"When you're sent something and read it, either you can see it while you read it, or you can't"
About this Quote
Soderbergh turns the mystique of filmmaking into a blunt diagnostic: the difference between a director who can pre-visualize and one who’s basically guessing. The line is almost aggressively unromantic. No talk about “vision” as a mood or a vibe. Just a practical binary triggered by a very modern ritual: someone sends you material, you read it, and your brain either renders images in real time or it doesn’t.
The intent is partly self-description, partly gatekeeping, but in a useful way. Soderbergh is famous for treating directing like a craft discipline, not a holy calling: he shoots, edits, experiments with formats, and treats constraints as creative fuel. So this quote reads as a credo for efficiency. If you can’t see it, you’ll outsource the movie in your head to committee notes, coverage, and post-production fixes. If you can, you’re already making decisions about blocking, lenses, rhythm, even the negative space between lines.
The subtext is that “reading” isn’t the point; translation is. Plenty of people can analyze a script, give smart notes, or understand character. Soderbergh’s tell is whether the script becomes cinema instantly, not literature. It’s also a quiet warning about contemporary content pipelines: with endless PDFs flying around, the industry rewards fast certainty. His binary isn’t philosophical; it’s protective. If the images don’t arrive on contact, the work will be slower, messier, and more vulnerable to everyone else’s imagination.
The intent is partly self-description, partly gatekeeping, but in a useful way. Soderbergh is famous for treating directing like a craft discipline, not a holy calling: he shoots, edits, experiments with formats, and treats constraints as creative fuel. So this quote reads as a credo for efficiency. If you can’t see it, you’ll outsource the movie in your head to committee notes, coverage, and post-production fixes. If you can, you’re already making decisions about blocking, lenses, rhythm, even the negative space between lines.
The subtext is that “reading” isn’t the point; translation is. Plenty of people can analyze a script, give smart notes, or understand character. Soderbergh’s tell is whether the script becomes cinema instantly, not literature. It’s also a quiet warning about contemporary content pipelines: with endless PDFs flying around, the industry rewards fast certainty. His binary isn’t philosophical; it’s protective. If the images don’t arrive on contact, the work will be slower, messier, and more vulnerable to everyone else’s imagination.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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