I've become wary of interviews in which you're forced to go back over the reasons why you made certain decisions. You tend to rationalize what you've done, to intellectually review a process that is often intuitive.

When I began making films, they were just movies: 'What's the new movie? What are you doing?' Now they're called 'adult dramas.'

In terms of how I work with actors, having worked so heavily on the script I have a very clear idea of the characters; they are reasonably well illustrated in the script. If you cast it right, to a great degree you can hand it over to the actor and I just make suggestions. I'm not the kind of director who needs or wants to get into too much finessing. Ideally, when you hit the set, you have this conversation, like, 'eh, what did you think?' 'I don't know, what did you think?' 'Why don't we just try it again, make a few physical changes.'

Various studios are still shooting on film with digital grain and the DI negatives, it's not ideal. We should really be all film or all digital. But that being said, the old way of graining in the camera, now you can make changes like a painter. It's dangerous because you can ruin the film, you can over-fiddle. We've all seen films and gone 'what the hell is that?'

I carve stone. I've got hammers and chisels and I carve from sandstone. I just did a big mural of birds and trees.

I've become wary of interviews in which you're forced to go back over the reasons why you made certain decisions. You tend to rationalize what you've done, to intellectually review a process that is often intuitive.

National film industries tend to move in cycles. In Australia right now, we're on a high, a feeling of potential, which as yet shows no sign of flagging. But the word "industry" is misleading. A small national cinema has no industry in the Hollywood sense.