I love the idea of taking your characters to lunch and who didn't love Rear Window and doing a little spying on your neighbors? One thing I do is drive around messier parts of the city and take pictures of old store fronts or kooky interactions on the streets. Later, when I go through the photos, it always helps inspire new ideas.

Agreed!

What a great article! Oh and we are definitely interested. The business still have some barriers to break for women, especially in technical fields. The fact the first woman to win a Best Director Oscar only happened in this last decade says how much further we need to go, though strides have been made. I sit in the front row as an AD and my director is female also. Sometimes we have a female TD fill in and I sit in awareness and awe in a room full of men. The dream is that some day it will be so common that I wouldn't think twice about the gender of the person sitting next to me.