Shyamalan: Effective Storytelling Aligns Audience With a Character's Realization
M. Night Shyamalan · How I Built Resilience: M. Night Shyamalan · Feb 4, 2021 · at 36:28
Filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan addresses audience questions on How I Built This regarding his reputation as a plot twist director.
0:00 / 0:24exact quote · 24.2s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“It's a points of view and how to talk about points of view in the structure of storytelling and not understanding why, why is she acting that way? Why is she acting that way? Oh my gosh, she's acting that way because of that. You know, that kind of thing. I love characters realizing things. And so if I'm doing my job right as storyteller, you are with that character. As they realize this thing that happens.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from M. Night Shyamalan
Shyamalan: A filmmaker's blind spots and quirks are their greatest commercial strengths
“Don't copy me or anybody else, or even try to round off the things that are not great about you. Your blind spots are your strengths. That is why you're not doing this, and you're looking at that, that's part of what makes you so beautiful. To concentrate on t…”
Shyamalan criticizes Warner Bros for unilaterally moving 2021 film releases to streaming
“It should have been filmmaker by filmmaker's decision of how to handle this here. If they wanted to put it out that way, great, everybody comes to decision, or if they wanted to wait, and if the studio could handle that financial burden of waiting for a beat, …”
Shyamalan: Artists Must Wrestle with Internal Demons Every Single Day
“My, both my older daughters are artists, and I said, that is your plight. You're going to wrestle with your demons every single day of your life.”
Shyamalan: Box Office, Critics, and External Validation Are Irrelevant
“So all this other stuff, to be honest, I've learned is irrelevant. How many people did come on the weekend, and what did the New York Times think, and what did that fan think, and oh, that other guy made that much, or did that, or oh, the cover, they offered y…”
Shyamalan: Early success introduces distractions that lead to poor decision-making
“When you have nothing, you become really clear about what's important and what are your values. You're very clear about them, and then you get up and you start to have success, and there's this accretion of good decision making that gets you here, and then you…”
Shyamalan: Daily writing time without output still drives creative compounding
“Spend those two hours. And even if I sat there for two hours wondering what happens to him after he hits his head, five different iterations of things came and went that were incorrect. Right. It feels like I didn't do anything, but I did. And then the next da…”