Michael Sarnoski embraced creative freedom on A Quiet Place: Day One
Michael Sarnoski is grateful that John Krasinski gave him the freedom to experiment on 'A Quiet Place: Day One'.
The 'Pig' director helms just his second feature film with the horror prequel and was delighted to be entrusted by Krasinski to put his own spin on the story.
Michael told Empire magazine: "When (Krasinski) first brought me onto the project, his directive was, 'Can you bring some of that 'Pig' touch to the 'A Quiet Place' universe?'
"What he wanted was to see someone else play in the sandbox he had created. Finding those differences was exciting. It wasn't something that we leaned away from."
Joseph Quinn, who plays Eric in the film, hailed the decision to take a "risk" by giving Sarnoski the reins behind the camera.
The 30-year-old actor said: "I think it's a really brave thing, because franchises rarely want to take risks. And I think it's a bit more interesting to take a bit of a risk."
Sarnoski explained that the responsibility of overseeing a major horror film emphasised the importance of not being fearful behind the camera.
He said: "It's something that I learned on 'Pig' as well: don't be scared of taking big swings and trying new things.
"I could have gone into this terrified, but I decided to just be like, 'I'm just gonna give it a shot, hope for the best, and be daring with stuff.'"
The filmmaker added that he put more importance on forming strong characters before moving on to the scary scenes.
He said: "I approached it the same way I would approach anything, which is to create a character and put them in these situations and just feel what they're feeling.
"I wasn't trying to engineer scares so much as create a character and engineer environments in which they would be on the edge of their seats, so that the audience can be as well."