What is a Film Director? *BLOG*

[Sweeney Jet]

Hey all.

I write filmmaking blogs in my spare time. Here's my latest. Enjoy and share.

WHAT IS A FILM DIRECTOR

 

[Ewan]

Nice!

Bookmarked!

 

[trueindie]

Hey that was a good post. I really, really agree with your "psychiatrist" bit... "because character behaviors is their business." Is that a personal insight or did you read that somewhere? I ask because I agree with that 150%.

I just got done directing this piece that has hardly any dialog and is completely about the person's feelings. I think my job was half as good as I wanted it to be. But people around me kept wanting to go to the next shot. I didn't want to because I wasn't sure if I got the behavior exactly as I wanted, and I still had time left in the day, so I wanted to stay with my shots. But eventually I relented and moved to the next shot.

I don't blame my crew. I spent three days on a three page short with like three lines of dialog. The crew was laughing that I had done 50 different shots with an average of 10 takes. The highest take for one shot was 17. Crew wanted to kill me... haha.. But what can I say. The way I feel is that if I don't have my shot, then I don't have my shot and moving on is kind of useless. I'll move on if I have time constraints, but I don't want to move on if I have time and don't feel like I got the shot that I need. so my point is that I was aiming for the correct "behavior" the whole time, while the crew didn't know what the hell I was talking about or why we needed another take. But my actors understood why I wanted another take.

Also this time, if I didn't like the behavior, I would tell the actors to come take a look. And then we would discuss what I didn't like about it. They would realize what I was saying, and then change their approach. Meanwhile the crew thought it was a waste of time. I really liked this technique, which I used for the first time.

I don't mean to hijack your thread. Just wanted to provide you with some of my own insights from the weekend.

Again, nice blog post.
Aveek

 

[Sweeney Jet]

Nice!

Bookmarked!

Awesome.

Hey that was a good post. I really, really agree with your "psychiatrist" bit... "because character behaviors is their business." Is that a personal insight or did you read that somewhere? I ask because I agree with that 150%.

Personal insight. Pretty simple to connect the dots between what directors and psychiatrist need to know about -- people. Shrinks evaluate the people and directors try make people on the script come to life.

I just got done directing this piece that has hardly any dialog and is completely about the person's feelings. I think my job was half as good as I wanted it to be. But people around me kept wanting to go to the next shot. I didn't want to because I wasn't sure if I got the behavior exactly as I wanted, and I still had time left in the day, so I wanted to stay with my shots. But eventually I relented and moved to the next shot.

I don't blame my crew. I spent three days on a three page short with like three lines of dialog. The crew was laughing that I had done 50 different shots with an average of 10 takes. The highest take for one shot was 17. Crew wanted to kill me... haha.. But what can I say. The way I feel is that if I don't have my shot, then I don't have my shot and moving on is kind of useless. I'll move on if I have time constraints, but I don't want to move on if I have time and don't feel like I got the shot that I need. so my point is that I was aiming for the correct "behavior" the whole time, while the crew didn't know what the hell I was talking about or why we needed another take. But my actors understood why I wanted another take.

Also this time, if I didn't like the behavior, I would tell the actors to come take a look. And then we would discuss what I didn't like about it. They would realize what I was saying, and then change their approach. Meanwhile the crew thought it was a waste of time. I really liked this technique, which I used for the first time.

I don't mean to hijack your thread. Just wanted to provide you with some of my own insights from the weekend.

Again, nice blog post.
Aveek

No hijacking assumed. It's a personal experience and that helps filmmakers understand the game more. Totally cool. Yeah, nailing that specific behavior for a scene can be tricky especially when working with not-so experienced actors. I feel ya on wanting to get it perfectly correct. Otherwise, what's the point? Also worth mentioning -- I think Scorsese and De Niro tried many, many different types of behaviors for each of the scenes in Kings of Comedy. Many takes, many types of approaches. Since they had already built such rapport, they felt comfortable in experimenting in the performances to get it perfectly right.