"Subject matter that is not bound to reality offers more opportunity to write a unique story and cinematically present it in very unique ways"
About this Quote
Richard King is making a quiet case for the value of unreality as a production tool, not just an aesthetic preference. The line reads like a director translating creative philosophy into practical advantage: once you unclip a story from the rules of the plausible, you also unclip your camera from the default grammar of realism. “Not bound to reality” isn’t an escape hatch; it’s a mandate to stop borrowing the visual language of everyday life and build your own.
The phrasing does a lot of work. He says “opportunity” twice, and “unique” twice, which signals a familiar pressure point in contemporary filmmaking: audiences can smell template. In an era where streaming has industrialized storytelling into “content,” originality becomes a marketable resource. King’s subtext is that the unreal isn’t merely whimsical; it’s a competitive edge. Fantasy, sci-fi, heightened horror, surreal comedy: these genres create permission structures. Lighting can be unnatural, edits can be discontinuous, sound can behave like thought instead of physics. You can show internal states externally and call it world-building.
There’s also a gentle rebuke baked in. Realism, in King’s framing, can be a kind of aesthetic conformity: the same handheld urgency, the same “authentic” color palette, the same studied messiness. The paradox he’s pointing to is that reality can be the most limiting fiction. By stepping outside it, a director gains room to stage images that feel less like documentation and more like authorship - cinema as invention, not reportage.
The phrasing does a lot of work. He says “opportunity” twice, and “unique” twice, which signals a familiar pressure point in contemporary filmmaking: audiences can smell template. In an era where streaming has industrialized storytelling into “content,” originality becomes a marketable resource. King’s subtext is that the unreal isn’t merely whimsical; it’s a competitive edge. Fantasy, sci-fi, heightened horror, surreal comedy: these genres create permission structures. Lighting can be unnatural, edits can be discontinuous, sound can behave like thought instead of physics. You can show internal states externally and call it world-building.
There’s also a gentle rebuke baked in. Realism, in King’s framing, can be a kind of aesthetic conformity: the same handheld urgency, the same “authentic” color palette, the same studied messiness. The paradox he’s pointing to is that reality can be the most limiting fiction. By stepping outside it, a director gains room to stage images that feel less like documentation and more like authorship - cinema as invention, not reportage.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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