Shane Carruth
Shane Carruth
Shane Carruthis an American film writer, composer, director, and actor. He is the writer, director, and co-star of the prize-winning science-fiction film Primer. His second film, Upstream Color, was released in 2013. Carruth also composed the scores for both these films. In recognition of Carruth's idiosyncratic and, at times, bizarre filmmaking, director Steven Soderbergh told Entertainment Weekly, "I view Shane as the illegitimate offspring of David Lynch and James Cameron."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
editing waiting watches
Editing is very satisfying process. You spend hours working on something and then you get to watch it. It's immediately satisfying where everything else is just kind of waiting and waiting and waiting.
tv-shows bored tvs
Probably the TV show I've watched the most is 'How It's Made' on the History Channel. I could watch 24 hours of 'How It's Made' and never get bored.
beautiful math really-beautiful
When something is beautiful in math, everything is just perfectly lined up, and you see through sheer thought that something really beautiful can take place.
photography looks snapshots
Cinematography was incredibly foreign to me, so I read as much as I could about it. Once I figured out that it was just photography with a set shutter speed, I got some slide film and I just went about storyboarding the script and taking snapshots. I took a ton of time doing it just to make sure I knew exactly what I was doing. By the end of it I knew what the film was going to look like - my exposure and the composition and everything. I wasn't scared of cinematography anymore.
freak film process
Film is a collaborative process, absolutely, but I am a control freak.
want way execution
As a viewer, that's work I respond to - work that I know is singular in some way. If I'm being challenged by something on screen, if I don't quite know why it's happening, I want to know I can do the work of pulling it apart and that there'll be something satisfactory about it. If the architecture is sound, you can be lyrical in execution.
ideas political film
I love to work. It's the idea of having someone else tell you how to make your film or how to sell it - that's the part I can't really deal with. I would rather do 1,000 things that are work than deal with one thing that's a political problem.
mistake people stories
The biggest mistake I made was not having a full-time producer. I was securing locations and wardrobe and making sure people get called to show up on time and getting the film to the lab and getting the camera, and all this stuff that I'm happy to do, but if I'm doing every little thing, I'm not concentrating on my story. So it never gets any better than the script.
hate ideas stories
I hate even the idea of a synopsis. When stories are really working, when you're providing subtextual exploration and things that are deeply layered, you're obligated to not say things out loud.
heart littles plot
Many of my favorite films, if someone were to tell me simply what they're about, I probably wouldn't be that interested. Plot often has so little to do with what's at the heart of a film.
matter film permission
I will be making films, and I'm going to keep working, no matter what I have to do. And I don't plan to ever ask for permission from anybody.
writing helping-others thinking
I think I'll always want to write and direct. I'm interested in producing and helping other people tell stories. But I'm still in love with writing and directing.
attention author came hold hopefully passing piece stories stuff
There is commerciality in storytelling, even in a film or a piece of literature. These things exist. That's why stories came to be: to hold attention and, while you're not looking, you'll get hopefully some nutritional value that the author has been working up. That's narrative; that's passing stuff down.
aisle almost exercise favorite feels good grocery low mundane stores walking
Going to grocery stores is almost my favorite thing to do to calm myself down. There's something about just walking aisle after aisle making mundane choices. 'Do I want that? No, I want the one that has the low sodium.' And that feels like a good exercise to be doing when there isn't anything to be doing. It's like a kick-starter in some way.