Directors Getting it Right or Being "Loose"

A benevolent dictatorship is how I have heard people describe movie-directing. It might be out of fashion, but I like that way of looking at it. I envy the Farrelly Brothers telling their crew at the start of Dumb and Dumber, “Hey, we don’t know anything about filmmaking so we are counting on you to save our asses.” Very disarming. Peter Farrally has said that if you come off like you think you are Stanley Kubrick the crew will make your life hell. I don’t know how true that is. But if I believe in being fair and up front I think it is essential to say that especially when doing a low budget movie the ethic of preparation makes sense and respects everyone’s time. Roger Corman liked storyboards. The sleepless nights and the anticipation of directing a movie would not be worth my time and I wold have no clue as to the final result without being high maintenance or at least specific about certain things, namely the frame and the cut. The myth of “coverage” is that as long as you “got” the content on one camera, you can cut to that wide shot as a bandage if anything else doesn’t work. There is nothing wrong with wide shot, over, close-up, over, close-up for the whole scene, except that you are stuck in the mentality of recording a stage play. It is fine to give the actors a running start, but I likely already know what segment of a scene will be shown from which view. Each beat within a scene might have its own best angle. I may also work “joins” into the scene where I know that in this or that motion the edit has to occur. That might make life tedious for the editor, and if that is a deal breaker he or she must have the opportunity to beg off the production so that someone more amenable can come in and accept direction. I know from past experience that it will eat away at me if I have found the best way to present something and – for example on a student film – it isn’t followed and there is no way to correct the problem. Coppola has said that the reputation of a director as “dictatorial” can come from the tendency of an experienced crew to have such a routine and to know so many variations of how something is usually approached that they want to do things by rote. The more vision and preparation the director has, the more this machine will seem to be impeded by specifics. But I expect that a good cinematographer appreciates time being properly budgeted and a day being planned. One can spend all morning tying to get an all-purpose master shot done and close-ups where there is a best performance and no flubs and ultimately have a dull scene. The audience may feel the generic shots intercut the way they might feel a live multi-camera interview. Those set-ups might provide a hiding place for a director’s entire career. Contrary to what I was recently told in a workshop, I would not equate this with every shot being “coverage” after you record a wide shot from the hills looking down at a traffic intersection. That bump might only be good for one early establishing shot or a reveal, but it is where the “master” concept breaks down because the rhythm of the scene will be made in specific shots and specific cuts. A director might claim, “I can do fancy shots but I find them distracting” reveals by the broad use of the term “fancy” an indiscriminate attitude about the use of cinema tools. I do not love bullets and guns, so I would not justify a loving slow-mo or digital shot which tracks a bullet. But there might be a story-relevant instance where that information is important, namely a shot in the TV series Fargo which follows a piece of buckshot from a shotgun, through a cop, and into the hand of an antagonist, and its resulting infection. Had that shot played as is the first time the scene ran, it would have felt showy and fancy but as a subjective recap or flashback, it was a strong use of modern digital technology. Some people include crane shots for “production value” even though they usually ruin the rhythm and flow of a rom-com and often get cut out. So if you can’t imagine spending half an hour or even ten minutes storyboarding that and reflecting on why the crane shot needs to be there, it might not be worth a morning on the clock shooting it. In High Noon, I often mention Gary Cooper stepping into the street of Dodge to find himself alone and the camera craning up to look down at him and establish how he feels – abandoned and small. That is historically perhaps the single best use of a crane shot. If it feels integral to the inner life of a character or to the story, it will be rendered somewhat invisible because it plays as content. What if in a dialogue scene, two people meeting in a coffee shop, the talking heads and the words they say were not the only content? What if the way they are framed and the bustle of crow around them also had to be considered content? Then the director would be tested. Of course, the behavior of extras and their timing and the assistant directors managing them will play a part. The cinematographer will want to know the workload for the day or the morning, so the preparation should be outside of your head. What if this dialogue scene was going to be what your next job prospects hinged upon? Is it then enough to just get along with people (which does matter) and get a job done as opposed to THE job done? The actors will also want to know that they are not playing their hearts out for nothing. I have acted and worked on sets where there seemed to be no light at the end of the tunnel and where I have lost faith in the idea that there is a plan or anything special going on. I’d usually keep it to myself, but I have a feeling smoke might be seen coming out of my ears. It is usually the non-storyboarding director who will create this unease. Better to have a plan that is not 100% followed than to say that because they won’t get 100% done there is no need for a plan. Fail to plan, plan to fail. Some writers don’t mind taking full screenplay credit even when others have made substantial contributions of even more than 50%. Some directors feel comfortable letting the crew “do their job.” Which is likely fine and healthy. If the cinematographer’s job ends up incorporating decisions that should be part of the director’s work – like deciding what the angles will be or literally calling the shots – it is less because this director cares so deeply about the actors than that he or she just looks at the camera’s job as something to “cover” the action and not be part of the action and part of the whole performance. When a live person sits from an audience watching a play, the brain creates cuts and close-ups and zeros in on what it must. A camera covering this from the same position does not. In a movie, the camera and the cut hold the sensibility of the audience and either jerks them around or carefully crafts a journey and a way to perceive the events and it should feel even more like we are there and involved than the objective audience in a live theater. Sometimes I care so much about this that it freezes me. I know people generally fuse director and producer, and that even though these are two very different disciplines the director’s ability to get across the proper message and feel is reliant somewhat on production value. I rue every compromise I have made in the past, and each time I was too relaxed or trusted too much. If I ask to see a shot or a take or a cut a certain way I NEED to see that first, before any other options are presented. Some people may test the role of director and feel somebody else gets the last say, but it is a long journey and when the omission of one bit or the addition of an other in the alchemy of good cinema it can be as different as the temperature between light and shadow on the moon. I like my work, for example, to have a prickly edge that others will file off. It may travel better if it is very smooth and offends nobody, but there is no shortage of that kind of thing. So it is especially vital that people know a plan is on track and a screenplay will remain much as it was when they said yes let’s make this. A storyboard is much like a script as well, especially if the movie is not a rom-com or talking heads. Even in that case, new approaches to a less director-friendly genre can make them interesting, and create problems that can be fun to solve. Sometimes I am willing to let someone else direct a script until I sit down and storyboard it. Then my appetite to direct it returns. I mean, you can and certainly want to be friendly and keep the actors relaxed so they can make mistakes or try things you might not use, but in terms of allocating time to get the shots and managing the crew I would rather run a tight ship than a loose one. And that might just be something that is understood in advance. I know that's the way I prefer it when I am being directed or when I am on a crew. We don't need more directors or fewer directors from any social stripe - except those who are both talented and organized. The field is crowded. In film school, it's difficult to put your foot down. But anywhere, anyone would expect common sense and communication. If a take is chosen, it's not asking much to use that one in the edit. If a zoom-out should stop on the shoulders, it is astounding if it ended up going to the full body and becoming a heartbreaking "wrong" shot that might mean re-do.