Martin Scorsese’s Tips for Developing Your Filmmaking Style

Filmmaker Martin Scorsese, who has over 50 years experience directing some of cinema’s most notable films such as Goodfellas (1990), Casino (1995), The Departed (2006), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and The Irishman (2019), shares his tips on developing your own filmmaking style.

• Style can change: Think of style as inspiration, and remain open to changes and shifts that you did not anticipate.
• Develop visual literacy skills: As a filmmaker, you should be able to distinguish between images created to sell something, those created to merely entertain, to inform, or to tell a story. Not all images are there to be consumed and forgotten. That's important to remember—filmmakers are not mass manufacturers.
• Draw your movie: Make your idea for a film less abstract and more concrete by drawing frames on paper. Draw the title sequence and one scene frame by frame. If you’re feeling ambitious, draw your whole movie. Martin sometimes draws his movies using watercolor, sometimes in black and white with ebony pencil, and some were even sepia, so choose the color palette and medium that best evoke the ambiance of your proposed film. As you draw, try to convey shot choices, angles, camera movement, and cuts to the best of your ability. Martin stresses that ultimately if you take away all the equipment, you still have to be able to tell the story.
• Experience first, analyze later: Martin finds that going to see a film and studying it at the moment as you're watching it for the first time doesn't work. He says that you have to let the film work on you or not. Then if you're hit by certain things, you can go back and figure out what made the scene so impactful. For example, you might remember a scene being shot close-up, but when you rewatch the scene, you find that the camera wasn't that close. Why? Well, it may have been the use of a sound effect, it may have been the use of a specific cut, or a camera move that was imperceptible at first.Go back and watch films and scenes that you found to be impactful.
• Experiment with other forms of filmmaking: Martin considers documentaries to be ripe places for experimenting, or finding another way to tell a story. He finds that the nonfiction films he makes inform the narrative structure of the fictional films he makes. Scorsese finds that there’s a freedom in making these documentaries loosens him up as a filmmaker—you get the space and the time to allow the film to speak for itself. For example, the documentary he made about his parents called Italian American was a great lesson in letting his subjects exist within the frame and tell their own stories, without intercutting or finding obvious cinematic techniques to push time forward or backward.

Whether you’re a budding director, screenwriter, or filmmaker, navigating the movie business requires plenty of practice and a healthy dose of patience. No one knows this better than legendary director Martin Scorsese, whose films have shaped movie history. In Martin Scorsese’s MasterClass on filmmaking, the Oscar winner deconstructs films and breaks down his craft, from storytelling to editing to working with actors.

Want to become a better filmmaker? The MasterClass Annual Membership provides exclusive video lessons from master filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Jodie Foster, Werner Herzog, Spike Lee, and more.

Filmmaker Martin Scorsese, who has over 50 years experience directing some of cinema’s most notable films such as Goodfellas (1990), Casino (1995), The Departed (2006), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and The Irishman (2019), shares his tips on developing your own filmmaking style.

• Style can change: Think of style as inspiration, and remain open to changes and shifts that you did not anticipate.
• Develop visual literacy skills: As a filmmaker, you should be able to distinguish between images created to sell something, those created to merely entertain, to inform, or to tell a story. Not all images are there to be consumed and forgotten. That's important to remember—filmmakers are not mass manufacturers.
• Draw your movie: Make your idea for a film less abstract and more concrete by drawing frames on paper. Draw the title sequence and one scene frame by frame. If you’re feeling ambitious, draw your whole movie. Martin sometimes draws his movies using watercolor, sometimes in black and white with ebony pencil, and some were even sepia, so choose the color palette and medium that best evoke the ambiance of your proposed film. As you draw, try to convey shot choices, angles, camera movement, and cuts to the best of your ability. Martin stresses that ultimately if you take away all the equipment, you still have to be able to tell the story.
• Experience first, analyze later: Martin finds that going to see a film and studying it at the moment as you're watching it for the first time doesn't work. He says that you have to let the film work on you or not. Then if you're hit by certain things, you can go back and figure out what made the scene so impactful. For example, you might remember a scene being shot close-up, but when you rewatch the scene, you find that the camera wasn't that close. Why? Well, it may have been the use of a sound effect, it may have been the use of a specific cut, or a camera move that was imperceptible at first.Go back and watch films and scenes that you found to be impactful.
• Experiment with other forms of filmmaking: Martin considers documentaries to be ripe places for experimenting, or finding another way to tell a story. He finds that the nonfiction films he makes inform the narrative structure of the fictional films he makes. Scorsese finds that there’s a freedom in making these documentaries loosens him up as a filmmaker—you get the space and the time to allow the film to speak for itself. For example, the documentary he made about his parents called Italian American was a great lesson in letting his subjects exist within the frame and tell their own stories, without intercutting or finding obvious cinematic techniques to push time forward or backward.

Whether you’re a budding director, screenwriter, or filmmaker, navigating the movie business requires plenty of practice and a healthy dose of patience. No one knows this better than legendary director Martin Scorsese, whose films have shaped movie history. In Martin Scorsese’s MasterClass on filmmaking, the Oscar winner deconstructs films and breaks down his craft, from storytelling to editing to working with actors.

Want to become a better filmmaker? The MasterClass Annual Membership provides exclusive video lessons from master filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Jodie Foster, Werner Herzog, Spike Lee, and more.