With portable cameras and affordable data and non-linear digital editing, I think this is a golden age of documentary filmmaking. These new technologies mean we can make complicated, beautifully crafted and cinematic films about real-life stories.

I've always been a fiction filmmaker and I've been heading in the direction of fiction filmmaking, doing documentaries along the way.

I remember when the Berlin Wall fell and suddenly intractable problems get solved.

I find titles the hardest thing. I was worried that 'Waste Land' was too much of a downer. For me, 'The Crash Reel' confronts what the film is about: it's not just about the reality of a crash, it's about the extremity we all face, and what happens when life crashes on you.

I don't believe in objectivity. I observe the observer's paradox every moment I'm filming. Your presence is changing everything; there's no mistaking it. And you have a responsibility.

I can ask someone to let me into all aspects of their life for several years, but people have got to have that gift: that courage and that talent for opening their lives to the camera. Being candid is a gift, and that's what the audience responds to. Part of it is me asking, and part of it is just their inherent talent, which is what you are looking for when you make documentaries - people that are really going to let you in on what they are going through.

I don't know if people realize how hard I work, because sometimes people ask me for my secret. The truth is that I don't have any secrets apart from the fact that I've been directing theater and film for twenty years and trying at every stage to make my work better.