the process of actually discovering what the film is for me is the journey of
making the film the key process is getting out there on the location and
shooting the film and it's during that but I really discover what the film is
and that is a collaboration of a very involved in organic kind which is not
just about the actors but about the cinematographer the designers the sound man the weight of the editor and
everybody else but in order to do that each film is preceded by what these days
is usually arounds not about six months of doing the kind of work that I would
elicit Lee referring to which principally involves the actors that of
course it involves the other people too because obviously we have to prepare the
film that we're going to shoot and we all have to be when we get to day one of
the shooting which is the only time but it really matters because frankly if
you're making a movie nothing matters except what happens in front of the
camera when it turns over that the period before that that the beginning of that period and there is no structure at
all there is no five or three act structure or anything else there is a
feeling a concept a notion possibilities but the time we get to the point before
the shoot there is a structure a broad structure which I I do put on very
briefly on paper in a very schematic way but I think it what I have to say is
that all art in every medium is a synthesis of improvisation and order all artists no matter when you write or
paint or sculpt or make music or write poems or whatever you do all artists
will have to a greater or lesser extent and sense of what they're going to do
and perhaps not it may be down there I love and up there
in other words completely intuitive not not in any way cerebral or intellectual or rational it may be a strong sense of
something that inevitably has to be done or something that really has to be
fleshed out or discovered or dug up from some depth just by the sheer act of investigating Picasso paraphrasing
Picasso said words the effect that if you know what you're going to do before you do it what is the point of doing it
it is not extraordinary for artists to either a not know what it's going to be
until you start to investigate and then you interact with the material or be to
think they know what it's going to be and it turns out to move in another
direction or see to have a clearer notion which drives them into the theme
but then they're able to make discoveries so all of that really is an
explanation to you the fact that I can and do have in the case of some films in
the including naked and happy-go-lucky as we've said have no more than a kind
of sense of feeling of the spiritual thing but then I start to you know work
with this actor with Sally Hawkins in the case of naked with David Thewlis and
with others and start to build characters and start to this resonates
with ideas and possibilities and juxtapositions of things I want to deal
with and things that I mean for example happy-go-lucky is at one level quite
clearly a reflection on education there are various teachers and good bad and
indifferent that's a very V poppy and her comrades are very good teachers
there's a very good flamenco teacher who however has doesn't know the first one
of the first rule of teaching if you leave your personal
emotional baggage outside the classroom and then there's this driving instructor
called Scott brilliantly played by the Marsan who is full of all kinds of quantification and stuff about teaching
but in fact understands nothing about teaching it's always a lousy teacher and
but it didn't occur to me but to investigate teaching until I came to it
through creating the characters and it isn't that suddenly out of a blue light or our education that's something I've
never thought of I'm going to make this film about it it's something that I'm
obviously like everybody you know it's an ongoing proc you patient I've been on
the end of the education system I teach time two times substantially and of course I I've raised a couple of now
adult kids and so I've been preoccupied with education from that point of view
so you see kind of again as we artists and people of various kinds of create
things do you kind of have ongoing preoccupations when you have very
specific things that you set about