Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
'Guava Island' is the end result of four incredible weeks spent in Cuba with some of the most inspiring creative talents I've ever met.
The weird thing about having an alligator on set is that you can't be in the direct line of sight, or they might start charging at you.
Whenever you're making something, you're hoping that it connects with somebody in some big way, but I'd have to be crazy to expect that.
Part of the fun is finding out how elastic that box is and, you know, test the limits of what TV shows can do or what a music video can do.
I think to truly not know what to expect out of the story - to create a world where nothing is guaranteed - is sort of the backbone of 'Atlanta.'
A lot of my personality and my affinity for certain pieces of pop culture and art all stem from a sort of Japanese aesthetic and way of thinking.
I was fortunate to work on a few episodes of 'Barry' right before we shot 'Atlanta.' That was where I got my training wheels for action coverage.
Some people draw a line between music videos and short films, looking down on music videos as a format, but there's so much potential in music videos.
Music videos were an outlet. They were the jobs most easily available to me, but creatively, they're also so free form; there are no rules whatsoever.
A lot of the music video stuff I've worked on is mostly me pitching ideas, and then if [the artists] have notes or thoughts, I'll integrate them into the idea.
Regularly in music videos, I'll write the pitch and convince the artists that this is a good idea, and then I'm having to make concessions to meet in the middle.
Once you go outside of Atlanta, there are still a lot of Klan rallies and whatnot. There are a lot of conflicting elements that are trying to solve itself in that city.
People have a natural tendency to read emotions out of faces, so when you see a face that is hyperreal but without the life behind the eyes, it's really off-putting and intriguing.
I'll listen to a song so much that ideas start to form out of daydreaming. It's as if I'm reverse-scoring the track and building visuals around a specific beat or riff that's grabbed me.
The most difficult thing about music videos is that a lot of young filmmakers come into the medium, and they have so many different ideas, but they need to understand what the musician wants.
Most of the time, I can't listen to the song after the video's done. Sometimes I'll hear a song that I've worked on at a restaurant or on the radio, and I'll have this visceral physical reaction.
TV is generally an unfriendly environment for directors because you're expected to come in and tell a story in the voice of the show that already exists and just fill in the blanks and then submit it back.
It might sound naive, but for me, you know, for me, the important part is kind of making process. So I'm not super result oriented, and I just, like, kind of getting lost in the process of making something.
TV is generally an unfriendly environment for directors because you're expected to come in and tell a story in the voice of the show that already exists, and just fill in the blanks and then submit it back.
When we were making 'Teddy Perkins,' we were playing with a lot of horror tropes and things you might've seen in movies before, but we get the ability to subvert expectations or get a comedic element out of a horror moment.
I don't know why, but even my nighttime dreams are very, very rooted in reality. They just start to become surreal, little by little. That exact moment when you're about to realize that this might be a dream is my favorite thing.
I'm a firm believer in the idea that once we make a thing and release it, my turn to talk is done. Ideally, you're saying everything you want to say in the product you're making, and you don't have to add commentary to it afterwards.
'Atlanta' is Wild West-y - every corner of the city is trying to get by under its own rules. There's no single narrative. At the outer edges, the overgrown parking lots and project blocks, the city is a few yards away from apocalypse, and if you slow down, it could engulf you.
Two things - one is obvious: always keep making. The second thing, with regard to music videos specifically - the music video industry can be a place that takes advantage of young freelancers and filmmakers. Make sure you're making stuff that you're proud of and you can get behind.
I love museums, but I always thought there was something funny about a group of strangers silently staring at works of inanimate objects together. Each person is having a very personal and maybe even emotional experience, but it's in the confines of an extremely quiet and sterile room.
I thought there was a way of marrying what I wanted to do with filmmaking with pop videos, which I found out through a couple projects just wasn't possible. That's not saying anything about the artist. If you're making an Usher video, you're making an Usher video, not a film with an Usher song in it.
In the case of, like, Childish Gambino, he is someone who is a writer by trade, so he is very meticulous about how he writes his ideas. I don't do this with a lot of artist, but he would give me a treatment that he wants to do, and I'll go off that; then I'll give him feedback and pitch him my ideas.
I'm a fan of the mythos of Atlanta hip-hop, and it's something I grew up imagining. It was very interesting to get there and see the real version of this world and then reconcile the differences between what's presented as Atlanta hip-hop to the rest of the world and what the real, breathing version of it is.
A TV show has to be a certain length and, you know, you have expectations from the viewers. You know, you want to see the characters again, or you want to see certain dynamics between the characters or certain kinds of storylines. And you kind of figure out how to best fit what you want to say into that format.
We always talk about how, obviously, there is still very in-your-face aggressive racism. But there's a lot of passive racism that, in the moment, you don't even realize is racist. You chalk it up as a strange interaction you had, and then you look at the context of it later on and realize the root of it was racism.