The informing idea of what you want to say and do, that's what will take you from film school to professional - the idea. That's what is original to you.
We're always looking for the backbone, the central idea, and once you have that you know everything can circle around it.
All I want a song to do is just to kind of present an idea.
When it gets down to it, basketball is basketball.
There's always a germ of truth in just about everything.
Try to reach for a simple, visual phrase that tells you what the picture is all about and evokes the essence of the story
When I came up with Ethereum, my first first thought was, 'Okay, this thing is too good to be true.' As it turned out, the core Ethereum idea was good - fundamentally, completely sound.
But the truth is the highest consideration.
The way I see it, there's only one melody for any song.
The beautiful thing about 'American Gods' is that it's very simple at its core.
My ideas are all the same but look different.
I think that if you have a strong narrative, if the idea of the song can be boiled down to the basics, it won't change that much.
I've learned one general thing in filmmaking: to work with one strong idea. One strong concept that pushes you to work in a certain way artistically.
Well, I think what's most important is the idea of something.
What gets me excited is the original principle.
The core idea that underlies all of our democratic states, the core political idea, is this idea that it's not that one person is the sovereign; it's that all of the people are sovereign.
For me it's absolutely necessary to start from the very beginning. I can't think of coming and contributing something anywhere along the line other than the very start.
In my opinion, that's one of the hardest things to do in songwriting: crafting a song that speaks to you but, at its core, is a simple concept.
Grasp the subject, the words will follow.
The art of writing has for backbone some fierce attachment to an idea.
The thing that cannot be defined is the first thing; the primary fact.
You want what you write to be essential.
'High Concept' means a book or a film whose core idea can be stated in a single sentence, such as 'Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito are twins.' Or, 'Arnold is pregnant.'
In every great novel, who is the hero all the time? Not any of the characters, but some unnamed and nameless flame behind them all.
You do not have to explain every single drop of water contained in a rain barrel. You have to explain one drop-H2O. The reader will get it.
