I don't have any interest in doing superhero franchise movies. I don't connect to the fantastic, and I'm not a comic person - it's just not my thing, so I'm not looking in that direction - but ambitious films on a big scale I'm very interested in looking at.
— David MacKenzie
'Perfect Sense' is an extremely serious film, and I am an extremely serious film-maker who is trying to explore the medium in original and interesting ways.
All my films are, in some way, romances. But I've always felt that the best romances are somehow doomed.
I'm an international director.
I like the idea of the audience absorbing the language and getting to understand it as they journey through the film. It starts off being more obscure, but you get used to it. A 'Clockwork Orange' thing. I read 'Clockwork Orange' without any vocabulary, and I got to understand the words as I went through it. I like that process. It immerses you.
Most of the films I've tried to make I've ended up making. And they don't necessarily go in the order you want to do. So I haven't got a huge list of undone films or stuff that's just been abandoned forever.
I used to regard genres as being embedded in cliches, and I always felt funny about the need we have to label things. But I'm happy to think of 'Starred Up' as a prison drama, although we tried to smuggle in some elements of family drama in there.
I really don't want to make the same film twice, so I am conscious of going after material that is significantly different to anything I've done before.
Being open to what's happening in front of you is the most important thing about being a director. To allow the magic to exist and to be light enough on your feet to harness it as it's happening. That's what makes cinema interesting.
Signature film-making seems rather dull to me; it's about finding something you can do something with and running with the ball.
As I get more confident as a filmmaker, I don't need to prepare so much in advance. I can trust that I and my team can come up with a solution.
Somehow, the process of making movies conventionally can dampen creativity because you've got to wait in line to do everything the way it's supposed to be, particularly with actors who are just hanging out waiting for the call.
Food scenes in movies are traditionally nightmares to shoot - you just can't fake eating, and you usually have to repeat it a lot of times to get the angles you need. It's actually quite a lot to ask of actors, and there's really nowhere to hide.
I don't have continuity people. I don't have clapper boards. I don't have monitors. I shoot very fast, I shoot a lot, and we just keep on going.
Edinburgh is a sort of gothic fairytale city, and it can be a gothic horror city as well.
Movies tend to be dislocated and non-linear in their process.
Filmmaking is hard. I mean, it's not that hard, but it is hard to find your way through a system because there's a lot of people, there's money, there's a big machine to kind of make it - and how to find methods and processes that allow it to continue to be a lively process and a creative process.
I travel light as a director. I don't have monitors on my set.
I spent the first part of my career trying to avoid genre because I felt like genre, in some way, was cliche.
As a director, when you embrace a project, you try to understand as much as you can about its world, and you do that by embracing and engaging with people who are in that world. Then it's down to your best instincts, which is what most directing is about anyway.
I very rarely read a script that I don't feel I want to change a lot.
I sort of feel like my job is to be a conduit to opportunities, to maximize the creativity of the day itself - because that's when the cameras are running. That's the important thing to me. Some of these shots you need to think about in advance; you need to have some ideas for them.
I have a memory of this experience when I was young, watching 'Stop Making Sense,' the Talking Heads concert movie, which is one of the best concert movies ever, and I saw it in a full house in New Zealand, and everyone was cheering between songs, and you really felt like you were part of the audience at the gig.
'Perfect Sense' is a film about love and catastrophe, which I hope is a powerfully romantic and emotional take on the apocalyptic sub-genre. Its aim is to be a minimalist concept movie - where seismic events occur in simple ways that ask the audience to use their imagination.
I'm definitely going to continue to make films in Scotland, but that doesn't mean it will be exclusively there, and I don't have any particular need to wave a flag.
I think we go to our graves being a bit weird.
When you make a movie, you don't know how it'll turn out. You can only guess.
Event cinema is what it is, and I understand why it's successful. It started with things like 'Jaws,' which are extraordinary movies. But what we've lost are great character films which are beautifully directed and had great movie stars in them. Films that were about something rather than about spectacle.
As I get older, I'm looking more and more for films that are actually about something rather than just narrative vehicles.
I always feel like a script is a recipe, and then you bring the elements into the recipe, and you cook with it.
A lot of cinema is about the game of authenticity - do you feel it's real?
I like the energy of doing things fast. We shot 'Starred Up' in just four weeks, and we edited it in four weeks.
When I started making films, all the theaters, the screen would slide open the widest possible point, and that would be widescreen. But now, theaters are geared up for around 16:9, so scope is now 'letterboxed.' In a way, if you want the big picture, you shoot 16:9.
