Directing for Film and Television: Revised Edition

Introduction: The Mystique

During the short history of the motion picture, the film director has acquired a fair share of mystique. Names come floating back to us from out of the past: D. W. Griffith, Abel Gance, Sergei Eisenstein, Carl Dreyer, Josef von Sternberg, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, John Ford, Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa. Out of more recent years, come a host of others: Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Spike Lee, Robert Altman, Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorcese. If someone’s favorites have been left out, it doesn’t matter, the point has been made. These are giants whose work calls to mind a particular kind of screen image, of film genre. They were in command of the set, the script, the cast, the mood, and the temper of their films. They controlled. They directed!

In fact, at times they appear to have been in such control that, during the 1960s, the misuse of the French word auteur—conveying the concept of the director not only as the filmic leader but as author of everything—captured the imagination of the film critics. Writers, producers, editors—all were to be thought of simply as pawns in the director of photography’s hands. The film was his, from start to finish. And what a giant he must be to so control!

What about this myth? Must we, for instance, in the manner of Kurosawa, be able to paint marvelous images of each frame during pre-production or, like Bergman, be a great symbolist? Like Coppola, do we have to pursue a single truth until it either bankrupts us or makes us ten million dollars? No, of course not, though these abilities (or passions) might make us more famous or more productive, if we could indeed acquire them. In any art or craft, a continuum exists. On one end are those artists whom nature, or perhaps hard work, has endowed with ability and insight so rare that they can create works of beauty and metaphor, apparently without effort. Beethoven certainly belongs on that special end of this artistic spectrum. But moving along the line toward the center, we soon come to artists whose achievements are more debatable, whose lives have been spent in fruitful but not necessarily stunning artistic endeavors. In music, Johann Pachelbel is a good example. Aside from his one rather sentimental and monotonous Canon, few today have heard his music, and perhaps rightfully so. In painting, we all know artists whose works hang on our own walls or in a gallery, but who are not memorialized in museums or art books. And in filmmaking, the legion of directors whose names we don’t know points to the obvious fact that one does not have to be a genius or a giant to direct film. But wait, the continuum has more room on it. At the far end, away from both geniuses and merely competent creators, are hundreds of others—musicians, painters, and directors whose art is so inept we not only don’t know their names, we never see their work. Of course, the continuum is not rigid. People move along it, perhaps not from the genius end to the other end, but from the middle to one side or the other.

In all artistic endeavors there are incompetent, merely competent, and superbly competent artists. So it is in film. There are journeymen and -women (people whose work has been good enough to get them jobs, to earn them livings) and there are great artists. Of the four thousand directors in the Directors Guild of America (DGA), few would call themselves famous; fewer still, auteurs. If the public prefers to keep alive its fantasy image of the director-as-giant, with his hand resting upon the shoulder of a camera man gazing out over the Arizona desert—fine, but there’s no reason for you to punish yourself with this fantasy. In fact, you would never have bought this book if you intended to buy such a myth.

Not that we can’t learn from the work of the best and the brightest of the movie directors, or from the myth of the artiste. All craftsmen, no matter what their potential, should want to know the work of artists better and wiser than they. But studying their work is not enough, not simply because they know things—perhaps instinctively-that we must acquire through our own hard labor, but also because the famous or extremely gifted person very often works in ways that we cannot emulate. I remember being in college and watching a young mathematician do a problem in calculus. He skipped several of what I thought were mandatory steps to arrive at the correct answer. For him, those steps were simply unnecessary; he saw past them, making leaps of the imagination. For me, they were essential, and I could not get there without them. Some of the best directors also make such leaps that others, perhaps less visionary, cannot make. And while we can learn much about the art of filmmaking from analyses of great films and from listening to the words of great filmmakers, we cannot create a great film simply by these methods. Other steps, other training, and another mindset is necessary. And that’s what this book is about. It is a book addressed to the journeymen and -women and to the artists; to them and to those who aspire to be like them. It is a book about both the art and the craft of film, about the tasks and talents required to direct a reasonably articulate film or videotape.

Reality forces me to include a negative note at this point. There are over a hundred thousand students of film in colleges and universities every year. Most of those students want to direct. Obviously, few have a chance of becoming professional directors, since, for example, there are ten thousand members in the DGA worldwide (most are assistant directors, stage managers, etc., not directors), and of those, 25 percent work only sporadically. Going further, if you inquire how many women or minority members of the DGA there are, or how many women or minorities get to direct in unionized, professional situations, the picture looks worse and worse. In fact, when I recently inquired, the DGA had posted on its Web site the lamentable fact that the number of women and minorities entering the DGA is not what it should be.¹ But—to return to a positive note—there are thousands of working nonunion directors; there are thousands of films being made by students; there are lots of directors working in a host of strange and wonderful situations: cable television, industry, educational fields, hospitals, schools, and, of course, the commercial worlds of Hollywood and New York, Chicago and Houston, where both union and nonunion markets exist. In other words, there is a chance to work as a director, because there is always a chance for trained talent.

Ironically, much of that training comes from a background in literature and the arts and fields other than filmmaking. Some readers may think that I am merely stating the obvious, that everyone knows that directing is the kind of craft that requires a great amount of understanding in many fields, along with instruction in a few technical matters. Unfortunately, that is not the case. For every single person who believes in the myth of the genius director (with powers we cannot attain), there are dozens (many of whom are now directing) who have ingested only a technical competency and who think that that is all there is to directing.

Directing is neither the craft of those who are merely technically competent, nor the craft of those who know a lot about art and science but nothing about the technical sides of the filmic world. In short, aspiring directors must not think too big or too small. After all, look at what is required of you. Rhythm and pace must be judged, words must be weighed, actions watched, sounds listened to, human talents appraised, music considered, pictures cut according to symbolic or abstract judgments. Framing must be observed, judged, and set against values gained from the study of art or photography. Scripts have to be read and understood on a variety of levels. Actors and crew must be handled with care. So, the study of English and foreign literature, the creation of musical or visual art, the comprehension of philosophical and psychological concepts, all contribute powerfully to the ability to move the myriad participants, both human and inanimate, into configurations that produce a competent and perhaps artistic motion picture or television videotape. I therefore will assume that the reader of this volume has studied something other than frames and glitches; that he or she goes every now and then to museums or to the ballet; that reading and writing are pleasurable and often-indulged-in activities. In short, a director may not be a genius, but he or she must be an educated person. (Once again, I hear the cries from offscreen, What about all the hacks, the dullards? Who says they’re educated? My answer is that I am not talking about hacks. I am writing for those of you who want to do the best possible job of directing, and I am suggesting an avenue toward that goal.)

I began this introduction by saying that one doesn’t have to be a genius in order to become a competent director, but I have also tried to say that there are some prerequisites for the work, more, perhaps, than many practitioners are willing to accept. One has to have a good intellectual background; one has to have luck and a predilection for hard work. And one has to possess a certain kind of talent. Assuming, however, that you have those things, and can pay careful attention to details, you should be able to do what thousands have done before you: direct a film

¹The percentage of minority members entering the DGA each year has remained stagnant at an average of 12.6 percent for the past 5 years, a figure less than half of the 28.6 percent minority share of the American population calculated by the U.S. Census Bureau. The Census Bureau figure for women as a percentage of the U.S. population is 51.1 percent, while in 1999 the percentage of women members entering the DGA was only 26.6 percent. This represents the lowest percentage of women members entering the DGA since 1995, and the second consecutive year of a decline.

1

Reading/writing, and Arithmetic

In the beginning is the written word. That’s where a film starts. Of course, some people say that the beginning of a film is an image, or a concept. We could stay here and discuss the point all day, but rather than do so, let’s take my idea that it’s words that start the process and see how far that gets us. Basic words, at that, such as:

FADE IN: EXTERIOR PHIL’S HOUSE IN THE BEKAA VALLEY, LEBANON (NIGHT)

On the front of the house can be clearly seen the marks of the latest shelling attack. We HEAR rifle fire, but it is sporadic.

DISSOLVE TO:

INTERIOR HOUSE - WIDE SHOT (NIGHT)

In the corner of a room that is dimly lit by moonlight, a family is huddled. The camera TRACKS slowly toward them. They are eating, but we can’t tell that until we get close. There is the SOUND of the rifles and the SOUND of eating, but it could be crying or sniffling. As the camera MOVES very close, we find four people: Phil, the American husband of Mirra (a Lebanese woman), and their two children.

These words, of course, are in the form of a shooting script. They establish some very basic idea of where the film is to take place, who is in it, and the mood it establishes within a few seconds after Fade In. Later, dialogue will come in, and we will have to read that and add it to our knowledge of what is happening. Other characters will appear, other scenes will take place. You will need to decide how to shoot such a script, but before you go that far, you must read it and understand it thoroughly.

In this chapter we will talk about how to know, by reading a script, whether (a) you want to make it into a film, and (b) you need to rewrite portions of it. We will discuss how to go about doing that rewriting. We will cover basic budgetary problems and how to know whether you will have enough money to make the film. We will also deal with some glaring problems that show up in dialogue, especially as we hear it on American television.

Take, for instance, a hypothetical line of dialogue ending a scene in a cafe, with a man saying to a woman, I know we’ve just met, but wouldn’t you like to come over to my house for a cup of coffee? This is followed by a dissolve to an intimate corner of a house, with coffee on the table, the two strangers comfortably ensconced, and the woman asking, What do you do for a living? Now this isn’t bad just because it’s a terrible plot, or because the dialogue is so weak; it’s bad because it leaves the viewer wondering what on earth the characters were saying to each other during the twenty minutes it took to get from the café to the house. In other words, this is an exchange of information that most likely would have taken place during the unseen time between scenes. The writer is so scatterbrained that he or she can’t find a way of revealing information to us in the course of a conversation, but instead has to start at the beginning of the story in every scene. That’s just not the way people behave. What could be done? Well, she might have said, after the dissolve, as they drank their coffee, I’ve never been inside a military base, what’s it like? Or, If you hate waiting on tables so much, why not a job in life insurance? The same information is relayed to us, but we don’t get the impression that these people have been sitting silently in a cab for twenty minutes, waiting to impart information to us!

Of course, you will develop your own objections to scripts and that, in a sense, is what this chapter is also about—developing your sensibilities.

READING

Whether you’re a first-time director who has never made a film or a videotape, or a twenty-time award winner, every time you read a script in order to decide whether or not to film it is a crucial and wonderful moment. It is a time of choices. Or at least some choices, for you will fall between two extremes. On the one hand is that talented kind of director who writes his or her own scripts—many Hollywood directors, at least of feature films, do that these days—and on the other hand, there are those of you who will be hired by a production company to direct a script that’s already written, cast, and ready to go, in which case you have very little leeway and very few choices to make. If neither of these is your lot, then, like most of us, you will be given a script by a friend or an acquaintance, and you will have to read it and decide whether to commit the next weeks or months or years to being tied up with that material. Are you, in other words, going to devote your life to this script?

Romance, suspense, terror, jeopardy, a decision point in someone’s life. For thousands of years these have been the essence of drama, even of comedy. They are the meat of good stories. But how, your first time out, do you know if a script is going to work, if it has enough of these ingredients? Well, that’s a long process, but let’s simplify matters by assuming you don’t have a script, but merely a story-let’s say a short story or a paragraph or two from a writer who says her idea would make a delicious movie. Start by reducing the script to a one-liner to see if it piques your interest, to see if you’d want to go further. If you’ve taken scriptwriting in college, that’s very often where you’ve been told to begin, moving on from there to a paragraph, from there to a full-fledged story—that is, a few pages of summary—and then on to a treatment—the draft just before script—in which every scene and every character is described. If you’ve ever tried to sell a story or a script, you’re familiar with this process: producers and executives ask to see a brief description, first. If they like it, they proceed to more elaborate efforts.

Okay, you have a one-liner, maybe something like the following.

A multiracial family in Lebanon tries to come to terms with the conflict surrounding it, but during a frightening month it comes apart at the seams.

Many one-liners will tell you that a story has no possibility, but do you really know enough to decide about this film? Probably not. Now, what?

Try the paragraph form.

Phil and his wife Mirra live on the front in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. He is a wiry, tough-minded American journalist who has come to Lebanon to cover the war but instead falls for Mirra, whose husband has been killed in the civil war. He leaves his job and they marry, with a firm intention to remain neutral in the conflict. This proves impossible and, one year to the day after their wedding, Mirra and Phil take opposite sides in a battle that sunders their marriage just as violently as it tears the country apart.

This may or may not be your meat, but there’s no doubt that you’re better able to tell whether the script works as a story than you are in the one-line version, or, possibly, in a hefty, complex fifty-page version.

Okay, what is it we look for when we read such a paragraph; which things tell us this is an exciting possibility? (One thing we won’t talk about is the film’s commercial potential; that’s something that depends on the place, the time, your position in the world of film, and a dozen other variables.) Does the story idea make you think it would be a good film? Why? The first thing I look for, whether in a student’s paragraph, a professional script that I read, or a book that I want to make into a film, is if the story has a strong beginning, middle, and end. It’s amazing how many stories don’t. And it’s amazing how many good writers claim that they know where something ends but don’t know where it begins, or vice versa. (Middles, for some reason, are easier to come by.) Like so much in this business, this way of looking at a story may seem simpleminded, but the beginning-middle-end analysis is a wonderful place to start. After all, a film that fizzles out into a mediocre ending won’t be satisfying to an audience; and a film that doesn’t have a satisfactory beginning won’t be satisfying either. What do I mean by a satisfactory beginning?

I want to make clear that this chapter is not a quickie course on screenwriting. We’re looking at things from a directorial point of view, not a screenwriter’s. So, what is it that you, as director, would put on the screen, and what just wouldn’t go?

You want a beginning in which the conflict or goals of the main characters are evident or, if not evident, at least hinted at. A film that does not establish at some early point who the characters are and what they are trying to achieve (or escape from), leaves us feeling uneasy. Which doesn’t mean, I hasten to say, that we need to have that all spelled out in embarrassing simplicity; when I say hinted at, I mean that a suggestion may well be enough and, indeed, is often very exciting and provocative. But we want to have an idea that the following questions can, soon, be answered: Who are they? Where are they going? Where do they want to go? What forces are preventing them from going? Do we know enough about them to (a) like them, (b) hate them, (c) fear them, or (d) find them intriguing and mysterious? This is a beginning.

We want an ending that satisfies. Sorry, I can’t define a good ending more than that. The likelihood is you’ll know a vapid or nonexistent ending when you read one.

And the middle? Although often overlooked, this is, after all, the substance of a story. Does your story leap from beginning to end without any interesting ups and downs in the center? Or is there a wonderful progression as it moves with its characters from one place to another, one problem to another? Do we feel we are coming to the end of the film only to have one more obstacle or one more achievement in our path? Along the way, do the characters grow or, if not, are we aware of the lack of growth which, by itself, becomes a dilemma to overcome?

It should be evident by now that all of this cannot be determined simply by a one-liner or, probably, even a paragraph. Hence the need, once a story intrigues you, to see it in an expanded form—the story of a one- or two-page length. Then, if you find that satisfying, move on to the treatment, whether it’s something you’re writing yourself or being supplied with. Here, every scene is spelled out, dialogue is hinted at, and the entire story is there for you to see. Problems will leap out at you, as will images that make you excited.

Finally, of course, in order to determine whether the story is something you want to film, a script is needed, with dialogue intact. And here, when someone moves from a treatment or dynamite story line to a script, many of us find ourselves disappointed. What was a wonderful treatment seems vapid now that the dialogue is in place. Or overwritten. Or clumsy. How do you know if the dialogue is any good? The first and simplest test is to read it aloud yourself. (Many beginning writers don’t do this—some claim they have a good inner ear. Others just don’t think of doing it—and many directors don’t either.) After that, if you’re ambivalent, get some friends who are actors to read through it. They’ll appreciate your interest in their talents and ideas. If, after that, you love it, fine, go ahead with whatever business steps you need to take—call your agent, sign the papers, make the film. But what if you still don’t know, or if you hate the dialogue? Is that the end of the project? To some extent, that depends on the reaction you’ve had to the rest of the film idea. Have you been wild about the story and a little discouraged with the dialogue? Or have you been so-so about the story and hated the dialogue? Or are you still puzzled about the dialogue, and think that with a little rewriting you can make it work? Or don’t you know? It’s with the last question that I want to deal. What makes good dialogue? What makes bad dialogue?

A line of dialogue needs to sound like it comes from the character who is saying it. That’s simple enough. It should, in other words, not sound like it could come from just any character; nor should all the characters sound alike. Dialogue helps distinguish one character from another, and different people obviously talk differently; yet how many scripts have people in them who, on paper, all sound alike? Dialogue should meet a number of other requirements as well:

Lines should not go on and on, stating every obvious fact that could be better shown with pictures. This is a well-known problem with American television, where the radio with pictures label is too often true.

Pauses should be spelled out. By which I mean that what the characters are doing in between lines should be felt in the dialogue, not just stated in screen directions.

We should feel in the dialogue that these are real people, not just narration lifted off the page. People should sound, sometimes, as if they have not listened with every part of their fiber to the other character but have actually had an interior life of their own going on. This is one of the most realistic things about Pinter’s dialogue when he writes for film. Characters are obviously dealing with a rich inner life. In fact, they often don’t respond to each other’s lines, sounding more as if they were two independent characters, alone in the same room, but not aware of it. (This can be amusing, annoying, or, as in Pinter’s writing, phenomenally realistic.)

And, of course, it’s more than nice if the writer shows a fine sense of wit, timing, intelligence, and character, all of which should leap out at you.

Lines that cover a whole page and leave no room for action should be suspect; but if someone writes a lengthy monologue that makes you jump out of your chair with excitement, you’ll probably find a way to make at least that speech work.

One of the most exciting kinds of scriptwriting is the kind that places us right in the midst of a scene. We see the lovers quarreling, but we don’t know why—yet. The scene has