About
As a director I love the art of filmmaking and I enjoy more than anything working with friendly, enthusiastic people making surprising and meaningful film.
My love for film was an evolution through art, design, music, and writing. Story experienced through the collective current of sound, image, imagination, and the creative talent film employs has affected me like nothing else. When it works, it's magic. And it only works with the right team of people. People with great ideas, especially if those ideas are different than my own.
These are the kinds of artists I love working with:
Producers
Filmmaking is problem solving and it's because of the creative solutions to those problems that films can become something special. A producer who can see problems as process, who can stay level-headed and positive - the antithesis of drama - is valuable beyond description.
Directors of Photography
Working with a cinematographer who understands the language of imagery, loves it, and who's excited to try new things is an ideal experience. Cinematography is an art, and films mature when the relationship between the director and a cinematographer is collaborative. The more my vision is affected by other voices and ideas, the better the film will be.
Actors
At the end of the day, no matter how great everything else looks and sounds, it's the acting that tells the story. The films I love are films that can push aside the world long enough to let me connect to something within myself. That connection is made possible through actors who care about the authenticity of character and who aren't afraid to plunge the depths and commit to a role. I will always do my best to support actors any necessary way to help them get to that place inside themselves.
Composers
Nothing inspires me to write and create more than music. It's the channel through which my ideas come and the pulse that translates those ideas into an emotional frequency. Composers perpetually suffer the misfortunes of a job that begins late in the genesis of a film and thus work against tight deadlines, stressed producers, and voices from all directions telling them to copy rather than create. The sooner in the process the composer is involved, the better the score, the better the film. I believe that ideally the score and script would be written hand in hand, while the score continues to evolve through production and post production.
Editors
I think a good editor has the ability to see a film not for what it is but for what it can be. Editors deal with the infinite. They see a single cut dozens or hundreds of times. To learn to see past that, to experience the cut as if for the first time is key, but what's most important is the ability to look through the script and to tell the story in the most appropriate, dynamic, and original way. And to have fun doing it.