This is a guide for anyone who wants to do what we do: direct television and film. It is a clear, concise approach to the craft that fulfills us artistically and pays us handsomely for our expertise.
We direct narrative (nonreality) primetime network episode and television movies. That is, we direct dramas and single-camera comedies using the same process that Steven Spielberg (or any other movie director) uses. We are filmmakers. We tell stories. We just have less time and less money than a feature director. We direct shows seen by perhaps ten million people at one time.
When either of us directs a network television show, we are the fulcrum upon which balances the efforts of roughly 200 people and a budget that can be as much as $3 million to $5 million dollars. It’s a powerful, creative, and complicated job. We want to examine the requirements of this job and tell you how to do it well. We don’t want you to be just a good director; we want you to be a great one!
So what makes one director better than another? Being a director can absolutely be done with no experience and no training, but like anything else, the more knowledge and practice you have, the better you’ll be at it.
But it’s more than that. There is an esoteric quality, an almost indescribable way of being that often distinguishes the excellent director from the merely good one. And what is even more astonishing about this “x” factor is that the job of the director is a multitasking one that requires many different skill sets, from knowing how to communicate with actors, to understanding the physical requirements for accomplishing a shot, to editing the final product perfectly.
So what is this “something” a true director has? It is an ability to both have a vision and lead others to help you create it. That is, a director is first and foremost a leader—a Moses, if you will, that leads a motley group toward the promised land of a successful project: one that creatively expresses the ideas of the script in the fullest way possible. It’s a big job, challenging and exciting, different every day, requiring someone who deals easily with stress and pressure, someone who is physically robust and healthy, and most important, someone who can see how the written word can be interpreted on film.
So there it is. The short list of what a great director is:
1. A leader
2. With creative vision
3. Who understands and can execute the craft, and
4. Who can physically and mentally handle the demands of the job.
Most of Directors Tell the Story: Master the Craft of Television and Film Directing deals with creative vision and executing the craft to fulfill that vision. What first separates the good director from the great director is the creative vision, because without that, you’re just a technician.
Before you can direct, you must have a story that you want to tell. In our case, as TV directors, we are given a script—a written story that we translate into the visual medium. The artistry of the director begins with interpreting the script. We are storytellers, inheritors of the tradition of telling tales around a campfire. We have to figure out what each scene really means, how each scene contributes to telling the whole story, and then design how to communicate that visually.
So how does a director fulfill creative vision? A great director:
1. Interprets the script
2. Chooses every element within the frame
3. Shapes the actors’ performances
4. Tells the story with the camera.
Did you notice, as we described each aspect, that they all begin with a verb? We interpret, we choose, we shape, we tell. It’s an active job. It requires decision making. It requires action. We’ll talk much more about this in the book, but for now, we want you to realize that to be a director with creative vision, you must act on that vision.
To give you an idea of how we do that, we’ll break the process down to the three stages that every single director goes through in order to produce an episode of television or a movie:
1. Prep
2. Shoot
3. Post.
These stages are our first three sections of the book. In the preparation stage, you’ll learn how to make choices that will appear in the film, from casting to production design and shot listing. In the section on production, we show you how the director guides a huge number of people toward the realization of his or her creative vision. (But that’s the last time we say it that way. From here on, those pronouns will be used interchangeably.) In postproduction, you’ll see how those efforts are put together into one cohesive story told in the director’s unique way.
After you understand the demands and complexities of this job, we discuss in the final section what is required for leadership and what kind of shape, both physical and mental, that you have to be in to actually do the job.
We use our experience teaching master classes in directing and acting to explain what we want you to learn in small instructional units. We’ll give you directing exercises to assist you in mastering your skills. Because we both write as well as direct, we have included original scenes with which you can practice.
In addition, we’ll boldface lingo we think you should have at your fingertips and list these vocabulary words at the end of each chapter. We even ask our colleagues who are in the trenches with us to share their wealth of information in our bonus Insider Info boxes.
For a final piece of inspiration, we tell you how we got our first jobs and suggest ways you might get yours. And as an added bonus, we ask 15 of our colleagues to share their How I Got My First Directing Job stories as well.
So let’s dive into Directors Tell the Story: Master the Craft of Television and Film Directing.