Directing 'The Office' is kind of like someone going, 'Would you like to drive my Lamborghini?' And I'm like 'Yes, I would like to drive your Lamborghini. That sounds like fun.'
TV is a completely different discipline, which I think I am still learning about. You just have to learn how to work fast and pace yourself.
The craziest thing about TV directing is I turned in a version, and then they made their final changes - so I don't know what they are. So I'm like, "Ooo, I'm dying to see the final print."
I got into television, and I'm a television guy, so I've never really had a movie career.
I don't want to carry a network show. I don't want to give up 10 months, working 17 hours a day, up at five in the morning.
I kind of want to learn how to direct TV. It's interesting.
The first TV show I worked on was with the guys from 'Little Britian,' Matt Lucas and David Walliams, who did a show in 1995 I directed, 'Mash and Peas.'
Television is kind of restrictive in its directing, but it would be nice to get some chops doing TV.
I'm directing episode 10 of the new season of 'Dollhouse' and couldn't be more thrilled. I've visited the set several times in the last year and a half to shadow Joss and other directors in order to prepare. It was important for me to get a feeling for the crew and how they interact.
I'll be directing some more 'Private Practice' episodes when we wrap 'Caprica.'
Directing television is really hard - it's so fast. You shoot an hour show in seven days.
Here's the thing about standup directing: not that hard. As I said on Twitter one day, or maybe it was Instagram - sorry, I want to keep my platforms straight - it's essentially the same five shots over and over again. Seven if you're ambitious.
I directed an episode of 'Party of Five' toward the very end of that show. It was a great experience.
Well directing TV is very time-consuming, so if you are going to direct TV, a season will take a year out of your life.
I did my acting performance in 'Roger Rabbit.' I think I did a voice-over also in 'Osmosis Jones' and I directed an episode of my show years ago, 'Tales from the Crypt' and that's my endeavors in the non-producer oriented ranks.
Let me be crystal clear: I love doing television.
You know, episodic TV directing is a very long and arduous job. You have very short schedules, short short shooting days, and you have to get lot of pages done.
I've learned more about directing from five years of television than I could have in ten years of film.
As a film director and as film actors, you get used to a certain rhythm that's slow. But with TV, it's hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry. It's a different pace. So, it's about adjusting to the pace. It's not meant for everybody.
Television is much more of a producer's writer's medium, so a lot of the time, when you're directing a television show, they have a color palette on set or a visual style and dynamic that's already been predetermined, and you just kind of have to follow the rules.
I don't think anyone who runs a TV show would ever say to you, 'I have a grasp on running a TV show.' Maybe that's not true. Maybe there are people that do. I don't know.
Whether it's movies or television that I've directed, or characters that I've played, I'm just always fascinated by the moral ambiguity inherent in life.
After college, I funded my short films with acting roles in film and TV. I learned my craft through the great opportunities British television gave me as a director.
My first pilot gig, in fact my first job in television, was 'Freaks and Geeks,' and the experience of directing that pilot was probably the single most formative of my directing life.
There's always the pressure on the director of how to transition from one scene to another, especially when it can really be oblique on 'Game of Thrones.'
