With 'Black Sea,' I long had an idea that I wanted to do a film about people stuck on the bottom of the ocean. I thought that was a terrifying scenario.
— Kevin Macdonald
I can't claim my grandfather's work has influenced mine directly, but his life certainly inspired me to follow this path.
Put someone on a horse looking cold and wet, and they don't have to act. They just are cold and wet.
My grandfather died before I started making films, but I definitely learnt this from him: believe in your own judgment and stick to your guns - 99% of the time, you'll be glad you did.
Like a lot of expatriate Scots, when you want to be called Scottish, it's useful. I see myself as being without nationality, as a European: my region is Scotland; my nationality is European - isn't that a very Alex Salmond thing to say?
I was born at Rotten Row in Glasgow and brought up in Loch Lomond near a small place called Gartocharn. And it's a bit like anyone: where you're brought up, you have an irresistible attraction to that place; it defines who you are.
There's something about the lack of certainty with a documentary, which is exhausting if you do three in a row. It's nerve-wracking.
I think everything that I've done, I've been involved with for longer. Either you develop it from scratch, or you take something, and you develop it, and you work on the script, but I'm not sure how good I'd be at just sort of taking a piece of material and being a director for hire like that.
The amazing thing about Bob Marley is that there is no moving footage of him at all for the first ten or eleven years of his career. From 1962 to 1973, there's nothing, not a single frame.
The things that are hardest to shoot are the things where you want people just to feel very natural, and you want to do love scenes, and you want to do just kids hanging out and trying to get them to relax.
I think we're all greedy. Who do you know who says, 'I have enough! I don't need any more!'? It's part of human nature.
It's interesting to me that the Arab Spring started in Tunisia, and in the marches, people were singing 'Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights.'
I like to take a little of what I learned in fiction and apply it to documentary and vice versa.
When I was growing up on Loch Lomondside, one of the first albums I ever bought was Marley's 'Uprising.' I guess that would have been 1980 - just before he died.
Every film that is made about the past is always a reflection of the present.
I think the parallels of a giant power with overwhelming military superiority and might, with America and Rome, it seems obvious to me.
The submarine genre is a category with all its own rules. But shooting on water is famously tough.
I suppose that I'm easily bored.
When you see how people in the developing world react and how they use a camera, you realise how narcissistic we are and how the filming of ourselves and thinking that we're interesting enough to care about is odd.
I went to see 'Francis Ha,' which I could certainly relate to. She ends up wandering the streets of Paris all alone - something I've ended up doing a number of times in capital cities around Europe.
I suppose making documentaries is like doing journalism on film.
I don't think of myself particularly as a Scottish director, but you are what you are because the first ten years of your life, and where you spend them, brand you. In that sense, I'll always be a Scottish director.
When you look at almost every submarine movie, to some degree or another, there's this 'Moby Dick' element, this Ahab element to them.
I started as a documentary maker, and they're my first love.
It's always nice to have the same people that you are familiar with and shorthand with, obviously, to be around you.
'Uprising' was one of the first three or four albums I ever bought in 1980 when I was 13, and that had a strong impact on me.
When we made 'Life in a Day,' we asked people around the globe to record their lives on a single ordinary day. When we were cutting that film, we talked about what it might be like if we chose a day that already had significance to people. The result is 'Christmas in a Day.'
We should not confuse having a Flip camera with making a documentary.
If you go to pretty much everywhere in the developing world, you will find Bob Marley murals, and you'll find people playing his music.
Elvis Presley's estate is making 30 million a year, and they say that Marley shouldn't be, but he is from a much poorer part of the world, and a lot more people need the money.
People think that the Italians invented neorealism, but actually, Humphrey Jennings did. He was revolutionary in using non-professional actors in his films, and he got extraordinary performances out of them.
It's nice to stretch in different directions and use different muscles. You can get swallowed into Hollywood, where it's all about bums on seats and how commercial a film is.
I suppose that the Western has always been a kind of mold to which you could pour the concerns of the day, but have them seen in the simple terms of the Western, of one alley or whatever.
I went through a period of not watching fiction.
I don't read many young adult books.
For me, what works well about 'Life in a Day' is that it's emotionally affecting without being manipulative. It really does make you think about the connectivity of the world, the similarities and differences. It shows the experiences we all go through: birth, childhood, falling in love, having kids, getting ill, dying.
If there's a principle really worth sticking up for, I'll go the whole way.
I always loved digging away at the story, trying to find out things that people don't want you to find out and piecing it all together. I love the treasure hunt aspect of it, the thrill of the chase.
I'm not particularly ethnically Scottish; I have one grandfather who is Scottish, although he's called Macdonald, and you don't get a lot more Scottish than that. The Scottish part of my family are from Skye, and I've always been very aware of that - always been very attracted to Scottish subject matter, I guess.
With fiction, I've grown to really love the challenge of lying, the challenge of telling a good tale that isn't truthful, and working with performers is endlessly fascinating. You know, learning what a good performance is, how to get a good performance, how much or how little you need to create emotion or to create character.
John Lennon made wonderful music, which people listen to as music. Nobody around the world is living their life according to the precepts of John Lennon.
I used the same designer and costume designer on 'The Eagle' and 'The Last King of Scotland.'
I recommend to any of you, that's always a good way to make a film: use the interesting bits.
I was fascinated by making a submarine movie, inspired by the Kursk disaster. This idea of being trapped down at the bottom of the sea seemed so terrifying. I was very interested in making a sub film which wasn't a military film. You think, Well, why are they there, then, if they're not in the military? Oh, well, they must be looking for treasure.
For me, the aim of making any film like this, any film about an artist, would be to send you back to the art.
I'm a cynical person who's normally attracted to the dark side of things.
I think there's always been interest in Bob Marley.
I remember going to the university film club to see 'The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp' one night and being bowled over. It was one of the most beautiful films I'd ever seen. And it felt so personal.
It's so nice to be totally artistically free.
I don't think life gets any better than sitting in the sun while a legend of French cinema tells you stories about making 'Belle de Jour' and other wonderful films, and eating great food.
