Film Courage: Let’s go back to the word assumption and the filter that the director
sees this story from. How much does a director have check their own world view? Mark W. Travis:
Their own worldview? Film Courage: Yes. Or the filter that they see the world through
which has years of good things, bad things, traumas, abandonment, happiness, praise?
How much do they really have to know themselves to see 'am I projecting this worldview (which
may not be correct) onto every story?' Mark W. Travis: Okay. A couple things. First
off how much do they know themselves? Film Courage: Yes. And how important is this?
Mark W. Travis: First of all, really important to know themselves! Really important to
know themselves and I’m sort of struggling a little bit with how much do they have to
check themselves, but, let’s go back to know themselves. They really have to know
themselves a lot. Know who they are…I think the more you know who you are…the
more you know about your assumptions, your prejudices, your view of life and the world
because of your life experiences and how you see things through different filters, the
more you know what the better director you are going to be. The more able you may be
to get out of the way. Your job is to get out of the way and not try to impose something
on a story or on characters. There is a process on The Travis Technique™ which I don’t
know if you and I have talked about much at all called Write Your Life. It’s a very
important part of the whole process which is storytelling. And storytelling, not so
much writing, even though it’s called Write Your Life, but it’s autobiographical storytelling.
Taking an event in your life and telling one event in your life. Maybe it only takes
3, 4, 5 minutes to tell this event. The question is, when you’re telling an event
in your life, can you tell it honestly? If you’re telling something that happened
to you (this is what I love about this workshop and this way of working) that event is already
written. There is nothing to write, it happened. This happened, this happened, this happened,
this is the event, that happened. Done! So there is nothing to create. What your
challenge is, how do I tell this story? How do I tell this story openly and honestly.
Second question is: Do you know yourself well enough? You are the protagonist of
that event. How well do you know yourself? And how well are you willing to reveal yourself?
In all your flaws and all your courage and all your trepidation, expectations. Whatever
was going on in that event. Do you really understand it and can you reveal it in the
story knowing that event, that little 3-minute event in your journey, in that 3-minute story
is the only thing that the story is about. What happened around you, let’s say it was
a birthday party you went to or something like that and some strange things happened.
All those things that happened around you and impacted you, that is not the story.
The story is how you felt, how you reacted, what you thought, what you were feeling, what
you were desiring, what you were expecting. That is the story. And that’s the story
of any character in a movie. So going through Write Your Life, can you even do that?
How well do you even know yourself? And the better you know yourself and can see how
you operate at any moment, the better you are going to be able to see other characters,
the better you are going to be able to work with other actors. So this whole thing of
knowing yourself is crucial. And this is why we teach Write Your Life to so many writers,
directors, actors so that they can start from a point of self-awareness and self-revelation
before going into writing the next script. Before taking that next role, before directing
that next movie. If you know yourself. If you say “I now understand how I operate
as a human being.” You will understand every character you work with much better.
So that is crucial. And then getting back to your question about imposing your own world
view on it. You will be less likely to do that because you will be more likely to want
to honor the view of the characters. And there is one other aspect of this and that
is when you read a script and it impacts you…and I’m assuming that you have this script that
you’ve read and you want to make it into a movie and you’ve been so moved by it and
you say “I want to make this.” My first question to you the director would be “Great!
Why do you want to make this? (And all that) But what do you want to say? What do you
want to do?” Best answer to that is “I want to create this as a movie so that viewers
will have the reaction I had to it.” Not “So I can push this message on them.”
I was so moved by this, I was so moved by these characters. I was touched. I was
brought to tears and laughter and I went on an emotional journey after I was reading this.
I want to afford an audience (a viewer or an audience) the same experience, knowing
that for each member of the audience, it will be different. It won’t be exactly the
same as mine. Question for the Viewers: How important is self-awareness for a movie
director?