Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've loved music all my life.
I'm a first-generation Japanese immigrant.
'Atlanta' changes genres a lot per episode.
I used to be terrified of heights as a kid.
'Twin Peaks' was my gateway for David Lynch.
I've always preferred being behind the camera.
I'm one of those people who keep a dream journal.
If artists do have ideas, they're often not great.
I love David Lynch movies, and I like Haruki Murakami books.
Most of the time, I'm a little bewildered or sort of feel out of place.
Pilots are tricky because there are so many things you have to accomplish.
Every time I've rushed into something, that's usually when I have regrets.
I don't like fast cuts. I'd rather shoot something that dances to the music.
Shooting videos with lots of effects is like shooting a bunch of puzzle pieces.
As an Asian guy, I would love to see a big blockbuster with Asian lead characters.
I've never been robbed in person, but I've gotten my car broken into a couple of times.
I like stories where it feels like you're only seeing a small window of a bigger world.
I like shooting locations just because too much control on the stage can be a bad thing.
I got into film school thinking I was going to make features, like every other film geek.
A lot of weird things happen in life that are not always pertaining to your main objective.
Obviously the actors are incredible at being the audience surrogates in this crazy universe.
I think a season of 'Atlanta' bounces back between classic sitcom structure and genre movies.
Your understanding of culture can be very skewed sometimes, depending on what you're taking in!
That exact moment when you're about to realize that this might be a dream is my favorite thing.
I usually work in music videos, where we shoot, like, 10 to 12 setups and 60 shots or something.
I'm an immigrant, and I think being an outsider in your home is something that I really relate to.
That feeling of wavering between reality and supernatural has always been really interesting to me.
I grew up listening to hip hop and embracing black culture, probably because it was 'outsider art.'
At the end of the day, if you don't identify with the main characters, no television show will work.
Even if an episode is self-contained, the preceding episodes always affect how the audience takes it in.
Too many things are possible in a dream. It's most interesting when you don't know which space you're in.
A lot of people who make films in my generation have the vocabulary of all the films they've seen before.
It's something that I've always been attracted to, that idea of letting everything happen in a single frame.
I think music videos in particular and film in general - it's really good at communicating tone and feeling.
It's very easy to fall into a rut where you're just making things that you don't believe in for other people.
In a lot of comedy shows, there's a safety net where you don't assume anything of real consequence will happen.
Even my nighttime dreams are very, very rooted in reality. They just start to become surreal, little by little.
Directing action scenes is really just pure visual storytelling that just makes sense to me pretty intuitively.
The way I look at stories is often from far outside, like a god's point of view, and also very, very subjective.
I did a short film with Donald Glover for one of his Childish Gambino projects, and Flying Lotus was an actor in it.
I remember, when 'Atlanta' first happened, I didn't know what to expect. It felt like it was a lot of responsibility.
For me, I don't have a grand vision planned or an end goal. I'm just exploring what's given to me at any given moment.
I just got a Filmstruck account so I can watch all of those Criterion movies streaming. I've been nerding out about that.
I like the idea of reading into people's faces when they're not emoting. Some people are fascinated, some are sympathizing.
Whether it's a TV show or a music video, the seed of the idea is what's driving my decisions, not the format or the outcome.
I like absurdist aesthetics. There's something about dream logic that's really fascinating, how it interweaves with narrative.
FX is a network; that's their whole model, letting creators make the thing they want to make and then marketing it really well.
In Japan, animation is a big part of your media diet. I moved out to Los Angeles at 9, and when I got homesick, I would watch anime.
I like the feeling of keeping people off-balance and having the audience not knowing where I'm coming from or keeping that mysterious.
I really enjoy blocking and staging. I think most of visual storytelling is camera placement and how to stage action around the camera.