Because I come from that old-school optics environment, I know stuff about depth of field and camera movement and things that are not necessarily a part of the curriculum for people who started on a box and have never done anything that wasn't on a box.

Boy, am I glad there wasn't a fourth episode of Lord of the Rings.

I come from an era when we had to figure out how to bolt a camera to a motorcycle or an airplane or dig a hole and find a canyon deep enough to repel into it so that we can capture images that were real.

I was involved in the color correction and the digital color correction. In an odd way, you end up making a film many times-the DVD, the archival record of a high-definition master, and so on.

If you understand how the real world feels and looks and sounds it is much easier to create a virtual version of the real world.

If you can imagine it, we can make it.

It's very much like filmmaking always is-you're always asked to do something that you're not sure you know how to do. So you make an educated guess as to what you think will work and you hope between that and plan B, that you can end up with a product that's really good.