As one of Australia's most celebrated cinematographers, Don McAlpine is used to calling the shots. But 'Show me the Magic', featured in the Byron Bay Film Festival, turns the lens onto his story.

Don McAlpine has an eye for magic.

Over many years, his role has been to make a director's vision a reality, to take the audience to a place they haven't been.

McAlpine's film career began in the 1960s, and since then, barely a year has gone by where he hasn't been listed in the credits of a major feature film.

X-Men Originals: Wolverine (2009), The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), Moulin Rouge (1996), Romeo and Juliet (1996), Mrs Doubtfire (1993), Puberty Blues (1981), Breaker Morant (1980), My Brilliant Career (1979) are just some on his lengthy track record.

Born in the small outback New South Wales town of Quandialla, his journey to the heights of Hollywood wasn't always on the horizon.

Starting out as a share farmer and then a physical education teacher, his first stint in the movie-making industry was filming athletes ahead of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.

He watched the Australian film industry flourish into the 1980s, and change the way the rest of the world viewed the country.

"It's amazing that John Gordon had the perception to realise that a film industry stopped the world considering Australia as just a farm," he says.

"In my lifetime I have seen the world's perspective of Australia definitely change and the film industry has been a major part of that."

After working on a couple of B-grade films in the Phillipines, he says his big break came down to luck.

"The real lucky sequence of events was, and this is where luck plays so much of a part in a career, three movies of mine; Breaker Morant, My Brilliant Career and The Getting of Wisdom, were all released in New York within three weeks and some brilliant person in New York Times realised they all had the same director of photography and wrote about this."

This culminated in an offer to shoot American comedy-drama Tempest, at which point he says he gained entry into the 'major league' of movie making.

McAlpine himself recalls the film's director Paul Mazursky saying the cinematographer's role on set was to 'Show me the magic!'.

"There is some magic in what I do, I have no idea what it is and I really don't want to understand," McAlpine says before chuckling.

"When it's successful, I'm able to get behind the eyes and into the mind of the director, that's the key to me being truly successful on a film."

In Show Me the Magic, filmmaker Cathy Henkel gives people a glimpse into the man behind the many lenses of major feature films.

Weaving in some of his own archive footage, the documentary also takes the viewer behind the scenes of his 50th film, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Director Baz Luhrmnan is featured in the trailer, declaring Don McAlpine the 'absolute heartbeat of cinematography' in Australia.

Henkel met the man awarded the American Society of Cinematographers' 2009 International Cinematographer of the Year while shooting a film about actor Spike Milligan, who McAlpine had also worked with.

"Don started to show me some of his footage of the shooting of Romeo and Juliet, and I was just mesmerised, I thought this was fascinating and beautiful and took us into a world that I thought others might like to see," she says.

"It was watching his inventiveness, things like how they got the kissing scene in the swimming pool with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, and what the cinematographer has to do to get a moment like that... it was this magic that we see on screen, has the magician and his team creating all of that."

Henkel followed him behind the scenes with a camera, channelling the creative flow between the director, McAlpine and the rest of the production team on set.

"Having an outside camera on the movie set is really like having an atheist in the Vatican; the actors are terrified of it generally, the producers are terrified, everyone's terrified that something is going to get out that they don't want to," McAlpine says.

"Cathy was able to win their confidence to a degree that was quite amazing, that she was able to get right into the inner sanctum, that to me is the intriguing part of the film."

Some may say making a movie about one of the world's best cinematographers is a daunting task to take on board.

But Henkel says she wasn't trying to compete with his cinematography, but simply trying to tell his story by capturing intimate moments.

"I wanted to get the moments, for the audience to feel like they were there... but Don was very generous in saying he thought there were a couple of good shots in the movie."

Retirement is not yet in sight for 78-year-old McAlpine, who lives on the NSW central coast with his wife.

But as for what comes next... he's still waiting for the right script to land on his doorstep.

To see the full Byron Bay International Film Festival program, visit the festival website.