For me, I don't have a grand vision planned or an end goal. I'm just exploring what's given to me at any given moment.
Hiro Murai
I used to be terrified of heights as a kid.
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.
I don't like fast cuts. I'd rather shoot something that dances to the music.
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.
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.
That feeling of wavering between reality and supernatural has always been really interesting to me.
I did a short film with Donald Glover for one of his Childish Gambino projects, and Flying Lotus was an actor in it.
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.
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.
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.
Whether it's a TV show or a music video, the seed of the idea is what's driving my decisions, not the format or the outcome.
I'm one of those people who keep a dream journal.
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.
Your understanding of culture can be very skewed sometimes, depending on what you're taking in!
'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.
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.
I like shooting locations just because too much control on the stage can be a bad thing.
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.
I just got a Filmstruck account so I can watch all of those Criterion movies streaming. I've been nerding out about that.
It's something that I've always been attracted to, that idea of letting everything happen in a single frame.
I remember, when 'Atlanta' first happened, I didn't know what to expect. It felt like it was a lot of responsibility.
I never thought of myself as a TV director.
A lot of weird things happen in life that are not always pertaining to your main objective.
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.
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.
'Atlanta' changes genres a lot per episode.
'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.
I've never been robbed in person, but I've gotten my car broken into a couple of times.
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.
Directing action scenes is really just pure visual storytelling that just makes sense to me pretty intuitively.
'Twin Peaks' was my gateway for David Lynch.
A lot of people who make films in my generation have the vocabulary of all the films they've seen before.
Most of the time, I'm a little bewildered or sort of feel out of place.
I'm an immigrant, and I think being an outsider in your home is something that I really relate to.
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 grew up listening to hip hop and embracing black culture, probably because it was 'outsider art.'
I got into film school thinking I was going to make features, like every other film geek.
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.
I think music videos in particular and film in general - it's really good at communicating tone and feeling.
In Japan, animation is a big part of your media diet. I moved out to Los Angeles at 9, and when I got homesick, I would watch anime.
I love David Lynch movies, and I like Haruki Murakami books.
I like absurdist aesthetics. There's something about dream logic that's really fascinating, how it interweaves with narrative.
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.
FX is a network; that's their whole model, letting creators make the thing they want to make and then marketing it really well.
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.
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.
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 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.'
Every time I've rushed into something, that's usually when I have regrets.
