The real tough thing is working with actors. I'm a designer and used to working with artists, so there is some familiarity with the personalities that come up, but actors are their own animal.
You certainly can't be a perfect person, coming up with the 100% correct solution, all the time. It's just a combination of a chain of good decisions that comes up with a successful product or a successful film. That's what you hope for. But, nothing about the system is 100% fool proof.
A successful director is someone who has the combination of skills that you can learn, but there's also an intuitive sensibility that they bring to it, that they've developed on their own and that is singular to them.
In a lot of cases, you think that the art director and the production designer designed and built this amazing set, when in fact they only built part of it and were able to extend it using all of this fabulous technology.
If you are able to see on a monitor what it's actually going to look like and have that kind of feedback informing your decisions, then you're bringing back a lot of the decision-making process of the designer, the director of photography and the director away from the post-production process and bringing it back into the actual capturing of the event on film.
The advantages of a virtual production pipeline are that you can reduce the footprint of your production down to the size of the stage.
Even in traditional filmmaking, you're always trying to find novel ways of telling stories, and this is different.
With all of this new technology at our hand, there is much more opportunity to show and to allow the audience to take in bits of the story on a more subliminal level, as well as the more expository, simply because they are getting things from different ways. It is really interesting to see where that can go.
One of the things I've always tried to do in filmmaking is that you don't tell the story, you try to show it.
More and more of our finest actors are finding room for themselves in the world of television - but I truly believe it's because some of the best stories are being told there.
As a matter of fact - it'll probably ruin my movie career - but I think better storytellers are in television.
Certainly I think being an absentee farther helps in adding a layer of conflict.
I'm not a fan of horror. I don't think a proper horror movie has been done since The Shining.
If you can't really have a conversation with someone candidly about it it's something that you'll always have something to learn from when it comes to taking a literature class.
I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to literature and theory. I wish I could have more of that in life, but I don't because I'm always reading scripts or things to prepare for movies when I'm reading.
I love working with women. I think they're beautiful. I like to photograph them. I like the way they interact. When I was in high school I used to hang out with the girls. When I went to graduate school, I was in an all girls school. So it's something I'm very familiar with and quite fascinated by.
When you get the role, it's 'cause you know exactly how to play it, and they know that the way you're playing it is exactly what they want. I never go with a role and say that I need to change anything about it. Otherwise, I wouldn't take it.
You never know what you're in for when you take a role. When you're reading the script, you're in some cafГ© in New York and you're loving life and it sounds great because it's like reading a book. When you step into that book and you actually have to play it out, for real, it's a totally different ball game.
You've got to pick your roles really carefully. It's a lot more fun to play a layered woman, than just someone where what you see is what you get, by far.
Anything dark and emotionally complex, I'll do it. You're acting, but when you take an acting role, you have to live it. You're living the life of that person.
