Greg MacGillivray Quotations

My goal is that after seeing 'Grand Canyon,' every person in the audience will go home knowing they have to conserve water: even something as simple as installing a low-flow toilet or showerhead, or turning off the faucet while they're brushing their teeth.

At first, the tornado is nearly invisible. Against the sky, it's white on white.

I love the ocean; growing up around Laguna Beach, I spent my summers surfing, diving, and snorkeling.

Satisfying myself is the point in filmmaking, in my mind.

'Hollywood Don't Surf!' is really about how Hollywood's superficial view of surfing culture has influenced popular culture and the story of what happened when real surfers tried to change that.

What's happening on the Colorado River is happening all over the world. The water is overused, overdammed, and it's polluted in some places.

Film has far more color shades. It's called 'bit depth' in digital terms. And most bit depth in digital is about twelve, but film bit depth can be twenty to thirty. And so you just have more shades of yellow and red and oranges and everything.

Grain isn't structured like a screen door that you're looking through, but pixels are. Film-based grain is just all over the place, one frame totally different from the next. So your edges are coolly sharp and have a different feeling, an organic feeling rather than this mechanic feeling you get with digital.

Not only have I made films about the subject, but I've largely funded them on my own, so I'm fully committed to doing whatever I can to change the audience's respect and appreciation for the ocean. In 100 years I want whales, dolphins and sharks to still be around, and the ocean to be a healthier place.

We have new tools that can give the audience a sense of not only being there, which is the key element in an IMAX film, but also seeing things in a way that they won't see on television or in feature films.

With digital, you do have the advantage of having an absolutely rock steady image because there's no projector gate, no perforations, no film weaving through a machine. And there's no dust and no scratching.

Marine scientists predict that by 2050 there will be no more large fish left in the ocean if we don't change our relationship with the sea.

I've been using the power of the IMAX medium, with its gigantic screens and supervivid pictures, to get people to fall in love with the ocean.

The ocean is our planet's life support system, yet in my travels and at home, I've seen its degradation firsthand.

Flying through a hurricane is the most fearsome shaking you will ever get. Everything has to be tied down in the airplane. And the IMAX camera has to be rock-steady through all this. We had to design special mounts on the left and right sides of the cabin and in the cockpit to hold the cameras.

In a normal movie, the director controls what you look at. The shots don't last very long because you're getting the audience to look at specific things. An IMAX shot, on the other hand, can be twenty or thirty seconds long.

What I love about IMAX is that, when you're in an IMAX theater, in a museum, science center or aquarium, it's eight stories tall and it's immersive, and you can see it in 3D, you really feel like you're being transported to that place.

There are major challenges, when it comes to making a film in the Arctic. When you're filming wildlife and that wildlife doesn't necessarily take direction, you can spend a lot of time waiting, where you're debating whether or not you should press the record button because it costs a lot of money.

My job is to find the stories, find where to go, do the research, do the logistics, be there on location, and do as much as possible to get the footage that we need to make an incredible film.