David MacKenzie Quotes

It's very much like filmmaking always is-you're always asked to do something that you're not sure you know how to do. So you make an educated guess as to what you think will work and you hope between that and plan B, that you can end up with a product that's really good.

In my work, I have never had any use for anything that I have known in advance.

But I just think we've got such a continuity with what we're doing that most people come in and fill in the blanks. And sometimes we leave a lot of blanks to be filled.

Improv training allows you to get out of your head a little bit and take more risks, which is something I would like to continue to improve upon.

It's such a great thing to work with people and not have a plan.

I've been lucky enough to work with some of the best TV directors there are, and I've learned from how they had to handle when things don't go quite according to plan.

When you're playing the same dirty dozen night after night, the moments that keep it fresh are those when you just let go and trust everyone.

As they say, there are two rules in improv: Never say no, and never ask why. When another actor asks 'Why?' or says no to something you're suggesting, then it's very clear that they're putting the onus on you, because they're not comfortable with it themselves.

My methodology is not knowing what I'm doing and making that work for me.

I think one of my strengths is that I can always take advice, and I can delegate. I know a lot of people feel the need to do everything themselves, but I am not one of them.

We must improvise, and we must experiment, and we must do things that might go wrong, and everything we bring - the people and the equipment - must serve us in that goal.

There is no facet of my professional life that doesn't require or request improvisation.

When I'm working with improv people, I give them the green light to just bring it and try things.

Sometimes, thinking on your feet can be the most creative. Constrained circumstances can bring the best out of you. Some of the most successful shows come out of shoestring invention.

I went to Second City, where you learned to make the other actor look good so you looked good and National Lampoon, where you had to create everything out of nothing, and SNL, where you couldn't make any mistakes, and you learned what collaboration was.

It's like, the more you commit, the happier the animators are; if you're at all iffy and concerned, then it doesn't free them up to do as much fun stuff, so you have to just go for it and, again, trust the people around you and not be seemingly guarded and numb. Throw caution to the wind a bit.

Think on your toes, use what's around you, and come up with something organic and fun.

You have to be very flexible and understand as a director, especially as a writer/director, that you cannot hang onto stuff really hard. You have to be ready to accept those happy accidents and to anticipate that they are going to happen and capitalize on them.

We would write scripts, like for 'Shutterbugs.' Then when we shot it, everyone just came up with new stuff. We've definitely learned how to do it better as we've gotten along. So basically, that's how it went. We just go in with ideas and try to figure out funny stuff while we're there.

It's through working with a lot of first-time directors that I realized that people learn on their feet. Everybody works on something for a different reason. Everybody has got something new to learn on these sets, and you don't have to know everything, the second you start.

With each job that you're given an opportunity to do, you're asked to use new parts of yourself and to figure the play out with other tools that you perhaps didn't use with the last show.

You have to think that the answer - and the right answer - for you and your organization might not be something that's been done before. And it's up to you to discover and work with your team to form and figure out how to do successfully.

In our case, we have no script. So the only people we can work with are people who have been working with us in the past, and they know we are going to do something; it's kind of a trust.

FCA is a culture of leaders and employees that were born out of adversity and who operate without sheet music.

I think by now if people hire me, they know I'm going to improvise. I'm an improviser by trade.