As Executive Creative Director, Academy Award-winning production designer Rick Heinrichs, a longtime collaborator with Tim Burton, is now responsible for leading visual design at the innovative Fourth Wall Studios.  While continuing to raise the overall creative output across all of the projects developed for the innovative transmedia RIDES.tv, he brings over 30 years of experience to the next generation of interactive storytelling with a platform that uses technological devices to enhance and add dimension to narrative while engaging fans on a whole new level.

During this recent exclusive phone interview with Collider, Rick Heinrichs talked about how his interest in these transmedia platforms has developed, how he came to be involved with Fourth Wall Studios, that it’s both exciting and daunting to have so much input in something that’s still so new, and the approach that they’ll be taking with each of the different projects.  He also talked about what led him to make his directorial debut with the short The Ledge (the pilot episode for The Gamblers) about a high school senior who tries to talk her lovesick stalker out of jumping off a building while two gamblers bet on the outcome, how collaborating with such creative directors throughout his career has influenced his own approach, and that he loves how collaborative an industry and art form film is.  Check out what he had to say after the jump. 

March, 2009. That’s the first time I started talking with William Monahan about doing an interview for his directorial debut London Boulevard.  At the time, he was in prep in London, and we talked about why he wanted to adapt Ken Bruen’s novel and what the experience was like for him.  But for many reasons, the interview fell apart, and we decided to continue talking at a later point.  Of course later became a few months, and then we started and stopped a few more times.  Until last week.  That’s because about a week ago, at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, I finally sat down with the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of The Departed to talk about his directorial debut, which stars Colin Farrell, Keira Knightley, Anna Friel, Jamie Bower, David Thewlis, Ray Winstone, Stephen Graham, Eddie Marsan, and Ben Chaplin. The film is about a man just released from prison (Farrell) who falls in love with a reclusive young movie star (Knightley) and finds himself in a duel with a vicious gangster (Winstone).

During our extended interview, which lasted close to an hour, we covered everything from the genesis of the project to what it was like in the editing room.  Of course we also covered things like his writing process, why it is coming out in the UK before America (it gets released November 26 in the UK), the test screening process, why the British gangster genre is so popular, his other projects like The Gamblers, Becket, what’s up with Tripoli, what got him involved in Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion, and so much more.

While I hate to compare interviews against one another, I can honestly say this is one of the best conversations I’ve ever had with any filmmaker.  Hit the jump to check it out: