It’s like being friends with someone you don’t like just based on impressions but the closer you get to them then you see things from their perspective but you also want to maintain your obligation to your initial feelings of them? Maybe I need to read more on Bresson

He prepares and then.. I doubt he could describe in details what happens, and that's normal, as he is not a brilliant speaker or writer. He was a master in other matters. The preparations were useful of course, otherwise he would not do them. See more in "Bresson on Bresson".

"He first claims that he does not want to know what is going to happen tomorrow on a shoot, then confesses that he has made a complete storyboard, and then cast it aside." You have a way too rational concept of any _artistic and aesthetic process_ . Bresson isn't producing a set of watches in the most efficient manner - but tries to _tell a story_ that once came to his mind, maybe over the course of several years. He has got an image or model about the character - so he can cast them - but since he's a filmmaker and not an author he doesn't know yet what these characters will say in a dialogue - or how they will say it (if I understand Bresson right, then the these details are kept minimal in order to not distract from the relation between scenes and their events). A storyboard can't answer such details precisely - but the *momentary improvisation between the actors* usually can, according to their personal *imagination* . So a director doesn't know exactly how a scene will eventually turn out and it takes the *editing in post-production* to shape the scenes and frames into telling a story that hopefully resonates strongly with the original idea of the movie - possibly clarifying aspects that had been obscure or revealing a new insight that hadn't been there before or hadn't been fully understood. The latter can be as exiting as playing a drama on stage where it is also unclear if a scene will resonate with the personal imagination of the audience. It's arguably concerning that people can be so alienated from their own imagination that they can't imagine how others produce something if it isn't straight out _'painting by numbers'_ ...

"My movie is born first in my head, dies in paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real object I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected onto a screen, come to life again like flowers in water."- Robert Bresson, Notes on Cinematography This quote perfectly expresses his idea here. I genuinely think he is good at explaining his methods and beliefs of films, though maybe only by short sentences.

@@christophmahler​this argument just boils down to semantics. Bresson worded it like he would arrive on set with his head completely blank, without even a clue and improvise entirely extemporaneously from there. “Nothing is even written down,” he says. Sounds pretty contradictory to the idea of using storyboards at all.

@@villain7140 "(...) he would arrive on set with his head completely blank, without even a clue and improvise entirely (...)" No. He has already a profound understanding of a story, but unlike an ideologue he is open minded for further sources of inspiration like instinctive actions by the actors. This is the procedure of every mature artist, writer or rhetor: *_to prepare for the imponderable organic_* .