But why watch so many movies?

"If you want to be a filmmaker," my film professor used to say, "you need to: (1) study physics (2) learn how to play the drums and (3) watch two movies a day."

While I don't think that the first two are strictly necessary to filmmaking success, I've always taken that third point to heart and found it to be true. If you to work in an artform, you need to understand that artform. If you want to understand an artform you have to experience, appreciate and study a great deal of work in that artform.

If you want to be a novelist, read novels - lots of them. If you want to be a composer, listen to music - lots of it. If you want to be a game designer, play games - lots of them. And if you want to be a filmmaker, watch as many films as you can.

You learn who you are as an artist by exposing yourself to as much artwork - and especially work in your chosen field - as you can. You find work that inspires you, work that taps into that nerve of what you really love, work that shows you how to accomplish specific goals, work that has found an audience while succeeding in its own terms.

And you find work that shows you exactly what not to do, work that shocks or disturbs you, work that inspires you to make something better, work that by its own failures shows you just where the work you love succeeds. Watch Hitchcock's "Psycho" immediately followed by Gus Van Sant's frame-by-frame re-make and you will have a much better understanding of Hitchcock - and filmmaking in general. Every single creative decision Van Sant makes that differs from the original (I mean really, every last one) detracts from the film, and by looking at the failure of those decisions scene-by-scene and detail-by-detail you start to understand exactly how and why Hitchcock's choices are so effective.