I'm not against the technology at all, I just don't like to use it if it's just to mimic what you can do with traditional methods.

The problem is, with a lot of children's films, they are very commercial.

It's part of my job to maintain the emotional reality and the naturalism even when the atmosphere is contrived.

Perhaps my favourite story is 'Le Passe-Muraille' by Marcel Ayme. It's about a guy who wakes up with a weird faculty that means he can walk through walls. He's a very shy clerk, and he uses it to get revenge, or vent his frustration.

Since I was a kid, I've liked to see how things are done. Sometimes when you see how things are done, it's like watching a 'making of' within the story. You see the physical aspect, the construction of things.

The first dolly track was somebody who had the idea to put the camera on a boat on a canal. So the boat would move very slowly but steadily. So they would see all that surrounds you and you'd see the landscape changing slowly. So that was the first time.

I like collaboration, I like to incorporate other people's ideas [and] that's what happens when you do a big movie. Unless you're called Stanley Kubrick and you do an independent movie for like $200 million.