The real tough thing is working with actors. I'm a designer and used to working with artists, so there is some familiarity with the personalities that come up, but actors are their own animal.

Even in traditional filmmaking, you're always trying to find novel ways of telling stories, and this is different.

If you are able to see on a monitor what it's actually going to look like and have that kind of feedback informing your decisions, then you're bringing back a lot of the decision-making process of the designer, the director of photography and the director away from the post-production process and bringing it back into the actual capturing of the event on film.

I love the interplay with other smart and creative people who have got better ideas than I do and that I can bring something to, as well.

A successful director is someone who has the combination of skills that you can learn, but there's also an intuitive sensibility that they bring to it, that they've developed on their own and that is singular to them.

In a lot of cases, you think that the art director and the production designer designed and built this amazing set, when in fact they only built part of it and were able to extend it using all of this fabulous technology.

The fact that there are awards and exhibitions and some people know who I am is just all gravy. I'm lucky to just work in an industry where I get to play so much.