Writer-director

Over Easter, I had beer with a few high school friends. It's the kind of thing where you expect to account for the last 20 or 30 years of your life. Even though the broad strokes are already known. Graduated from Film and TV Production at Humber, did a lot of volunteering and being unemployed, and kept writing and making my little movies even while taking on a job as a security guard, which I thought would be temporary. ************** Some helpful and supportive thoughts and ideas were offered. I won't mention one business plan which might easily be used by others. But along with that came the opinion that a person has to decide whether he/she is a writer or a director. I keep remembering what one of my instructors said to me as graduation approached and he asked what I planned to do. He asked, "So you're going to pass yourself off as a writer-director." Since this was someone who might still be able to mess with my grades, I must have said something polite instead of, "Better than passing myself off as writing and directing instructor." He must have failed upward because he became head of the department. I could have also said, "Yes, I'll pass myself off by writing a screenplay and then directing it; that will surely fool people into thinking I am a writer-director." :):):):):);):):):):) What I have been seeing typically for years is that many directors develop their own projects. If they have found an already written screenplay, it is considered a draft and they will want to "work with" the writer or just walk away. It is like the old joke of producers or executives lining up to take their turn pissing on a script. It's not like I have people lining up with excellent scripts for me to direct. But I have participated in readings over the years and given detailed notes on many scripts. It is enough to know that you either click with something or you don't. I may not have time to see every story idea through to completion. I have too much in my inbox anyway. I have directed another writer's work and the process was the process. Once a script is ready, it can basically be locked. Especially after group readings and storyboards have drawn out possible areas of improvement or necessary tweaks. All of my own scripts go through that process. And once I have drawn it out and had to meditate on each beat of the story or of a scene, I can relax as long as everybody else is open to actually looking at my plan rather than just trusting the whims of the day. ________________________________________________________________________________________Being the writer and the director does not mean that I do "everything." I have had a few people offer me scripts to "produce" which they would want to direct, but that is like hiring me to do many of the chores I only reluctantly do for myself or for which I have waited years to delegate. I would be the wrong person to finance a film, given that it is mostly guard income I survive on. But I have had to do just that many times. Even if you get a producer, you have to have that awkward talk about whether you both understand the duties and responsibilities of that post. If suddenly the director has to recover funding that had not been properly locked down while a project is near or in progress, that could be a disaster. If you start revising a script because it has to be done with no resources, you are wearing the producer had and Murphy's Law is not co-writing and co-directing. There are a lot of opportunities or windows to shoot something I have let go by because now I am not as naive and certain of my destined path. But for me it is a matter of keeping an eye on the expected final result. A compromise on one end of the time-line will have its result on the other end. Each crew member is important. Each is a link in the chain. ________________________________________________________________________One logistical snafu and nothing can nor should be shot without the necessary element. I have in the past accommodated people leaving early from a big shoot and I've had to shoot around them to disguise the fact that they were not present. At that point, the best shots for those moments may be lost. Except that I was in the habit of doing storyboards and it helped the re-organization considerably. What may be lost is subtle. A room full of people has a certain energy. At this point I've caught on to how certain shots can't be easily achieved in reality. Even a 360 degree pan of people might not give the smooth other-worldly mood necessary and build viewer confidence in the project. So those elements become part of preparation. Too much emphasis these days is on simply "covering" the content of a scene, and assumes that it is two people talking. I am going to blog about this in more detail. But on the subject of writers handing over their scripts to a director, each project is its own. If I have written a stage play, I am oddly open to someone or several someones directing and re-staging it however they like. Perhaps because of the expectation that plays will be remounted or go on the road indefinitely. A movie is rarely remade. Even if it seems like the Seventies and eighties are being raided constantly for remakes. Also, part of my interest in directing a script is its potential for necessary invention and use of cinema language. So many movies are just master shot, over shoulder of everyone, close-up of everyone, and the scene from top to bottom. Flipping a burger. In those cases it seems like the director's role is merely symbolic or a matter of reviewing whether the actors are sticking to the plan from rehearsal or casting discussions. Jon Favreau has said that often studios would give him storyboards and say "just shoot this." Or he has hired the animator from Samurai Jack and the first style of Clone Wars cartoon to "direct" on paper the movements and framing of a battle in Iron Man 2. To be honest, the proper application of cutting and shooting is the key to my love of movies. MANY articles and interviews I've studied pay lip service to storytelling and visual elements but then run a camera merely recording conversation - as Hitchcock said, "pictures of people talking." Ironically, I am poised to do something that simple perhaps just because I have no production team and nothing to pay them so I will be writing like the wind and confining everything to the simplest location for the sake of. . .well not just savings of money but the Aristotelian unities of time, place and conflict. Then at least I won't be doing my "first feature" when I tackle the larger project I have been developing. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________I would LOVE to have a decent income. I would LOVE to have more of my titles from the past 10 years on imdb. I envy an enemy of mine who was savvy enough to start a film festival and once it was recognized by imdb simply put her own film titles up there - even at least one I know to be some sort of inside joke (a so-called doc that isn't anything more than an interview of her boyfriend). Much of my play and my passion has gone into preparing projects that at least were my own and/ or had an interesting element. I would be doing more for other people, but in my nerves I feel I am out of place in that capacity. If you advise anyone else on directing you are pissing up a rope. Everyone thinks he or she can direct, so this may not be unique. I won't co-write the work of others, so the idea of working on someone else' script to direct is not on the immediate horizon for me. Maybe after I've gotten my stuff out of my system. Most projects I should have done in my twenties or thirties. I know how sane I felt immediately after completing a film shoot in late 2003 and my brain felt more free to write. I got a lot of good work typed up, and some that still needs to be fixed up. I would certainly give certain scripts to another director and let them stage them and even cast them while I am directing one of my other scripts. As long as I'm not expected to pay for the pride of being a writer-john. I haven't given in to the vanity press. For now all I can do is be thankful for the people who have taken an interest in what I am doing and have helped. _______________________________________________________________________________You know, as I recall, the Canadian Film Center had its Feature Film Projects that as a rule only budgeted for an individual to be paid for one of the positions he or she held. This meant that it made great economic sense for the writer to also be the director. I know that if I were merely surrendering a script I would consider my job done. It would be all over but the compromise. So better to have me doing something, actually directing. As a producer I would be a liability because there are producer-minded people who could be going to bat for the project. You need a load bearing member of the team to be the producer. Obviously the cinematographer and first A.D. are essential. People expect a producer to be production manager as well. There are many positions that I have occupied, but the only one where I feel I am actually the best for the job (for the money) is writer-director. Even then, when directing it is to an extend acting if the scope is large. I wouldn't want some pip squeak wandering along and sizing me up and trying to spread dissent in the ranks. George Roy Hill was much like a general. Apparently so was Milius (who is recently featured in a great doc by Chop Shop). But I tend to be more quiet and hope to plan enough in advance that we don't miss anything. It is a cause for concern that I have not climbed up the imaginary ladder of the DGC for be a PA/AD, then a 3rd AD, then a 2ND AD, with payments and minimum numbers of hours on set in between. Unless I get in straight as a director, I might have to forget about union shoots. I can't be playing that game at age 45. I pretty much have to stick to what I am doing. ___________________________________________________Every now and then you will see a directing credit like Vincenzo Natali on Hannibal that you recognize and you can settle in and watch more carefully, but for most shows it just seems arbitrary who comes in to direct. The shows have good image quality, so the shooters know what they are doing, but I think it will only be taken as a grouchy position to evaluate the quality of TV directing or movies at least in an open forum. I need to be doing this more often, though I have no love of logistical tensions and politics. I feel like I am getting back into it and starting over each time. I keep seeing posts (by female directors) saying there are not enough female directors. I can understand someone boosting the stock of something they've got. But the one thing definitely needed is more excellent directors and a better image for directors. There is clearly an impatient view of directors by and large and a perception that they are all doing something by rote that is so standardized that they are redundant. Whether it is me or someone else, we need to see the DIRECTING evaluated as directing and not so much for content and politics. Some films are more fun to watch than others. The writing is often a meandering mess, which might make it closer to life but also makes the proverbial natives restless. Anyone can do it, so why am I merely wasting my time blogging on a Saturday when my time and my ind are my own? I am either hyper-ambitious, or hyper-apathetic.