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" I like to take a little of what I learned in fiction and apply it to documentary and vice versa. "
Kevin Macdonald
Like
Documentary
Little
Related Quotes:
" I was fascinated by making a submarine movie, inspired by the Kursk disaster. This idea of being trapped down at the bottom of the sea seemed so terrifying. I was very interested in making a sub film which wasn't a military film. You think, Well, why are they there, then, if they're not in the military? Oh, well, they must be looking for treasure. "
Kevin Macdonald
You
Think
Sea
" I don't think of myself particularly as a Scottish director, but you are what you are because the first ten years of your life, and where you spend them, brand you. In that sense, I'll always be a Scottish director. "
Kevin Macdonald
Myself
Always
You
" As a filmmaker, I'm interminably curious and nosy, but certain times you meet people and think, 'I don't want to push you too hard because I can see this is painful for you.' "
Kevin Macdonald
Think
Push
You
" It's interesting to me that the Arab Spring started in Tunisia, and in the marches, people were singing 'Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights.' "
Kevin Macdonald
Singing
Me
Up
" In film, I believe things should either be documentary or drama. "
Kevin Macdonald
Drama
Things
Film
" The tradition has always been that in Roman films, the Romans are always British, and it's usually posh British: Laurence Olivier and his ilk. My take on all this was that it's a metaphor for empire and the end of empire. "
Kevin Macdonald
Take
Always
Tradition
" The amazing thing about Bob Marley is that there is no moving footage of him at all for the first ten or eleven years of his career. From 1962 to 1973, there's nothing, not a single frame. "
Kevin Macdonald
Nothing
Moving
Frame
" I think everything that I've done, I've been involved with for longer. Either you develop it from scratch, or you take something, and you develop it, and you work on the script, but I'm not sure how good I'd be at just sort of taking a piece of material and being a director for hire like that. "
Kevin Macdonald
Director
Good
You
" I love submarine movies. "
Kevin Macdonald
Submarine
Movies
Love
" With fiction, I've grown to really love the challenge of lying, the challenge of telling a good tale that isn't truthful, and working with performers is endlessly fascinating. You know, learning what a good performance is, how to get a good performance, how much or how little you need to create emotion or to create character. "
Kevin Macdonald
Good
Love
Learning
" Most people in Uganda have something good to say about Amin - 'He was funny; he gave us pride to be African.' "
Kevin Macdonald
Say
People
Good
" I remember going to the university film club to see 'The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp' one night and being bowled over. It was one of the most beautiful films I'd ever seen. And it felt so personal. "
Kevin Macdonald
Life
Remember
Death
" It feels like we're all so familiar now with the traditional three-act structure that, actually, stories that are more complex, more naughty, that allow for disagreement and discussion, are more interesting to us. "
Kevin Macdonald
Now
Disagreement
Naughty
" Although 'The Anderson Platoon' was what we would now call an 'embedded film' - with all the ambiguities that term implies - somehow Schoendoerffer got away with showing things as they really were from a grunt's perspective. "
Kevin Macdonald
Call
Film
Got
" When you see how people in the developing world react and how they use a camera, you realise how narcissistic we are and how the filming of ourselves and thinking that we're interesting enough to care about is odd. "
Kevin Macdonald
Camera
People
Care
" If you go to pretty much everywhere in the developing world, you will find Bob Marley murals, and you'll find people playing his music. "
Kevin Macdonald
World
You
Will
" The Internet has meant that advertising has migrated; there are hardly any classifieds in newspapers any more because they're all online. If people have a car to sell, for example, they sell it online; they don't go to the newspaper. "
Kevin Macdonald
Car
People
More
" You can get good performances in quite sizable roles from people who have never been in front of a camera, people who maybe have never been in front of a movie theater. "
Kevin Macdonald
People
You
Never
" Despite the limitations of the bulky 16mm camera and 10-minute film magazines, 'The Anderson Platoon' feels as spontaneous and fresh as any films that have come out of the Afghan or Iraq wars. "
Kevin Macdonald
Film
Camera
Spontaneous
" What got me into making movies was that I wanted to be a journalist. "
Kevin Macdonald
Journalist
Me
Movies
" I was born at Rotten Row in Glasgow and brought up in Loch Lomond near a small place called Gartocharn. And it's a bit like anyone: where you're brought up, you have an irresistible attraction to that place; it defines who you are. "
Kevin Macdonald
Born
Like
Small
" I'm not particularly ethnically Scottish; I have one grandfather who is Scottish, although he's called Macdonald, and you don't get a lot more Scottish than that. The Scottish part of my family are from Skye, and I've always been very aware of that - always been very attracted to Scottish subject matter, I guess. "
Kevin Macdonald
Grandfather
Always
Family
" In war films, even more than in other kinds of documentary, we've come to think that shaky, poor-quality footage is somehow more authentic than something classically 'well shot.' "
Kevin Macdonald
Documentary
Think
More
" I don't read many young adult books. "
Kevin Macdonald
Young Adult
Young
Many
" Every film that is made about the past is always a reflection of the present. "
Kevin Macdonald
Always
Present
Reflection
" The thing with newspapers is that they are a filter. We're relying on the editors of that paper to be a filter and to tell you that this is worth reading about, this is quality, and this is quite reliable. "
Kevin Macdonald
Quality
Filter
Reading
" It's always nice to have the same people that you are familiar with and shorthand with, obviously, to be around you. "
Kevin Macdonald
You
Around
Always
" For everybody in the world, the answers to the mysteries in your life usually lie in your childhood, your upbringing, and your parents. "
Kevin Macdonald
Parents
Childhood
World
" I went through a period of not watching fiction. "
Kevin Macdonald
Watching
Through
Period
" In some ways, making documentaries is like being a journalist. You interview people and then use the bits you want to use as opposed to the bits they want you to use. "
Kevin Macdonald
People
Some
Want