I love production. I could do it 365 days a year. Post is different. It's just too slow, and everything is very finite.

I didn't really want to be a filmmaker, growing up. Other than Spike Lee's movies, I would think, 'Where is a place for me?' We were so damn poor that it just seemed too far beyond.

My first job was cutting grass. In Miami, this grass grows everywhere. You just get the lawn mower out, walk down the neighborhood, cut grass.

I grew up really poor and have always been the type of person who will work earlier or work harder or more than the other person to even the playing field.

You graduate from film school and move to Hollywood. Hollywood tells you, 'We're not the place for you to make films,' so you decide you have to make a film yourself.

My films are personal-voice-driven films about human characters and the place we live. Technically, I'm an independent filmmaker.

As a person of color from the South, San Francisco was the first city that really made me feel like an other.

As a filmmaker whose first film was made with the DIY tools of digital cinema, I love how the democratization of the filmmaking process and platforms like YouTube enables people to tell stories that in previous generations simply could not be told.

How did I feel as a guy who was making a movie about a single mom who's a crackhead? That - I was scared. I mean, it was scary. But part of that's because it was so personal and real to me.

I think it's really important to remind, reinforce people that their lives have value, you know? That their lives have worth.