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.
The advantages of a virtual production pipeline are that you can reduce the footprint of your production down to the size of the stage.
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.
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.
I love the interplay with other smart and creative people who have got better ideas than I do and that I can bring something to, as well.
I love working with other people, and I love the fact that film is a collaborative industry and form of art. You're all working with each other and playing off of each other and getting the best ideas out of everybody.
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.
Even in traditional filmmaking, you're always trying to find novel ways of telling stories, and this is different.
The fact that there are awards and exhibitions and some people know who I am is just all gravy. I'm lucky to just work in an industry where I get to play so much.
I never feel like I'm the guy that's got all the answers.
My problem has been with purely digital films. I feel the danger there is that the kind of short-cuts you end up having to take are the ones that are most telling in the main characters.
I would never have expected anything that I did would ever appear in first-rate museums around the world. That was just a choice that I made, very early on. I was interested mainly in the entertainment arts. I wasn't as interested in being a fine artists.
You want to feel appreciated, definitely. I think I've been very lucky to have a long enough career, so that I do get this kind of feedback.
I was working with actors who were very easy to work with, but I can just imagine how, with all the other decision-making problems that come up along the way, in addition to that, the whole point of what your doing is following performance and character development. You're building your story with those building blocks, and it is not easy. I've only come out with more respect for directors, from this.
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.
You gain wisdom and you don't make the same mistakes.
