“The creative process for me is a process of elimination and distilling something to an essence that can be expressed in one or two notes, but those one or two notes have been infused with the meaning of everything else that surrounded it for most of the creative process. In the end you have to just strip it away and the last step is to just get rid of everything. That’s the key.” — Ballast director-writer Lance Hammer speaking to Vanity Fair.com’s Julian Sancton.