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Promoting a stock is like making a movie. You've got to have stars, props, and a good script.

The technology available for film-making now is incredible, but I am a big believer that it's all in the story.

Now having said that, I realize that releasing a film in the real world is like trying to get General Motors to release a handmade car.

In documentary films, the most difficult thing to achieve is to make something complex appear simple.

I have actually been very fortunate to be able to make films on my own credit card without having huge funders behind me dictating how the story should be told.

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.

There is no way I could have ever dared to make a documentary, much less have the money to make a documentary, if it was on 16mm. But, with the magic of digital.

If you acknowledge that filming is an occasion where people express things they might not otherwise express, that offers a much more insightful analysis of why documentaries - even of the fly-on-the-wall variety - are powerful.

I grew up in the business since I was three years old so I've always kind of been in front of the camera and grew up in commercials and I knew that I wanted to do it no matter what, I just loved it.