I like that confusion when people are speaking in the same language but still can't understand each other. It's also usually my experience of being in America - when I speak no one can understand what I'm saying.

Film is more of a dream when you're younger. I found it almost impossible to see how you would get into the industry having no connections, nobody in the family being anywhere near it and never meeting anybody that had been on a set.

I've had pretty much the same crew for all the films that I've made, and I've managed to have really nice, calm, funny people. That is a big part of it, a family feeling of warmth and finding something interesting and making a platform for them to perform. It's a very difficult job, acting, in that it's totally counterintuitive to how we are brought up.

People say, "How do you get into the British film industry?" There is no British film industry, there are just people making films and finding their own way. It's not like in the States where there are studios and there's an actual infrastructure to it; there's just nothing here. You make it from scratch a lot of the time.

I tend to shoot really quick so you don't get the problems you might get on a traditional film where you shoot one way, then another, and it's pissing down with rain and they won't cut together. We shoot so fast we can incorporate the weather into it. The worst weather we had was when they were in the caravan up the mountain and there was no cover. One man's weather is another man's production value. To create the sleet would cost a fortune but we got it for free so we'll just have to go with it.

There's no way you can shoot low-budget stuff on lots of locations. It's just a practicality thing because every time you move, it costs time and money.

You can muscle your way to the top as long as you're part of the production, which I am. I'm knitted into the money, so it's very hard to extricate me from the decision-making dynamic.