Hiro Murai

“It might sound naive, but for me, you know, for me, the important part is kind of making process. So I'm not super result oriented, and I just, like, kind of getting lost in the process of making something.”

“The most difficult thing about music videos is that a lot of young filmmakers come into the medium, and they have so many different ideas, but they need to understand what the musician wants.”

“I've never been robbed in person, but I've gotten my car broken into a couple of times.”

“I've always preferred being behind the camera.”

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

“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.”

“Directing action scenes is really just pure visual storytelling that just makes sense to me pretty intuitively.”

“I grew up listening to hip hop and embracing black culture, probably because it was 'outsider art.'”

“It's very easy to fall into a rut where you're just making things that you don't believe in for other people.”

“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'm a little bewildered or sort of feel out of place.”

“I like stories where it feels like you're only seeing a small window of a bigger world.”

“I just want to do things on my own terms as much as possible.”

“I usually work in music videos, where we shoot, like, 10 to 12 setups and 60 shots or something.”

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

“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.”

“I'm a firm believer in the idea that once we make a thing and release it, my turn to talk is done. Ideally, you're saying everything you want to say in the product you're making, and you don't have to add commentary to it afterwards.”

“I'm a first-generation Japanese immigrant.”

“In Japan, animation is a big part of your media diet. I moved out to Los Angeles at 9, and when I got homesick, I would watch anime.”

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