Quotes from David MacKenzie

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

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.

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.

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

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.

It's dark now. But they feel each others' breath. And they know all they need to know. They kiss. And they feel each others' tears on their cheeks. And if there had been anybody left to see them, then they would look like normal lovers, caressing each others' faces, bodies close together, eyes closed, oblivious to the world around them. Because that is how life goes on. Like that.

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.

'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.

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 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.

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 like the energy of doing things fast. We shot 'Starred Up' in just four weeks, and we edited it in four weeks.

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.

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.

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

I very rarely read a script that I don't feel I want to change a lot.

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

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.

Edinburgh is a sort of gothic fairytale city, and it can be a gothic horror city as well.

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.

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.

Signature film-making seems rather dull to me; it's about finding something you can do something with and running with the ball.

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

I think that's my approach: If it feels right for a scene to be whole, to hold on without cutting for a long time, then that's great. But other scenes, they don't want it.