I only storyboard scenes that require special effects, where it is necessary to communicate through pictures.

There were two sides to David Lean: on the one side, he was kind of a rather stiff, disciplined Englishman. And then he had this kind of romantic side to him. I think being true to both sides of your nature is important.

The resistance to black-and-white is huge, in the way that you have to sell the film. It's difficult to distribute around the world.

I'm trying to suggest a kind of Middle Earth, in Tolkien terms. It's a contiguous world; it's like ours but different.

Up until the middle to late '60s, it was a choice to film in black-and-white or color. But then television became so vital to a film's finance, and television won't show black-and-white. So that killed it off, really.

What is passion? Passion is surely the becoming of a person.

There's always been this strand of filmmaking in Britain which is like socialist neo-realism. That's always been there. I've never been part of that, really; I've been much closer to fantasy.