I used to do stop motion in my own garage and Claymation and all that stuff. That led to doing backgrounds and matte paintings. I started doing matte paintings professionally back before the computer, sort of painting on glass.

As a director, the biggest job is to discern the imperfections in emotional tone and then view it in the global picture of what you're trying to do, if that makes sense. It's a rhythm, like music is a rhythm or composition and art is a rhythm. Dialogue is a rhythm as well.

When I met Peter Weir, we did a movie called 'Master and Commander' together, and that's when I really started to understand the power of acting, the power of directing, finding the emotion in performance.

Robert Stromberg Quotes