Shawn Ryan Quotes

The best work for creative folks on the team is when the problem is big and the solution escapes everyone.

When it's low-budget, and you have one other person on the set, you have to make rules.

I think a lot of people study the rules too much and then don't know how to be creative.

I believe that if creative people are open and generous enough when working with each other, a lot more can be learned and achieved by both parties. That's what it's all about, trying to produce the best work possible on any given project.

To me there's no creativity without boundaries. If you're gonna write a sonnet, it's 14 lines, so it's solving the problem within the container.

I think architects are often at their best when faced with restraints.

I've been lucky enough to work with some of the best TV directors there are, and I've learned from how they had to handle when things don't go quite according to plan.

I'm a big believer in creating parameters for creativity. I think parameters make people more creative. So that starts with my budgets. I only do low budget movies, and I think that makes the movies better.

I always look at 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail.' They talked about how they wrote this movie with horses, and then they realized that horses are super-expensive and time-consuming. 'Why don't we just change it to coconuts?' That's part of my process.

If you really want to step up your team's creative thinking, take a hard look at how many people you're putting in a room together. More than three to five is probably too many.

When you come to the set, and are aware of the limitations of the script or the director, don't expect the pigs to fly.

I love the flexibility of saying, "Today we're making 50-foot paintings, and we're going to have to join hands and figure out how that's going to work." But in the end, it's a possibility.

I think constraints are very important. They're positive, because they allow you to work off something.

It's been really exciting to work on a collaborative, creative team where we got to bounce ideas back and forth and figure out the best one.

I understand the relationships between the crew chiefs and the engineering or between fabrication and the body shop.

At 'Vogue,' I was responsible for a lot of production work, and production work is highly detailed, and you have to be very resourceful to fit a square peg into a round hole. I learned to push the envelope when it comes to asking questions or making requests.

I learned from growing a business that it's important to listen to everyone how we can do better.

Every new project, every new team and everything teaches you with something which you haven't learnt or done before.

If an employee can demonstrate results produced in a way that the company didn't think possible, then a new way forward can begin to take shape.

It's always about the project itself than a character for me. It's all experiential.

Being a start-up has nothing to do with the numbers. It's that everyone who works there has the chance to do everything and have an impact.

I've learnt a lot about construction and flexibility from my time at Geox.

The assistants, the managers, the PR, the person whose coordinating, the person in production - those are the people I loved communicating with and building network relationships with.

The people who built Silicon Valley were engineers. They learned business, they learned a lot of different things, but they had a real belief that humans, if they worked hard with other creative, smart people, could solve most of humankind's problems. I believe that very much.

The best way to get people to think outside the box is not to create the box in the first place.