Signature film-making seems rather dull to me; it’s about finding something you can do something with and running with the ball. – David MacKenzie
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. – David MacKenzie
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. – David MacKenzie
Edinburgh is a sort of gothic fairytale city, and it can be a gothic horror city as well. – David MacKenzie
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. – David MacKenzie
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. – David MacKenzie
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. – David MacKenzie
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. – David MacKenzie
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. – David MacKenzie
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. – 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. – David MacKenzie
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. – David MacKenzie
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. – David MacKenzie
I like the energy of doing things fast. We shot ‘Starred Up’ in just four weeks, and we edited it in four weeks. – David MacKenzie
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. – David MacKenzie
I spent the first part of my career trying to avoid genre because I felt like genre, in some way, was cliche. – David MacKenzie
As I get older, I’m looking more and more for films that are actually about something rather than just narrative vehicles. – David MacKenzie
I always feel like a script is a recipe, and then you bring the elements into the recipe, and you cook with it. – David MacKenzie
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. – David MacKenzie
