One of the biggest changes for me on a practical level of shooting the film was having a second unit.

You know, in an ideal world, people would just be intrigued and go and see a film without knowing anything about it, because that's where you're going to have the most experience of a film, the biggest, the most revelation of a film. But at the same time, I think there are benefits of having seen a trailer where you actually look forward to seeing moments in a film knowing that they're coming up. I don't know which is better.

When I said that something was going to cost a certain amount of money, I actually knew what I was talking about. The biggest problem that we were having on the financing front was people with lots of money saying "you need more money to make this film [Moon]," and us saying "no this is the first feature film we want to do it at a budget where we sort of prove ourselves at the starting end of making feature films; we can do this for $5 million." That is where the convincing part between me and Stuart came, we had to convince people with money that we could do it for that budget.

I think that I would like to have that kind of a budget [hundreds millions dollars] and I think the reasons for it are it gives you more time and it gives you the opportunity to be more ambitious with what you want to do with the camera and also how a scene works. I wouldn't want to direct those kinds of scripts.

I really don't see CG as a goal in its own right. I really do believe it's a tool. In the advertising industry I did a fair amount of CG, so I appreciate it for the tool that it is, and I think technologically where it's at now, you really can achieve most of your visual goals with either it or a mixture of it and practical effects.

Here in the UK the audience immediately reacts and they get the fact that: "What would be the most annoying thing in the world?" A Chesney Hawkes alarm clock!

There is this whole level of communication that I think our generation and younger is used to that does have this weird effect on people. It creates a familiarity that is possibly not always justified. I think that's interesting and I think it's nice to be able to incorporate it into films, because most of us can relate to that now.