Stephen Hopkins

“I directed 24's pilot. I felt we should follow the characters around as if we were a documentary crew, using available light, hand-held cameras, split screens, sound that isn't always what it should be, to suit the reality of the premise.”

“To be able to rely completely on the actors was a very simple process for me.”

“Each environment has its own signature. Sound tells a story: You make choices about what you're hearing, where to look, how you want to feel about what's going on.”

“There were no previews; we made the film we wanted to make.”

“When I was thinking of casting this, I thought, What roles would Sellers be playing now?”

“Everyone was going to play their part honestly, and not try and pretend to be good or bad guys.”

“Dark impulses certainly exist in me and, I think, in most people.”

“There's no attempt to manipulate the audience. We made our choice at the start.”

“I wanted to make a film that was sophisticated and emotional, but for a wider audience.”

“Because of all the concurrent stories going in 24 and its fast pace, it can be complicated in terms of the story, so I thought sound could help with the storytelling.”

“I had a birthday one night on a farm we were shooting on. I walked into the tent, and there were 150 people waiting for me, all wearing masks of my face.”

“24 isn't like other shows, where you set the look once and you're done. The show started at midnight, then moved to a pre-dawn look, and now we're at dawn and we're warming up the day.”

“I've always been a bit of a sound freak in the movies I've done.”

“It's rare that scenes last more than 2 or 3 minutes, so sound helps segue from one scene to another.”

“It's been exciting to be able to go forward with stuff without 10,000 people saying, It should be like this.”

“If people aren't in sync, things won't work out well.”

“I have an adult emotional life and an editing system inside me which prevents me from being preposterously stupid.”

“I had no special effects, no monsters running around, nothing blew up; those things are all things I've done so many times that they lose their allure after a while.”

“We use a lot of source music on some shows and none on others.”

“Knowing that Gene and Morgan were playing those roles made it much easier to put the script together-we knew who we were writing it for. It took some mystery away.”