When you're doing a TV show, it's not like you just shoot for six weeks and you're in an editing room with all of your footage. It's like a guitar or a car, you have to fine tune things. You stop doing what's not working, you work on what is working and you add things that do work.
Television is such an evolving medium. When you're doing a TV show, it's not like you just shoot for six weeks and you're in an editing room with all of your footage. It's like a guitar or a car, you have to fine tune things. You stop doing what's not working, you work on what is working and you add things that do work.
Nothing is cut while I'm shooting. I edit between nine months and a year, and usually have around 80 hours of footage I have to get down to an 82-minute movie.
As an Englishwoman, you pick up a lot through osmosis. I've been watching the Queen all my life. But, yes, I did watch news footage and was able to pick a couple of little tics. For instance, she plays with her hands a lot and has a certain way of holding them on her lap when she's in public.
I investigated post-traumatic stress disorder. I've been to a unit where people are suffering from it, and I read a lot of literature. I looked at footage of soldiers in the combat zone. I found 'Restrepo' to be unbelievably useful.
You know, I think the film business is its own worst enemy because it sells movies on DVD footage and 'behind the scenes,' and now it's a real struggle trying to keep storylines and plotlines a secret.
I'm not exactly watching my back. Most people, there's a twinkle when they admonish me. And I've watched a lot of footage on YouTube of people's reactions to watching me.
Occasionally, I hanker for the time when I sold more records, but I don't sit and drool about it. When I do look at early footage of Talking Heads, I realise I was just a wreck.
Movies, to a large extent, stand or fall on the strength of their scripts. But a documentary is a collection of found objects: fragments you've collected, accidents of interview and happenstance, pieces of stock footage that surface in the course of six to nine months of research and production.
No one knows if Saddam is still alive. They keep showing old footage of him on TV saying that it's live. You know, it's like the same thing we do with Dick Cheney.
