Once Upon a Time in Wester Ross

Michael Fassbender and Kodi Smit-McPhee in Slow West

Slow West, the new Western starring Michael Fassbender and Kodi Smit-McPhee, opens in UK cinemas next Friday. Its Scots writer and director John Maclean says it shows America's Wild West through Scottish eyes.

Maclean has a thing for cereals, the grain crop not the Snap, Crackle and Pop variety.

Wind-ruffled fields of wheat loom large in his inspiration for Slow West and in the finished film, which marks the former The Beta Band member's first feature-length movie.

An idea for Slow West came from an image Maclean saw years ago.

"It was of a couple of cowboys in a wheat field," he said.

"I can't remember where I saw it, but I think it was in a book from the 60s. It wasn't a Western, it was something more psychedelic and trippy."

Maclean adds: "I love films with wheat fields.

"I like how they can be used to hide people and then them popping up like the targets in the game Whack-a-Mole."

One of the big action scenes in Slow West is a crazed gunfight in a field of wheat.

Slow West is Maclean's debut feature but he previously made two shorts, one of which won him a Bafta

Growing up, Maclean was exposed to Westerns along with other films such as Star Wars' The Empire Strikes Back.

Later, when he was a student at Edinburgh Art School, he was blown away by a screening of 1968's Once Upon a Time in the West.

Directed by the legendary Sergio Leone, it stars Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson and almost always features in the top half of lists of top 10 Westerns of all-time.

Like some of the best known Westerns - Leone filmed his Spaghetti Westerns in Almeria in Spain - Slow West was not shot in the US.

Maclean, who also draws inspiration from early Japanese film-makers, says: "The story is set in Colorado - it was there, along with Montana and Wyoming, that many Scots and Irish were settled - but it was filmed in New Zealand."

However, there are scenes that were shot in Wester Ross.

Kodi Smit-McPhee plays Jay Cavendish

Smit-McPhee plays a young Scots aristocrat who leaves the "cold shoulder" of Scotland to go to America to find his lost sweetheart, crofter's daughter Rose Ross.

This is at the time of the Highland Clearances when landowners cleared tenants off land to make way for large-scale sheep production.

Maclean has close family links to Skye and Wester Ross, where some of the most notorious Clearances took place.

The film-maker's father, the artist Will Maclean, grew up in Inverness and has family ties with Achiltibuie near Ullapool in Wester Ross.

Maclean says: "My father is an authority on the Highland Clearances and I was very aware of it from an early age.

"But I didn't want to make a film about a boy who is forced off the family croft. I felt that was too clichéd, and when you look at the Clearances the bad guys are bad and good guys good. There is no grey area.

"I thought it would be interesting to have a character from the rich side of the Clearances."

Maclean adds: "People have said to me that there are plenty places in New Zealand that look like Scotland that I could have used for the scenes in the Highlands.

"But I felt the scenes in Scotland had to be shot there.

"We did the filming in December when there was snow and the light was incredible.

"We also got the last native Gaelic speaker in the area to recite a Gaelic poem. We were only able to use a few lines in the film, but my hope is to make the whole poem available as an extra on the DVD."

Michael Fassbender worked with Maclean on his two short films before appearing in Slow West

Fassbender in menacing form in the new Western

On his journey west Smit-McPhee's Jay Cavendish encounters Michael Fassbender's Irishman Silas Selleck.

Fassbender starred in two short films made by Maclean.

The first, 2009's Man on a Motorcycle, follows a London courier while Bafta Award-winning Pitch Black Heist from 2011 pits thieves against an office safe protected by a light-activated alarm.

After working on the shorts, Maclean and Fassbender discussed making a feature. "We talked about doing something and doing something fun," said Maclean.

Music in Slow West includes tracks by The Kittens, whose Bryan Mills appears in the film playing a banjo, and Gordon Anderson, who performs under the name Lone Pigeon and is the brother of Kenny Anderson, aka King Creosote.

The film's score was written by Australian Jed Kurzel, who also composed the scores for the films Snowtown, The Badadook and the new Macbeth, which stars Fassbender in the title role and features scenes shot on Skye.

Maclean has no immediate plans to rekindle his own music career and instead wants to focus on adding to his variety pack of movies.

"I'm happy with film," he says. "I am writing again. It will be something different from the other films."

Slow West will be released in UK cinemas next week