Film Courage: Does a director automatically deserve respect?
Jason Satterlund, Filmmaker: No, I mean I think that the
director automatically wants respect but they don't necessarily deserve it.
When you see frustration from directors it's because they don't have any respect and people
are just walking all over him that usually comes from a director that is not prepared or not
prepared and just not doing the job that they're supposed to be doing
it. They need respect, they should have respect because you're in charge of some
usually something larger even if it's a smaller production, you still got some money on the line
but they you got you're the person in the position of a pile of money, you have a target that you're
aiming for at the end of it with some sort of story or something. You have to dictate things
to all these other departments and if they don't have your respect they are not going to
be delivering their best work more than likely because if they don't like you, if they don't
respect you or don't want to be there, they're going to probably just try to they're just trying
to power through the day that's a really bad that you don't want your team members in that position
and I don't think that that if you find yourself in that position it's this is not
necessarily because you have experience or not that's not usually doesn't have
anything to do with it it's usually has to do with your preparation directors who are
not prepared really lose the respect of their crew very quickly because the worst possible
thing you can do on set as a director is not know what you want to sit there the clock is ticking
and you're going should we put the we should put the camera so if we put the camera here and then
ah it makes everyone crazy and they're going to start rolling their eyes and being very frustrated
with you and they're going to start a second guessing your decisions and things like that
coming into your location beforehand and knowing they're going to enter through this door and
they're going to go out to that door and I want to just move the camera this way you don't have
to know every little detail but having an idea of what you want it's super important and you
could do that without experience and if you don't know how to to even shoot a scene you can get your
DP to help you with that as long as what you want that becomes from preparation even having like an
idea of say for example a wardrobe you want I want it to look like this guy has been up all night
that can be enough of a description for your wardrobe person at least now they know what
you want okay so he's he slept in his clothes okay good and so a little bit of wrinkles in yeah yeah
that kind of thing if you came in and you're like I don't know he's just wearing like clothes like
normal that's maddening to work for you're going to lose the respect of everybody really quickly
so it's absolutely vital to have respect but it's not something that you will get just automatically
but you can get it by making sure you're doing the work so shot listing and storyboarding yep
shot listing storyboarding is very helpful you don't have to storyboard necessarily there's a
lot of schools of thought on that it depends on the style that you're going for sometimes
you don't have time so like there's a show I've been working on where we're running so
fast there's not time for storyboards there's not even time for a shot list but at least knowing
the basics even like I'm prepared as much as I can be in the moment I know that these two characters
are coming in and this is their objective and we have to get them back out and we have to do it in
five minutes or less so at least having some goal posts to hit at a minimum is helpful the more the
better it is and the easier it is for your team to work with you what's your image of a bad director
badger I've seen a lot of bad directors I can picture them in my mind that the first believe it
or not the first sign I see of a Bad director is someone who doesn't know how to talk to an actor
I think think about what it takes to be a director you can do it the best place for a
director to be is like television you can go into a television and the DP already is set to look
the this the writers wrote everything for you the actors know their characters and you don't
really have to do anything but the the the DP is probably going to be able to set it up and
while we normally shoot it when the guy goes over here and he cooks dinner there this is
normally how we shoot the scene okay great the actors are still going to know what you want
so if you don't know how to talk to them and they're and they're feeling alone and vulnerable
that that's that's a problem and that is the one job that no one can really help you with
someone else can light it someone else can get all the costumes ready in the stunts and stuff but
someone's got to talk to the actors someone's going to give them emotions and help pull moments
out of them especially if they've shut down who else is going to do that for you you it's up to
you so there's no more important job than that I think how do you gut check yourself to know
hey am I moving into bad director mode yeah if I feel like I'm in danger of being a bad director
I'm waiting for all the commas to appear below the video like you are a bad director if I feel like
I'm edging into that territory it always comes down to my prep if I find myself department heads
are asking me so what do you want for the color of the walls and I haven't thought about that yet
I know that especially if we're approaching the shoot I know that there's a problem and
especially if there are gaps like what I've noticed is is what I was called bad directing
it's really easy to focus just on one aspect of the shoot like
oh it's going to be in this place all lit with Christmas lights and and it's going to be shot
on a Steadicam and we're going to spin in a circle cool so what are the actors doing oh we'll
figure that out when we get there you haven't really thought about that department too much
that's that's that's usually my gut going alarm bells you you need to take a minute and sit and
think about that this comes back to a big thing I think we all struggle with which is resistance
your gut you inside know what you need to do to be successful but sometimes for
whatever reason boop it comes up where you you just don't want to
you'll resist sitting down and writing out your shot list because it feels a lot like work
so I know that if I if there are there's usually that thing and sometimes it's shotless and I like
doing shot lists that's what's so crazy but if I feel like I haven't done it or see that
I haven't done it and my alarm bells are going off inside I'm definitely leaning into bad territory
and I feel it on set because there's always this little sense of inner panic that comes up where
I don't know what I'm what I'm doing here it's it is a really uncomfortable bad spot
to be in when it happens because it's already hard enough on set it's already
and where else it comes up is where I think that I don't need to think about it
whenever I approach a situation where it's just another breakup scene we shot a bunch of these
it's just gonna be in the ice cream shop the two thing they're going to leave and I don't put the
work in because I don't feel like I really need to that's usually when things really go south too
oh the ice cream shop is closed and they and the actor is allergic to dairy oh well I don't know
what to do that because that kind of thing will happen it just happens all the time so
which is why you prepare which is why you do the work ahead of time you're preparing
for Murphy because Murphy will show up he will make no mistake about it that's why
you prepare because everything's going to go sideways on you at some point it just will so
you've brought up resistance a lot are you a fan of The War of Art
yes The War of Art, yes because that's how it starts right he talks about resistance that that
really rung my bell when he talked about that like because you the thing about resistance that's so
sinister is that no one else can tell you we can we're really good at making ourselves look busy
even to our partners or on social media
but we know if we're resisting we're the only ones who know generally if you're supposed if that you
have that screenplay that you're supposed to be writing and you just aren't no one's your
partner may be looking you'd be oh he works on it every day but is he though am I though
we only we know it and so it's yeah it and it can look like all sorts of things it can look like
it can look like exercise
every time I sit down and write that oh I just need to go for a walk oh guess what you're not
doing while you're walking you're not riding it could look like I think he even says in the
book it could be sex could be a resistance thing you just suddenly I'm really horny
yeah for every person is different social media is probably the biggest resistance blocker which is
and social media is a killer for art it's killer it doesn't favors whatsoever it's
there really isn't any purpose to it especially for artists like what are
you doing if like what do we really need it for how is it actually helping your career
we like to we like to kid ourselves and tell us that oh well people need to know that I'm busy
do they though like how many jobs have we legitimately gotten from Facebook
I mean unless you're in part of a Facebook group that you post a job and you happen
to be one of the first five that do it and they're looking for an art department person
I can't think of it I people will message me and say it looks like you're busy but I've
never landed a job from one of those social media platforms it's all about the grand advertisement
to show people that you're more important than you are that's usually the point of social media is
yeah it's not the point of everything to advertise to the world that you're more
successful more good looking more that your life is so great and perfect probably isn't
that what we do as humans yeah we just want to fool everyone into thinking that we're something.