The film industry is transforming, due to a changing relationship with its audience, filmmaker Paul Schrader said at Boston University Friday.

Schrader discussed his career as a screenwriter and director as well as the future of the film industry at Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences on Friday night as part of the Cinematheque series, hosted by the College of Communication’s Film and Television Department.

‘It’s undergoing a profound and permanent change,’ he said. ‘When I came into the industry, it was a crisis of content. Now, it’s a crisis of form. It is technology changing how we perceive the object and how the perception between viewer and the thing viewed changes.’

Schrader said audiences do not have the same relationship with movies as they used to, reducing their willingness to pay for them.

He said capitalism is the only economic system under which the film industry has ever existed and because of no-cost digital filmmaking, supply and demand is collapsing.

‘It’s possible to make movies without any regard to demand,’ he said. ‘We have made films based on the idea that we could sell them, but now it is possible to do artistic expression without any regard to whether or not it sells.’

Schrader alluded to the movie industry’s upcoming problem with a ‘Titanic’ reference.

‘The movie industry is saying ‘Wow, look at that iceberg’ like the music industry did 10 years ago,’ he said.

Schrader said there are three movies every director is influenced by: ‘The Searchers,’ ‘Vertigo’ and ‘Citizen Kane.’

”The Searchers’ is one of the top three or four American films ever made,’ he said. ‘It examines a certain kind of man from the darkness of the American psyche, and it’s an extraordinary performance by [John] Wayne.’

Schrader used his 2002 film ‘Auto Focus’ to discuss character complexity. The film is based on the life of ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ star Bob Crane and his relationship with John Carpenter played by Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe, respectively.

Schrader said he has always been drawn to flawed characters.

‘Contrast is the heart and soul of character,’ he said. ‘If the characters are really interesting, then that’s enough.’

His other screenwriting credits include ‘Taxi Driver,’ ‘Raging Bull’ and ‘The Last Temptation of Christ.’ His directing credits include ‘Mishima,’ ‘American Gigolo’ and ‘Affliction.’

Schrader said writing should be for characters, not actors.

‘Writing with an actor in mind makes for a lazy writer,’ he said. ‘You have to write dialogue that’s awfully good and just jumps.’

Schrader said there are other common mistakes first time writers make.

‘When writers make dialogue too punchy, too realistic and too linear, it’s not convincing,’ he said. ‘The mistake that first time writers make is the dialogue is all too linear.’

Good dialogue is about the disconnection, Schrader said.

‘[Typical problems might be] answering questions too quickly, not at all, with body language, or a different question all together,’ he said. ‘Dialogue is a tool not to talk to each other, and the audience adds the connective tissue.’

As both screenwriter and director, you have to be hard on yourself and constantly rethink your actions, Schrader said.

‘When you write a script, make it work as a story,’ he said. ‘If you can look a person in the eye, tell him or her a story for 35 to 40 minutes, [if] he or she is engaged, then you can make a movie.’

With directing, showing through imagery is better than telling, Schrader said. Schrader referenced a voiceover about loneliness being cut from ‘Taxi Driver’ because ‘you saw the yellow, metal, ugly cab with smoke and steam and how he is trapped.’

‘What are the visual ideas behind these words?’ he said. ‘You can eventually throw [the words] away because you have better visual ideas.’

Audience members said they agreed with many of Schrader’s points.

Suffolk University senior film major Justin Owades said he agreed with Schrader’s opinion about writing for actors.

‘It’s lazy to write for specific actors,’ Owades said. ‘If you’re writing for characters, you have to really create the characters, not mold the actor.’

Suffolk sophomore Amanda Klessens said she acknowledged the film industry’s circumstances.

‘It’s going downhill, but I still love going to the movies,’ she said.