When people leave cults, they don't know that they left a cult.
Sean Durkin
In editing, it's amazing how you choose the in and out points. What you cut on is everything for creating tension. It's amazing how expanding a shot by five seconds can just ruin the tension.
I'm a believer in film school.
Sports teams, people who follow sports teams, religion, churches, work - any company, I find that people just generally have a need to belong to something larger than themselves.
I won't rewrite on set, but I'll just trim the fat.
The trappings of a religious cult tend to fall into candlelit ceremonies and robes and group chanting and singing and prayer.
The way brainwashing works is subtle and takes a long time.
I always try to keep the confidence of the actors, and try my best to make them feel comfortable or confident.
I love the first hour of a horror movie, the fear and anticipation. Then, when it gets bloody, I lose interest.
It's sort of one ongoing process where writing ends and directing starts.
Yeah, in my scripts, I don't tend to describe landscape too clearly because I like to keep it really basic and sort of let people paint their own picture. I don't find it helpful to spend a page describing a setting, except for maybe a few key things.
You know, when you're isolated on set for like a month, people like to get rowdy.
I wasn't good enough to be a professional soccer player obviously but that was my first goal in life.
I was really into writing short fiction and also photography when I was a kid.
I went to my first college to play soccer.
When I was a little kid, I loved horror films. I always liked being scared.
A big fear of working with an actor that's never been a lead in a film before is that you're going to have to work really hard to pull a performance out of her.
Well, first of all, making films is a collaborative process. You need people. You need people you trust and love and who are your friends. People you can work with.
When you write, no matter what, it ends up personal.
You can't write something to please someone.
I remember being at school during morning meeting and looking around at everybody, 350 kids, saying a prayer. We're all very young and no one knows what it means, and I remember feeling strange that people were just repeating words that they didn't understand. I refused to participate. For some reason I always rejected it, but respectfully.
Filmmaking is a real craft.
When I was a kid, I was afraid of large group of conforming people.
When I hire actors I believe in their abilities.
When someone stays with you and they're not your guest, even when they are your guest they get on your nerves. When people visit for long periods of time, that just happens.
I'm interested in adapting books and all sorts of things.
What I learned from directing, I learned from soccer, where it's like a coach-player relationship.
I would like to do a sports movie.
