I just loved films. I knew I wanted to work on film, not video.
— Asif Kapadia
Martin Scorsese was being given an honorary doctorate, and one of the tutors asked if there was a student film he particularly liked. He mentioned our film. There was a dinner after the final show just for the tutors, but I was smuggled in to meet Scorsese over dessert.
Directing can be very lonely and quite intimidating.
You can't stop people watching on mobiles, but I hope the old fashioned idea of sitting in a dark room with a big screen with a group of strangers lives on forever.
While still a young student at film school, I was lucky enough to get a golden ticket to a Martin Scorsese master class at BAFTA in Piccadilly: fancy, but technically still 'the flicks'.
I worked with Michelle Yeoh on my last film, 'Far North,' and her partner is Jean Todt; at the time, he ran Ferrari. So I went as a VIP to the British grand prix.
'Senna' took five years, 'Amy' took three years. You try and say, 'Look, there's no deadline.' That's important. Just saying, 'We've got to make the film. And once the film's ready, it will be out there.'
You don't have to be someone who likes walking a tightrope across the Twin Towers to watch 'Man On Wire.'
My background is from India, and I always get asked, 'When are you going to do an Indian film, a musical or Bollywood film?'
My background is Indian, so I believe in a spiritual idea that there is another level, another layer or layers, if you will, above us. I believe that there are elements that allow things to be drawn together, a sort of energy.
I love telling stories with images. But I think there's more to just saying a movie is great visually.
There are no drivers like Formula One drivers. They are engineers, in a way. They are driving manual cars one-handed at 200 miles per hour around streets in Monaco. These cars use the ultimate in technology.
I'd always intended to make 'Far North' straight after 'The Warrior.' We had the rights to the short story, the script was in development, and I knew where I wanted to shoot it. It just took a long time getting the script together and raising the finance.
The worst thing ever for me is go see a movie, and the next day I go, 'What did I do last night? I have no memory of this $300 million movie I watched because I felt nothing.'
Hopefully, when people see 'Senna', they will understand why this inspirational story needed to be told, why it had to be made as a movie for the big screen, and why it is a film for everyone.
I don't normally make documentaries. I'm a drama director. I've made a few short docs, but I don't like talking heads or 'voice of God' narrators.
I like to make films where I learn along the way, like the audience.
'Do the Right Thing' has been a big influence on me. I saw it when it first came out in 1989. I was about 18, and it blew me away on many levels - I had never seen anything like it before.
I wanted to study film at an art school - I loved the idea of being surrounded by designers and artists. We were encouraged to be experimental.
We were studying at Newport Film School, and I found that the only way for me to make films - because you need people and you need equipment - was that I had to be a student.
Hopefully with digital projection, a film will always look the way the filmmaker intended.
We spent four days filming in a helicopter. I had never seen London from that viewpoint - you get a sense of how big it is and how easy it is to get lost. There was one day when we couldn't find Brick Lane: we spent 25 minutes looking and then realised it was directly below us.
I was a sports fan long before I had any interest in film-making.
If I'm going to do something, I'm going to spend however long it takes to get it right.
I'm an ordinary Hackney boy, and I can talk to people.
I often make films about subjects I don't really know much about. Maybe it's laziness, but I don't go in there having done a tonne of research; the research happens while I'm making the film.
I don't really rely on watching video monitors. They put you at a certain distance from your actors, and it makes me feel less a part of what's really happening in the scene.
To be teammates in Formula One actually means you are first rivals, not really mates.
My wife Victoria Harwood was art director on 'Far North,' and she had designed my student film, 'The Sheep Thief.'
I want to make my own films from my own scripts based on stories I want to tell, but they take time to put together.
The big thing for me is to make films that you feel, whether you feel happy, whether you feel sad, whether you feel sick; it's to make the audience feel so that the next day they remember what they saw.
My team and I used the actual footage to create a three-act story of the life of Ayrton Senna. There are no talking heads and no voiceover. Senna narrates his own epic, dramatic, thrilling journey.
In a film called 'Senna,' the clue is in the title, and we have a Brazilian badge on our sleeve as we were making it. We were making it from Senna's point of view, with Senna narrating it.
For me, 'Amy' is a very dark film about love.
I made several short films with very little dialogue. I'm still not a fan of talking heads. My stories are told with images as much as possible.
After Newport, I worked in television for a while, and then I went to The Royal College Of Art and did a master's degree. I really did study quite a lot!
I studied graphic design originally. I used to like drawing, and I was quite into technical drawing. I was always interested in the visual medium, but I thought I was going to be an architect or something like that, but it's quite a lonely job.
As a filmmaker, you complete a film you have spent years obsessively making, and you know the release prints will never look quite the same; prints get scratched and dirty.
Boxing is made for film - there is corruption, violence, tragedy and the chance that the underdog can catch the champion with one lucky punch.
When I was given the opportunity to direct 'Senna,' I decided the film had to work for audiences who disliked sport or had never seen a Formula One race in their lives. It had to thrill and emotionally engage people who had never heard of Ayrton Senna.
I don't have these crazy deadlines. I don't have this, 'Oh it's got to be out tomorrow.' I don't like working like that.
The thing people don't get about Indian films is that the songs are the story.
Real life is far more complicated than fiction.
As much as I love creating entertaining visuals, I love toying with the pace of a movie and trying to perfect that. It's imperative to the impact: faster cuts, cuts at the right moments that meld with the tenor of a scene. Creating and maintaining that feeling.
The Monaco Grand Prix is in May right around the time of Cannes.
I never realised 'The Return' would take so long to make - it was a very tough 'political experience,' and the post production in L.A. seemed to go on forever.
People have always been recording what's going on around them in one form or another.
As far as I'm concerned, I make movies.
Why make a movie about Ayrton Senna? Someone who drove around in circles at 200mph in a car that looked like a giant cigarette packet? Why would anyone who isn't already a fan of Formula 1 care?
I'm a sport fan. So, I have always watched everything, and I used to watch racing. Formula One was always on. The genius about it is that it's on at lunchtime on a Sunday.
