Putting my audience to sleep isn't what I'm going for.
I believe in entertaining the audiences with whatever I do.
It's like a novelist writing far out things. If it makes a point and makes sense, then people like to read that. But if it's off in left field and goes over the edge, you lose it. The same with musical talent, I think.
It's a rare book that wins the battle against drooping eyelids.
Think of a pitch in terms of advertising: You're trying to hook a reader the way a commercial tries to hook a detergent user.
You want people to feel something when you tell a story, whether they feel happy or whether they feel sad.
The whole purpose of filmmaking is to entertain the viewers and when it happens, it gives you a high.
I think it's hugely important to have a strong episode one; you can lose an audience so quickly now. You can't afford to take the attitude that you will use the first one as an introduction and save the high drama for later.
Cinema which is well-made, for any kind of audience, is worthy of being watched by just about anybody who would like to watch a good story being told.
Audiences are very willing to be taken somewhere, and to ask an audience beforehand what it wants is probably, I think, a mistake. Much better you should tell them what you want and hope they agree with it.
The trick to writing for people is, you have to be able to turn them on in your head. And know how they'd word something or how they'd inflect it.
A film should be an experience. You should feel something. It should motivate you to feel something.
The big thing for me is to make films that you feel, whether you feel happy, whether you feel sad, whether you feel sick; it's to make the audience feel so that the next day they remember what they saw.
There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.
My experience of great storytelling, working with classics, is just finding a way to present it simply but let the story do its own work, or be an invite to the audience's imagination.
I don't feel the obligation to have a big explosion in the first 20 seconds so the audience doesn't turn on another channel. We are trying to make something that looks like a feature film that was bought for television and I think we are succeeding.
You can't really tell what the audience wants but you can tell what will keep everybodies attention in the same place.
As much as I am one for real human interaction, I also want to make a show that's entertaining and that people want to see.
As a professional, I think we're not being judged solely on technical ability anymore. People really want to be entertained and enjoy what they're watching.
My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: when you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.
If we as writers could predict what readers grab on to, we would write it.
If a film or any piece of work doesn't entertain, it fails - and that is using the word entertain literally, meaning it holds you there and you become absorbed by it so that you don't walk away and get bored and so on.
Any director who's willing to be brave not only in terms of subject matter but also in terms of being emotional and moving you is what inspires me.
I think films have to reach people and really grab them. That's what I hope to do when I make a film - to get under your skin and really make you think about something, and have a transporting time that takes you somewhere.
People love to see reactions, they love to see emotions that come about.
