I don’t have tons of experience as a film director, but I do have lots of ideas for
how I could be a better director. That’s what I’d like to share with you this week.
We’re always hearing about the director's vision - what are they trying to do with this
film, but what does that actually mean? As the director you might decide that for this
chase scene in your film to be good, it needs to be exhilarating, or you might decide that
this other scene needs to be inspiring or make your audience cry. You try and work out
the purpose of each scene, and then everything from there is about, okay what do we have
to do to achieve that? Now there are so many different ways to approach this. Some directors
are very particular about the little details, and they have a clear image and there’s
kind of one way of doing things, and the other way is wrong. Or other people have a lot more
flexible kind of mentality where they let the actors improvise and they might be more
collaborative when it comes to the set designs, the costumes and the lighting, stuff like
that. But I personally don’t think that it’s the director's job to have every single
little detail perfectly envisioned, I think it’s perfectly okay for the director to
take a kind of wider look at the overall piece, and be more concerned with what you’re trying
to achieve than how you actually get to that point. The classic example of this is one
of the first things that people learn about working with actors - which is that saying
things like ‘oh can you raise the intonation on the last syllable of that second word’
or having them to do very specific body language movements at specific times - that stuff isn’t
actually that useful usually, it’s often better to talk to people about how the characters
are thinking, what the characters might be feeling, have it on more on a discussion basis,
and talk about the bigger ideas rather than going in on those micro little details. The
same goes for lighting. Now that’s not always easy to do, particularly if you have a background
in doing everything yourself, as most beginners do, and so collaborating can be a bit of a
struggle. Sometimes people have suggestions that are completely different from our original
plan. But then as you think it over you realise that actually that achieves what we were trying
to achieve with the scene, better than my original plan. So you take the best idea,
wherever it comes from. So a huge part of a director's job is to find these people who
can kind of get on the same page as us, without needing us to explain every single little
detail. And of course the big one is finding people who you actually enjoy working with,
who you enjoy spending time with, because that just naturally makes the whole experience
on set a lot nicer, a lot better, which will no doubt influence the final product. So directing
isn’t about being the smartest person on set, it’s about assembling a team and leading
them through the production. Okay so all this so far as been a little bit abstract, what
about the practical side of things? What does a director actually do? A director’s job
is to know what we want - on set people literally turn to you and say - 'okay, what are we doing?'
and that can be scary even when you do know the answer. The director’s job is to get
stuff done through delegation. In theory, the director could shoot an entire film purely
from walking around and talking to people. And knowing how to communicate those ideas
clearly to other people, is really something that only comes with experience. The director
makes most of the tough decisions. Are we ready to move on to the next shot, or do we
to fix something and go for another take? What happens if something goes wrong? That's
up to the director to figure out a plan. But beneath all of that, the director’s job
is to translate a script into a film. Answering the question, what does the audience need
to see? That’ll influence where the camera goes, how the characters move, and which moments
we decide to show. And of course how do we want that audience to feel? That’ll influence
what we say to the actors in between takes, what we do with the cinematography, the sound,
everything. But there’s even more - as the director we set the tone for the environment
for the whole shoot. Are we always pushing the cast and crew to work harder and harder,
or are we really encouraging when people do well? Is it serious business all the time,
or do we leave some time for joking around? I’ve definitely seen how much of a difference
it makes when leaders are positive & enthusiastic, and how far just a little bit of humour can
go when people are getting a bit dry after a long day of filming. I certainly know that
it's going to take me a little while to learn to keep a clear head when things start going
wrong, and to actually have fun during those stressful times. But something we can all
do to improve our leadership skills, is to show that we value every single person on
that set - so that could just mean that every day you make an effort to have a chat with
each person on the cast and crew. And finally, I think it’s very important that when the
tough times come up on set, when things start going wrong, that the director takes responsibility
for those things. It’s never ‘Oh, I wish I was working with better actors’ or ‘why
aren’t you understanding me’, it’s always what can I do to explain myself better, what
can I do to help you get the right performance. So all of these things - staying positive,
valuing your cast and crew, and taking responsibility when things go wrong, they can all be condensed
into one thing, and that is: Put other people before yourself. My name's Simon Cade, this
has been DSLRguide and i'll see you next week.