Wes Ball

My job is to kind of nudge them. Who said it, where, like, '90% of the job is casting,' so all I do is try to come to set and focus on getting all the best shots to cover the story; that's really it.

I had this project called 'Ruin' in my head for six years or so. This really big, really ambitious sci-fi thing. It's kind of my 'Star Wars'. I'm trying to achieve what 'Star Wars' did for me as a kid.

For me personally, when I was a kid, that's like the stuff I wanted to watch - all the R-rated stuff.

We storyboard a lot, but I love when we are just going in there and just, almost on the fly, making stuff and discovering moments. It's just fantastic, where you can really go in there and be creative and everything.

My background is in VFX, and I know from experience that the best VFX are when you have something real in the frame that you can either extend or work off of. It was really important to get as much as possible in camera, for real.

In a book, you can kind of take time and have lulls in places.

When you're out there trying to still figure things out, it can just slow things down. So you have to kind of think on your feet, and it makes it kind of fun and exciting and challenging at the same time. But more time is always better for any movie. I think any director would probably tell you that. Any filmmaker, really.

I have a few filmmaker friends who are known for shooting super-fast, and they say that you don't have the time to over-think things and how that helps things out creatively.

Movies are made in the scriptwriting process and prepping and preparations for the shooting process.

I always knew the script was important, but I didn't realize how important until you get out there and just deal with the issues of putting a movie together. It's amazing that anything works, to be totally honest.

You know, things that might work in a book just do not work in the visual medium of movies.

The script is so key to making a good movie. But everything is against you when you're making a movie: the logistics of putting a crew out where you need to go, whether the light is fading; if the weather's not right, something's wrong.