© 2001 Christopher Lukas
All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention, Universal Copyright Convention, and Pan-American Copyright Convention. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.
05 04 03 02 01 5 4 3 2 1
Published by Allworth Press
An imprint of Allworth Communications
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Cover design by Leah Lococo
Interior design by Jennifer Moore, Leah Lococo, Ltd
Page composition/typography by Celine A. Brandes
ISBN: 1-58115-201-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Lukas, Christopher.
Directing for Film and Television/by Christopher Lukas.—Rev. ed.
p.cm.
ISBN: 1-58115-201-9
1. motion Pictures—Production and direction. 2.
Television—production and direction. I. Title.
PN1995.9.P7 L8 2001
791.43’0233—dc21
2001003241
For Susan, who may not understand what I do for a living, but knows all about me. And for Megan and Gabriela, who are the best a father could have.
Contents
Preface to the Revised Edition
How to Use This Book
A few pages explaining the approach of the book and how to get the most use out of it.
INTRODUCTION The “Mystique” XV
A discussion of the notion that directors are geniuses, born to the art; an unfruitful concept for the thousands who now practice the craft and the thousands more who aspire to it.
ONE Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic
How to read a prospective script and analyze it for shooting purposes. How to make budgetary decisions.
TWO The Team
The people a director works with and what their contemporary job functions are. How to find a comfortable relationship with members of the team.
THREE Casting
Nothing is more important than getting the right actors: where to find them, where to find “casting directors,” how to acquire the knack for spotting the right cast.
FOUR Getting Ready (I): Look, Style, and Mood
If you have a “look” in mind, you will need to know how to achieve it. If no such look is preconceived, this chapter will persuade you that one is necessary.
FIVE Getting Ready (II): Technical and Artistic Preparations
There is technical planning to do, there are locations to be scouted, and there are costumes and sets to be designed. Planning for stupidity and stupid planning.
SIX Getting Ready (III): Shots and Set-Ups
How to determine how many shots and “setups” will be used in your film, an exercise of great importance.
AN INTERMISSION: Some Thoughts about Time
SEVEN 3 Getting Ready (IV): When It All Goes Wrong
Murphy’s Law works in film and television with a vengeance. Crucial to the director’s training is how to deal with potential disasters.
EIGHT The Shoot
What actually happens from the first through the nth day of shooting. Momentum, pace, rhythm—all depend on you, the leader.
NINE The Digital Realm
What’s happening to make film and video look more alike, edit more alike; how this development helps the director.
TEN Postproduction
The postproduction “blues.” How to treat them with a good dose of sound effects, music, and a first-class editor.
ELEVEN The Print and the Film Laboratory
What you need to know about dealing with film laboratories.
TWELVE The Documentary: A Special Case
The ability to move about with portable cameras has made film and video documentaries more feasible. What is the role of the director on such projects? How do documentaries differ from dramatic films?
THIRTEEN Getting There
Some brief thoughts on how to become a director, on unions, and on nonunion directing.
AFTERWORD What Is a Director?
Some “philosophical” thoughts on this question, plus some hints on finding work.
Glossary
Selected Bibliography
About the Author
Index
Preface to the Revised Edition
It has been a decade and a half since this book was first published. In the years that have passed, there have been many advances in technology—many clever inventions, new film stocks, new video cameras, and editing equipment.
But even though film technology has changed immeasurably, filmmaking—which began over 100 years ago—has remained remarkably stable. While aesthetics and experimentation always take us into new artistic realms, if we look at motion pictures from the vantage point of the craft—the requirements for creating a good story, the teamwork needed to translate those stories into film form, and the ability to conceptualize in advance—things are not very different from the way they were at the beginning. The practice of creating fiction films and videos—and documentaries in any medium—reflects the hard-earned lessons of the early masters:
The ability to be a storyteller
A good eye and a good ear
Sensitivity to people’s needs
Some technical know-how
These are what make a good director.
For that reason, Directing for Film and Television remains a stable and, I believe, valuable guide to the craft. In it readers can descry the importance of learning how to:
Write a good story
Budget sensibly
Think about look, style, and mood
Make lighting suit that look, style, and mood
Decide which cameras and lenses to use
Accomplish competent casting
Work with other members of the team
This book is about how to conceive and tell stories, how to employ the tools of filmmaking in whichever format one chooses. That having been said, today’s filmmakers have one advantage over those of ten, twenty, and fifty years ago, an advantage that does require mention, and that led me to want to create a revised edition of Directing for Film and Television.
For most of the history of filmmaking there has been a huge gap between the professional and the amateur. In still photography, the introduction of Eastman’s Kodak camera and Land’s Polaroid closed the professional-amateur gap long ago. Only enhanced aesthetics and professional judgment keep the snapshot artist and the Magnum photographer apart.
Now, today, in filmmaking, the gap is also beginning to close. Equipment has gotten so small and so easy to use that amateurs and professionals are using cameras and edit systems that are remarkably similar. And while the craft of the professional filmmaker is still one that requires enormous amounts of expertise, judgment, and aesthetic ability, it is possible to make inexpensive films that can almost compete in quality with those made by Hollywood. Amateurs and professionals are closer together than ever before. It is this narrowing of the gap through technology that I address in a new chapter in this revised edition: chapter 9,“The Digital Realm.”
One caution: The snapshot that Uncle Ted takes at a family picnic is still just a snapshot, no matter how easy it is to use the camera. The work of a talented, seasoned director is still superior to that of the man or woman who picks up a camcorder for the first time. In short, mastering the craft of directing requires talent, luck, a lot of experience, and the willingness to learn. Which is why I wrote this book in the first place: to give willing learners a place to beg
in.
How to Use This Book
“You can’t learn directing, you have to do it; you certainly can’t read about it in a book!” is the way it usually goes, followed by, “Besides, no one can be a director unless he’s been an actor, editor, or writer first.” The first of these statements is something of a paradox. The other is somewhat arrogant. And both, ironically, are partially true.
Directing is a complex craft, a sometimes art that assumes a certain amount of maturity and knowledge on the practitioner’s part. It’s the work of men and women who have been in the world and who bring to a film their vision. You can’t teach “vision.” You do have to “get out” and make a film, not just read about it; and, probably, you have to participate in some other area of filmmaking first before you direct. In other words, the naysayers are right: if you, or anyone else who reads this book, think that simply by reading it you can become a director, you’re wrong. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some things about directing that can be learned by reading. The special relationship between the theory of any art or craft and the practice of it demands that some things be learned about and some things simply be done. In my view, it would be foolhardy to assume that the only way to acquire knowledge about directing is to “get out and do it,” especially since, in the world of film and television, getting out and directing is very expensive. (The exceptions-and there are always exceptions—are the “geniuses,” those who seem “born to the art.” Think of Hitchcock or George Lucas or Orson Welles. But look carefully: they usually surround themselves with skilled craftspeople with lots of experience. The Introduction looks at the “genius mystique.”)
This book is designed for a wide range of readers, for those who are “out there doing it” and for those who have yet to try. For instance, some of you may have made a stab at some aspects of filmmaking and have decided they weren’t for you. Perhaps you have been the producer of a film but didn’t like simply controlling the purse strings. Maybe others of you have written a short story and wonder how to get your written words transformed into pictures and sound. There may be those of you whose first efforts at directing didn’t work as well as you had hoped. Finally, there are some of you who have never approached the craft of filmmaking. In this book I hope all of you will find hints on how to make things move more smoothly, productively, and, perhaps, artistically.
Parts of this book explain how the professional, unionized world of directing works. For instance, chapter 2 and chapter 10 deal with large-scale productions in professional settings. On the other hand, some chapters, such as chapter 11, are deliberately keyed to independent, inexpensive productions. But most of the chapters approach directing from the point of view of craft, not of budget, from the assumption that there are certain things that have to be done by every director, regardless of the scale or cost of the production. Chapters 1, 3, and 8 fall into this category. If you read these chapters while you are actively studying film or making a film, I am confident that they can be of help to you. If, on the other hand, you wish to learn how things operate in Hollywood, the chapters on professional, large-scale operations will be of primary interest.
In other words, this book is intended to be used either as a manual, in which you can skip from one area to another, or, if you wish, as a book to be read from front to back. Afterward, you can experiment, enjoy yourself, make a film. Contrary to popular opinion, directing is not difficult. At this point I expect alarms to go off. “Not difficult! Does he think anyone can be a Fellini?” No, I don’t think just anyone can be a Fellini, but why does everyone have to be a Fellini?) In fact, it’s actually quite easy to direct, as long as you don’t try to get in over your head and as long as you don’t imagine that you can be a great director without a lot of work and talent. But . . . direct a film? Of course you can.
The most important thing a director needs to do is make choices. This is not too different from the most important thing a doctor or policeman has to do or a moral philosopher for that matter. But the choices that a director has to make require (1) a knowledge of certain physical and technical matters, and (2) the willingness and ability to make aesthetic decisions in a wide range of fields. It is this latter category that makes directing difficult at times (and easy at others), because the wide range of areas in which choices are necessary demands of the director a certain amount of education and knowledge, plus the ego strength to make decisions (choices) often and, occasionally, quickly or against the will of other people. (The word “director” itself implies leadership.) This book is intended to outline these required areas of knowledge, both technical and aesthetic, and to supply some basic information. What I cannot do is endow any human being with the ability to choose, much less choose well! That part is up to you.
A word about organization. The chapters that follow divide directing and its efforts into an almost sequential timeline, taking the director from his or her first glimpse of a film—the script or idea stage— through to the final print. Along the way, as the tension of getting the production under way mounts, I have tried to give hints on how to reduce the pressure. I also indicate shortcuts that are useful, and I show you how to know when you’ve gotten too far off the track.
Where I think it’s especially important, I detail some of the knowledge that is worth having in the area of camera work or lighting or laboratory technology, but I deal mostly with those things that a director needs to know in order to carry out his or her tasks, leaving instruction in “how the camera works” to other people and other books (see the selected bibliography).
By the way, in this book I have used the term television to mean single-camera videotaping. For me, this kind of video work has a close affinity to film camera work. I do not intend to defend this statement, and I am aware that many practitioners of both film and video will quarrel with it, but my experience over the past thirty years has allowed me to travel back and forth between single-camera video work and single-camera film work precisely because I bring to both the same kind of approach and craft. As technology in the video industry has leaped into the twenty-first century, improving and almost eliminating the gaps between film and professional-format video, it becomes easier to talk about single-camera work, no matter what the medium (film or videotape) as if they were one and the same. For the purposes of this book, I intend to do so; where there are significant differences, I will attempt to point them out.
How should you use this book? In many ways. But if “use” makes it sound as if this is a textbook, I would feel very badly. I don’t want readers to regard this effort as “instruction.” I mean it to be an enjoyable book, one that gives you a feel for the world of the director as well as giving you some hardcore help in entering that world. Please—read on and enjoy!
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 s
o 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.
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