You're trying to create a screenplay and your screenplay is there to give you a structure, rigidity, situational awareness, who the characters are, what do they want, what's the shape of the thing.

You're trying to create a screenplay and your screenplay is there to give you a structure, rigidity, situational awareness, who the characters are, what do they want, what's the shape of the thing.

In the end, it's acting, it's not real. But every director will tell you that you have to create conditions that create tension, because tension is what makes drama feel real.

All directors make films in individual ways. But the classical kind of view of filmmaking is that you have a script and it's very linear.

Most of the films that I've written, made in my life, I've written. Not all, but most I would say.

I always try and bring screenplay, shooting and editing into a sort of symbiotic - as close into alignment as you possibly can get them, consistent, obviously, with the resources that you've got and the time you've got available.

That's one of the central challenges we face - how to stay true to events and compress the fundamentals.