Quote of the day by Samuel L. Jackson: “I see myself as a storyteller. So, when I read something, I see the story, and I see it on screen, in my head, in a certain way. I always want to see it and see me in it.”
Hand the same script to ten different actors, and you’ll get ten different performances, and not because the words changed, but because each person is running that script through a completely different internal projector.Some people read a page and hear it. Then there are those like Samuel Jackson, who feel it, nearly physically and genuinely see it with the complete scene playing out somewhere behind their eyes before a single frame has been shot.He weighed in on this thought beautifully through his wise words
Photo: @SamuelLJackson/ X
Quote of the day
I see myself as a storyteller So when I read something I see the story and I see it on screen in my head in a certain way I always want to see it and see me in it”
Samuel L Jackson
What does the quote mean?
From the perspective of a veteran artist who has worked in innumerable movies across nearly half a century, Jackson explains how he picks projects; he does not just judge a script by its dialogue or its role; he’s mentally previewing the finished film before it exists and deciding whether he can picture himself inside that picture.But the more interesting part of the quote is the mechanism underneath it, which, for him, isn’t an abstract or verbal process. It’s actually visual. Words on a page become a moving scene in his mind automatically.That’s a specific cognitive skill, not just a metaphor. Some people build vivid, cinematic mental images with almost no effort, while others read the same words and process them more like pure information, with little or no picture attached at all.
This describes the beauty of an artist’s thought process
For most of history, we assumed everyone’s “mind’s eye” worked more or less the same way, that when someone said ‘imagine’, everyone actually did.But looking into how artists visualise words or anything that comes down to their knowledge is actually worth pondering over.While inexperienced people read a sentence and just get the words. Artists read the same sentence and get a movie. The second a phrase like “rain on a window” hits their eyes, a whole little scene lights up in their head, with all colours, light, mood, and camera angle almost, before they’ve even finished the line.For most of us, reading is more like decoding, a word, meaning, next word. For a visual thinker, it’s closer to watching. That’s not magic, it’s just how their minds are wired. Their brains change language into pictures automatically.
