PHILOSOPHY

We believe you already have a way of seeing. You already notice certain things and ignore others. You are drawn to certain faces, rhythms, conflicts, silences.

You already have a voice.

Our job is to give you the craft, language and freedom to recognize it — and use it deliberately.

The camera will not save the scene.

Neither will the lens, the crane, the location or another day of shooting.

Know your tools. Respect them. Learn what they can do.

A filmmaker with limited resources and a precise idea is more dangerous than a filmmaker surrounded by equipment who doesn’t know what they want.

Don’t wait for permission.

Don’t wait for perfect circumstances.

Don’t wait for somebody to employ you as a director.

Be your own employer.

Make something.

Understand what your choices cost your producer and your crew.

Don’t tell your collaborators how to do their jobs.

Know enough to ask them better questions.

A film is not the execution of one person’s orders.

It is many crafts meeting around one intention.

Learn to communicate that intention.

And then remain open to the possibility that somebody else’s idea may be better than yours.

Don’t let your style become your prison.

Direct an actor.

Direct a non-actor.

Tell a story with dialogue.

Tell one without a word.

Make something beautiful.

Then make something deliberately ugly.

Know how to work with a crew of forty.

Learn what you can do with four.

Make the thing you think is “not you.”

Experiment is not a detour from finding your voice.

Experiment is how you find out how large that voice can become.

Cinema is difficult enough.

Keep curiosity. Keep play. Keep pleasure.

MOTIF is here for you to try the stupid idea, fail while it is still cheap to fail, let an actor surprise you, to give you a chance to change your mind.

A laboratory in which everyone is afraid of being wrong is not a laboratory.

Joy is not the opposite of rigor.

You can work ferociously and still enjoy making the thing.

We think you should.