HIRO MURAI

I like shooting locations just because too much control on the stage can be a bad thing.

'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.

As an Asian guy, I would love to see a big blockbuster with Asian lead characters.

I don't like fast cuts. I'd rather shoot something that dances to the music.

Your understanding of culture can be very skewed sometimes, depending on what you're taking in!

That feeling of wavering between reality and supernatural has always been really interesting to me.

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.

In the case of, like, Childish Gambino, he is someone who is a writer by trade, so he is very meticulous about how he writes his ideas. I don't do this with a lot of artist, but he would give me a treatment that he wants to do, and I'll go off that; then I'll give him feedback and pitch him my ideas.

It's something that I've always been attracted to, that idea of letting everything happen in a single frame.

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 can't listen to the song after the video's done. Sometimes I'll hear a song that I've worked on at a restaurant or on the radio, and I'll have this visceral physical reaction.

I just got a Filmstruck account so I can watch all of those Criterion movies streaming. I've been nerding out about that.

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.

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 remember, when 'Atlanta' first happened, I didn't know what to expect. It felt like it was a lot of responsibility.

Most of the time, I'm a little bewildered or sort of feel out of place.

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.

Every time I've rushed into something, that's usually when I have regrets.

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.

'Twin Peaks' was my gateway for David Lynch.

I really enjoy blocking and staging. I think most of visual storytelling is camera placement and how to stage action around the camera.

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.'

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.