David MacKenzie

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.

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.

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.

When you make a movie, you don't know how it'll turn out. You can only guess.

Movies tend to be dislocated and non-linear in their process.

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.

I think we go to our graves being a bit weird.

I'm an international director.

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.

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.

All my films are, in some way, romances. But I've always felt that the best romances are somehow doomed.

'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.

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.

'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.

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.

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.

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.

A lot of cinema is about the game of authenticity - do you feel it's real?

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 travel light as a director. I don't have monitors on my set.

As I get older, I'm looking more and more for films that are actually about something rather than just narrative vehicles.

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.

I spent the first part of my career trying to avoid genre because I felt like genre, in some way, was cliche.

I always feel like a script is a recipe, and then you bring the elements into the recipe, and you cook with it.

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.