Movies are so hard to get made - every step of the way of making a movie has obstacles. If you don't have that passion, if you don't have that vision, if you don't believe it's a piece of art worth making, then you probably won't get it made - you won't have a chance for it to be something special.

I love movies; I grew up loving movies. I've always loved movies. I never thought about making movies until I took art classes and then I started studying different artists. As you study paintings, you see light and shadow, of course - Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix. You start to understand the relationship between people and art, and images. For me, between movies that I watched and art, it was like, I'd love to make moving art. Moving pictures.

My experience of test screenings is that you don't know what kind of mood people are going to be in, and sometimes the studios accept what Joe Blo says - and this guy could just be a frustrated filmmaker, or not paying attention.

We're very good friends, we have a very honest relationship. He keeps me honest, I keep him honest. He's an incredible actor and when you have an actor like Denzel action becomes drama.

It's a dumb question, because I don't look at things as a black director, just as a director, so ask me as a director first and we can segue into the colour thing later.

What I learned is, don't forget who you are, because that's what's going to make you a filmmaker.

It's a hard line to walk, man. Cause you know you want to make this movie, you want to make it dark and real, you want to show all this stuff but unfortunately you can't always do that.