My main trick is to work with amazing people. It's a long and twisty journey, and you need people that really are amazing and have this rare gift of honesty and courage and really open up.
I remember when the Berlin Wall fell and suddenly intractable problems get solved.
I love my work, apart from when it's driving me crazy. But I get to be interested in stuff and think like a filmmaker as I'm buzzing about the world and then see an opportunity to make a film, and then make it happen.
I'm riveted by extreme sports like big-wave surfing, 'megaramp' skateboarding and half-pipe snowboarding. I'm fascinated partly because the sports are so exhilaratingly acrobatic. But I'm also captivated by the fear that a terrible accident might happen at any moment. And accidents do happen.
With portable cameras and affordable data and non-linear digital editing, I think this is a golden age of documentary filmmaking. These new technologies mean we can make complicated, beautifully crafted and cinematic films about real-life stories.
I find titles the hardest thing. I was worried that 'Waste Land' was too much of a downer. For me, 'The Crash Reel' confronts what the film is about: it's not just about the reality of a crash, it's about the extremity we all face, and what happens when life crashes on you.
Extreme sports tricks are becoming increasingly complex, the courses ever more challenging and crashes all too common.
Some documentaries are made by people who are driven more by one particular story, or have different backgrounds or ambitions, but I'm always looking for projects that let me be the best filmmaker I can be, and to be stretched and grow further.
I have always been interested in garbage: What it says about us. What in there embarrasses us, and what we can't bear to part with. Where it goes and how much of it there is. How it endures. What it might be like to work with it every day.
The world of extreme sports is also one of big business. Kids might think that snowboarding is the ultimate freedom, but this freedom is being marketed to them by commercial sponsors.
I love great locations in movies, and I couldn't believe I'd never seen a landfill on screen before. It was the most haunting place.
I don't believe in objectivity. I observe the observer's paradox every moment I'm filming. Your presence is changing everything; there's no mistaking it. And you have a responsibility.
