Usually I'm thinking about the palette. I'm thinking about the color for the most part, then I'll start thinking about composition and movement.

The best set was probably 'Bloody Sunday.' We had no money for extras and gambled on months of outreach to persuade the people of Derry to turn out and march for us on one single afternoon. And they did. In their tens of thousands. Seeing them march, their patience and their dignity and their commitment, I knew the movie would have a quality of truth.

Your take on things is what is either going to make you somebody people talk about or no.

"A meteor hits planet Earth" - that's a story idea but that doesn't give me any indication of what the character is.

I never leave the writer behind, because you rewrite the movie in post, or at least I do. I always do, and I feel like anybody who doesn't at least explore that possibility is short-changing themselves. Editing is the most fun and most exciting part of the process.

[I watch] Fincher, Spielberg, Cameron, McTiernan. Just people who are good at staging action. I like to know where I am. I don't like the kind of cutting where you don't know where you are.

I grew up mostly in the South, and there's definitely something about the South that's different from the North. When people ask me where I'm from, I say Louisiana. I spent more years there than anywhere else.