Shooting to Kill Quotes

“The camerawork might be shaky, the plot might have holes, the audience might not even know what the film is about, but if your actors are compelling you can still keep people in their seats.”
― Christine Vachon, Shooting to Kill: How An Independent Producer Blasts Through the Barriers to Make Movies That Matter

“The bottom line is, you cannot be a producer unless you understand that it’s all your fault.”
― Christine Vachon, Shooting to Kill: How An Independent Producer Blasts Through the Barriers to Make Movies That Matter

“The person smokes pot. Little alcohol, no hard drugs, but more than an occasional toke—although never while working: only at home, before bed. “Are you sure it shows up in your blood?” I asked, innocently. Ha. I’m an authority now. It stays in your bloodstream for six weeks. I called the executive producer, who said: “That can’t be what they’re testing for. It must be hard drugs.” Ironically, though, if you’re a cokehead or a heroin addict, relax: Those things go right out of you, a few days and they’re gone. And you can also be the biggest alcoholic on the planet, but they won’t test for that.”
― Christine Vachon, Shooting to Kill: How An Independent Producer Blasts Through the Barriers to Make Movies That Matter

“Sound. No matter how great a movie looks, if the audience can’t understand what the actors are saying, they’ll get frustrated and lose interest quickly. I know when I see a low-budget movie and the sound is crummy, I shut it off. The less money you have, the less you’ll probably budget for postproduction sound, so what you get during the shoot becomes even more important. Don’t scrimp here. If your production sound is good enough, you won’t need a lot of ADR (additional dialogue recording), which most of the time you need because there’s a flaw in the production sound, or an airplane was overhead and you couldn’t get a clean take. Your sound person should scout your locations. If you’re going to be shooting on a weekday and you visit on a weekend, make sure that there isn’t a noisy garage next door that’s only open Monday to Friday. Sometimes you do ADR because you want to change the performance. That’s fine, but I can usually tell when an actor has been looped, and I hate it, and so do many directors. Some actors are hopelessly bad at it—they’re never able to dub themselves in a convincing way. The best reason to use ADR is when you want to fill in a scene where lots of people are talking at once.”
― Christine Vachon, Shooting to Kill: How An Independent Producer Blasts Through the Barriers to Make Movies That Matter