Directing for Film and Television

by Christopher Lukas

  This is it. Your preparation time is over. You’ve selected a script, rewritten it, cast it, met with the proper teammates, chosen your look, mood, style, emotional content, and shots. You’ve had a rehearsal, and you’re ready to shoot. Well, not quite. In the next chapter, we take a look at the possibility that all this preparation is still not enough. You need to take into consideration that—well-prepared as you may be, or think you may be—all may not go quite as planned.

  But, first, it’s time for intermission while we change reels.

  AN INTERMISSION

  Some Thoughts about Time

  “HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME,” says the barkeep in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, but it could be a line from the daily life of any and all directors. From the moment you arise in the morning (early, on shoot days) to the moment you fall into bed, time is crucial.

  Overtime: After eight hours (or ten, depending on the contract) the crew gets paid time and a half for every hour it works. This adds up.

  Double time: After another eight hours without interruption, the crew gets double its original pay scale for every hour. This really adds up.

  Golden time: There are two kinds. The first is what happens to the pay scale after sixteen hours of straight work, when the pay is three hours for every hour worked. That adds up unbelievably fast! The second kind refers to the beautiful time of day when the sun is about to set, and everything is cast with a hue of the most splendid golden light; it’s a wonderful time to shoot. The problem with the second kind of golden time is that keeping a crew around just to film it can be very expensive, leading to the first kind of golden time.

  Lunch time: That’s after five hours of work, usually, and everyone welcomes it.

  Time to get to location: This is the time that production managers and producers worry about. How long will it take to get to the location site from the motel? Is the P.M. paying for too much travel time and too little work time?

  Rehearsal time: is something you probably won’t get without fighting hard for it.

  Time for “one more take”: Before lunch, before a coffee break, before the end of the day, before overtime, before golden time, there may be time for one more take.

  How much time will it take to build the sets? To get the costumes? To set up for lunch? To strike the sets? To take the costumes back? It’s all money.

  Ninety feet per minute, twenty-four frames per second—or, for 16mm film, thirty-six feet per minute, twenty-four frames per second. That’s time, too. The length of your film.

  Time pressure: The producer’s on your back to get more setups in each shooting day. Or to finish before the bad weather comes. Or before it costs too much money. Or before the actress has to go back to the Coast. Or—something else!

  Time before the rough cut will be ready: Time it takes to get the print out of the lab. Time the editors have been working already!

  “You’ve got five minutes before we have to break. Can you do it?” “You’ve got ten days for this film. Can you make it?”

  No time: For a makeup check before we do this take. For going to the bathroom. To take the actors aside and give them a pep talk. For fooling around!

  Wasted time: You sit and watch the grips walk in and look around, not sure where the first setup is because the D.P. or the A.D. or the P.M. didn’t tell them. You watch it take two hours for the first shot, when the last shot of the day is accomplished in twenty minutes. You listen as the A.D. tells a joke and wastes your precious time.

  HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

  12 In news interviews you sometimes see the shot jump a little as a portion of the interview filmed in one continuous shot, is eliminated.

  13 This “coverage” is different from the cover shots just described. It means all the shots you take to get a scene from a variety of angles and in a variety of sizes. It’s a crucial filmic concept: that you must cover every scene sufficiently to make editing possible later on.

  7

  Getting Ready (IV): When It All Goes Wrong

  It’s always good to be prepared for the worst. Here’s a selection of horrors.

  Your lead actor gets sick. The HMIs don’t arrive and are needed for your first shot. It rains. The producers say you’re overbudget and can’t allow you your extra day’s shoot. The carefully planned shot you spent so much time on doesn’t work, and the crew is waiting for your orders. An actor turns out to be half as capable as you thought he was, and twice as ornery. You can’t remember what you wanted to shoot in this far corner of the cottage you’ve all hiked to. The video monitor goes out and no one can fix it. Everything’s going very slowly today and you’re not going to get to rehearse anything. The dolly was supposed to hold the video camera you rented, but it doesn’t, and you’re already halfway to location.

  All of these examples make it clear that Murphy’s Law operates with a vengeance in film and television. During the weeks and months prior to a shoot, everyone begins to believe that things will go as planned. When they don’t, some directors go crazy. This chapter is about some of the disasters that could happen, and also about preparing yourself to deal with them and others like them. Knowing about disasters that may occur tomorrow allows you to prepare for them today, when you’re not under so much pressure. But this chapter is also a potpourri of suggestions for ways to organize, to be ready for any kind of shoot, whether it goes smoothly or over a rocky road.

  Let’s take things one at a time and see if we can find a way around some of these problems.

  Your lead actor gets sick. The solution depends on when it happens. If it’s before the shoot, you may have time to recast. Did you keep your notes on your casting readings? Can you remember who your second choice was? If you don’t want to recast, ask the producer to postpone the shoot. He should have insurance that will cover the costs. If this happens during the shoot and you’ve shot scenes with the lead actor already, you’ll have to postpone the shoot or “shoot around the character,” a phrase denoting filming scenes that the A.D. has planned to be shot without actors or without that particular actor. This is one of the reasons it pays to have that shot list we talked about in chapter 6.

  The HMIs don’t arrive. Here you are in the big crowd scene—the one that takes place with dozens of extras in bright sunlight. Without those lamps, you can’t shoot. Period. This is your producer’s problem, or your P.M.’s, but it can also affect you because your shooting schedule is limited by the money your producer has to spend. Again, if you have thought through your shooting plan for the day, you may be able to do a lot of close-ups, using alternate lighting instruments, without needing the “firepower” of the HMIs. Ask your D.P. Between him and the gaffer, you may be able to concoct a half day’s shoot of just close-ups. If possible, use your extras14 some part of the day, so they won’t get bored from standing around. Inform your P.M. of your plans as soon as you can, so he or she can get things rolling. Don’t wait for your production manager to tell you what to shoot; keep the creative initiative in your camp. And, above all, don’t panic. They’re only a couple of big lights.

  Rain. If it starts raining in the middle of the night, your P.M. or your first A.D. will take care of things, letting everyone know which “cover set” (meaning what has already been planned for use in case of bad weather) is to be used. If it rains while you are on location, a lot will depend on the sound problems and the lights you have available. If all the shots were to be outdoors in the sun, sit down and use the time to work on tomorrow’s script. But you just might think of what would happen if that particular scene were shot in the rain. Does it have to match any other scene (you know, a character walks out of the rain and into a scene that’s already been shot when she was bone dry), or can it stand alone? You might have a very interesting scene if it were shot in the rain, and you could never repeat it again if you tried. In Hollywood, it costs a lot of money to order rain!

  The producers say you’re out of dough and can’t allow you your extra day’s shoot. First of all, this ra
rely happens like that. You usually get more notice. Secondly, there are few producers who are so ruthless they just tell you that’s it, without giving you their suggestion as to what you can cut. But—assuming the worst—there are a number of things you can do to prepare for this kind of eventuality: (1) Make sure important scenes aren’t held to the last few days of a shoot. (2) Think in advance of what you would cut (that is, not shoot at all) if you had to. This isn’t easy, but it’s a marvelous exercise back at the script rewrite stage. It helps sharpen your idea of what’s crucial to the script, and it is also important in an eventuality such as this. What will happen to you, if you’re skillful and lucky, is that you will find some shots or even a scene that can be eliminated; you will bargain with the producer, ask for another half a day, and come in looking like a hero or heroine. If you’re unlucky, and have left things to too late, then you may have to “save it in the cutting room” or wait until the producer solves the problem for you. At any rate, as you will see in chapter 10, there are all sorts of problems that you didn’t know about that get solved in post-production. At least this one you know about now, as terrible as it is.

  That carefully planned shot doesn’t work and the crew is waiting not so patiently for your orders. Of all the complaints leveled against directors, none strikes home so much as the one that goes, “He wasn’t organized. We had to sit around all day waiting for him.” Organization is important, but so is creativity, and, in the end, that may override the simple ability to organize. What organization does give you is the ability to plan your scenes and your shots, and the knowledge of how things fit together: close shots, wide shots, dolly shots, process shots, and so on. It also allows you to know, in advance, everything you’re going to do; and it gives you that nice long list (that you tuck into your script and your briefcase and your spare pants) with dozens of shots that can be picked up when time allows. But what organization does not give you is the certainty that a shot will work.

  Let’s say you’re on location and you’ve planned a tracking shot up a hillside, with your two main actors meeting the dolly halfway, then moving out to a barn in the distance, and the dolly moves with them. This is an important shot because it gives the audience the emotional attachment to the couple they need to care passionately about if, say, one dies in the end. Now, for some aesthetic or technical reason, it just doesn’t work. No matter how organized you are, it’s your ability to think on your feet that will stand you in good stead here. It’s your understanding of the meaning of the scene, what is needed for conveying that meaning, and the alternative shots that can be used. But here you are on location, where everything looks different. Silly things like the height of your actors, the color of the sky, and your memory of the scene can interfere with doing the shot the way you wanted; it doesn’t just have to be problems with the dolly. Walk away from everyone. Take your time. What may seem like hours to the crew may only be minutes. It’s your film, your shot. Recompose things and forget about what people say. If you are truly organized and truly creative then it doesn’t matter how impatient your crew gets. What is crucial is that you not lose an important scene because something didn’t go right. Of course, the more you’ve planned alternative shots in advance, and the more you’ve thought about potential disasters, the better off you are.

  That actor isn’t half as capable as you thought, but he is twice as ornery. This is not as rare a circumstance as you might imagine. It’s also one of the cases where an immediate discussion with your teammates can pay off. You’ve been to the dailies, and you and your producer have seen the scenes that don’t work. Ask the producer what he or she thinks. Any suggestions as to what you should do? If it’s the acting ability that’s at stake here and not your directorial capability, then you and the producer share equal blame (you cast it together) and should share responsibility for solving the problem.

  Solutions? You might cut some of the lines and some of the scenes for that actor, shifting them to others. As for the orneriness, have the producer talk to the actor’s agent. That often straightens things out. If it’s a low-budget production and you’re in charge of everything, take the actor aside and ask him if something is getting in the way of your relationship. This may not work if the actor is aware that his performance is terrible and he’s being difficult because of that awareness, but it just might. Of course, if the actor is an important character, you do have some scenes that can’t be cut. Think about the script. Is it possible to “play” more of the scenes off the leading lady, or off a subsidiary character, to use more reaction shots when you edit? Finally, stop thinking of the actor as a trained performer, and think of him as either an amateur or a student. Treat him that way, with the kind of helpful hints and techniques used for students. (Remember, I suggested that training as an actor yourself was useful?) It may all come to naught, but at least you weren’t sitting on your hands. It’s interesting, though, that almost any other problem can be solved except bad acting, which is why casting is generally thought to be such an important part of doing a film.

  The video monitor blows. This situation is symptomatic of any one of the more than two hundred electronic or mechanical problems that can arise on a shoot. Some of them simply require that everyone sit down very patiently and wait until a magician-technician solves it. But even that time can be used fruitfully. In chapter 5 I said that you might end up not having any rehearsal time because so many productions are short on the money that rehearsals require. Well, now is a wonderful time to rehearse. The actors are here, the crew is here, everyone’s being paid while some monstrous electronic failure occurs. Use the time for rehearsal.

  In actual fact, the particular electronic gremlin I chose to use in this paragraph is not so monstrous. You can do without the monitor. Why? Because in the old days they didn’t have “video assist” (the video monitor that is tied in to the film camera so a director can see exactly what the camera sees during the take and in replay). A director had to trust that the cameraman and DP were right that the take was okay technically, and a director had to trust his or her own instinct that the acting was good. No replay. Only retakes. And in video, many of the early news and documentary shoots were carried on without monitors because they were too cumbersome to bring. Directors watched the playback in the eyepiece of the camera, and while I think every video director should watch the scene on a monitor, when the monitor goes out, it’s not a disaster. Trust your crew, trust your instincts, and watch the replay in the eyepiece. Inconvenient? Sure, but it’s not a disaster.

  Everything is going slowly, making it impossible for you to get to rehearse anything. Well, you didn’t expect rehearsals anyhow, did you? Just a reading and a quiet run-through prior to the camera crew. Now here come the producer and the P.M., telling you that there just isn’t enough time because someone else screwed up. All right, joking aside, what’s happened is that because of some technical matters or because makeup took too long, you’re going to have to take this scene without rehearsal. What do you do?

  If you can’t rehearse . . .

  First, you alert your actors.

  Second, use your camera rehearsal—that time normally reserved for the technical team to get things right—to run your actors through their lines. Normally, actors “walk through” camera rehearsals, because they’re stop-and-go sorts of things. Have the cast on their toes for this one.

  Third, be alert for lighting changes. Almost every scene has to have its lighting corrected once the camera has “run” it. Use this time for a bona fide rehearsal off the set. And, once you’re back on set, don’t let makeup and hair, gaffers and grips get in the way. Run the scene once again.

  Finally, be aware that the first time through a scene is normally a “rehearsal” anyhow. No one really expects you to do a take that can be used the first time you “run” a scene with everything in place. So, there you are: “no rehearsals,” but you slipped three or four in, didn’t you?

  The pacing seems wrong and you can’t verify thi
s with your editor. Why should the pacing be wrong, and why can’t you tell? This involves something we only touched on before: the fact that all your shooting will be “out of sequence.” This means, in the simplest terms, that for logistical reasons, scenes are shot when they best suit your camera, your lighting, your A.D., your P.M., and your producer, but not you or your actors. Of course, some of this makes basic sense; you shoot all the shots inside Set One before moving on to Set Two; you shoot shots pointing in one direction before moving all the lights and shooting in another direction—within reason. But the result of this is that you will shoot Scene 6a and then not shoot Scene 6b until three days later. The actors can’t remember what they were doing in 6a and neither can you. How fast were they walking when they left Scene 6a for the outdoor scene in 6b? Were their hats in their left hands? How fast were they talking? To whom?

  Pace is an all-important item. You will have thought about it often during your plotting of the shoot. The first time was when you were working on the length of scenes and the appropriateness of dialogue in your script. You will have thought out how your cast would read the scenes. Were they fast, slow, with a change of pace in the middle? Why that pace and not another? Once you set the pace within a scene, then you will want to establish pace between scenes. If all scenes are the same length and the same speed of playing, your audience will become quickly bored. Scenes that abut each other demand a different pace. Comedy demands one kind of pace, mystery another. But when did you establish with the actors this mystical “pace”? During rehearsal, of course. It is important that the pace within scenes be maintained. You can imagine how strange it would be for a close shot to be played at three-fourths the speed of the master. This reduces your options for editing and can make the scenes seem jerky. For the most part, like a good conductor, your internal rhythmic sense or memory, and that of your actors, will hold you in good stead. If not, talk to others on the set.