The first job I did was Volkswagen, we shot it in Long Beach, and it was like they won multiple awards with it and they were super excited about it and that kind of launched me into the world of commercials. Still most of what I do is car-related stuff.

Death Race was a very modern action movie and it used all of those modern action techniques with lots of hand-held camera, lots of punchy zooms, and lots of quick movements and quick cuts. In 3D, I didn't want to do that anymore.

There was a lot of pressure on me as a filmmaker to raise the bar and do better than before so, you know, I put a lot of thought and energy, that's for sure.

I think people were a little nervous to work with me to start with, because the movies I've done they thought that I wouldn't be able to control myself at all. I'd have to blow up the cars or something like that, and I think also people are scared of working sometimes with feature directors, because they feel like you're not going to listen to their opinions.

Interestingly it's when you come to the comedy, that's where a lot of the discussion is. It's like ten people sitting around talking about what is funny. "Is that funny? Is that funnier than that? Is this slightly funnier than this?" I guess that's what it's like when you're making a comedy movie as well, you just have to sit around talking seriously about the nature of comedy.

I had this movie, Death Race, that was a passion project for me that I'd had in development for almost ten years.

It's all based around the idea that basically VW cars are space age. They're the worst cars to use in action movie, because all the things you want to traditionally do in an action movie they won't allow you to do, because they make you drive safely if you want to or not.