First Time Director. Gil Bettman
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(Although a producer from the Philippines once asked me to direct a feature for him in 12 days, working 20 hours a day.) But what I love about that T-shirt is the attitude behind it. To me it says that if you want to make movies, you have got to be willing to sacrifice in some way to get the job done right.
The director sets the tone of the workplace. Stay positive, because you are going to need every bit of optimism to make it through the battle ahead. Be your own best cheerleader. Exude confidence. Take all the positive energy film people bring to the workplace and jack it up even higher. There is no such thing as going into production with too much hope and optimism. You want to plan for every contingency, but you had best go in feeling like a winner.
Bridge an the
DecisionsAlec Guiness! Decisions!
Throughout the preproduction period you are going to have to make dozens of decisions every day. This book is not going to take you through all those decisions, because my experience has convinced me that anyone smart and capable enough to get themselves hired as a director can make all the decisions he needs to make in preproduction simply by relying on good taste, reason, and common sense. If you have the force of personality and the poise to get hired as a director, you ought to be capable of vamping convincingly whenever called upon to make a decision that you are incapable of making because you lack some piece of hard knowledge or technical expertise. Whenever such a moment arises, every director has the prerogative to put the decision off until tomorrow, think about it, and come back with the answer. Take advantage of that prerogative; get a reprieve until tomorrow, and then simply get on the phone and download the missing bit of expertise from a friend or an associate who is knowledgeable in the field. This method has never failed me either in preproduction or postproduction because in either, you should have the right to put any decision off until tomorrow. Once on the set, there is no tomorrow.
Yet it is wise to anticipate such occasions. If you are going to direct a film which relies heavily on some realm of filmmaking that you are new to — whether it's something as old hat as song and dance numbers or stunts, or something as cutting edge as 3-D CGI graphics — then before you ever set foot in the office, study the nuts and bolts of that process so you can walk the walk and talk the talk. Most of these specialty realms of filmmaking are best learned through observation. Get hold of a director who is in the middle of doing a stunt film or a film that's heavy on CGI and tag around after him for as many days as possible.
You are not actually expected to know everything going in. Everyone — both the money people and your minions — would certainly prefer that you did, because it would take the burden off them. If anything goes wrong, there will always be someone to blame: you. The general assumption is that you are so smart and such a fast learner, you will pick up everything you need to know in a couple of days, if not a couple of hours. This position presumes a great deal, but such is the burden of a director. Bob Zemeckis (whom I will quote throughout this book, since I know him well and I think he can safely be cited as an authority on directing) has a saying: “The director is responsible for everything, even that which he has no control over.” Again, the beauty of the saying lies in the figurative interpretation — the attitude. It challenges the director to step up to and face his burden. If you want to be king, and have everyone look up to you and obey you as if you were a god, then you had best seem to have the power of a god. The director should never be heard laying blame or making excuses. It is not his place. He should have anticipated everything and made all the right decisions. Even if disaster befalls him, he should have had a back-up plan that saves the day. If everything comes up lemons, he makes lemonade. If the situation was truly beyond his control, it's not for him to say. His collaborators should be the ones to step in and let him off the hook.
Work, Work, Work
For a first time director, this burden of appearing infallible is even greater. Without the mandate of a proven track record, he is going to have to work that much harder to instill confidence in everyone around him. Yes, you may not be expected to know everything going in, but from the minute you land your first directing gig until the minute you step on the set, you should do all in your power to prepare yourself to make every one of your decisions well-informed. There is an old Hollywood saying which best expresses the logic behind overestimating what is expected of you as a first time director: “You are only given a couple of chits in this business. You've got to make every one of them count.” You've had to chew glass to get this first directing gig, so make it count. Prepare and then prepare some more. There is no such thing as being over-prepared.
As I pointed out in the preface, because you are not, as yet, a bankable director, your breakthrough directing gig is going to inevitably be a day late and a dollar short. The bean counters are going to force you to make do with a little less of everything, and that includes preproduction time. None of your principal collaborators or the crew will be put on salary until the last possible minute. This means that you, as well as all your staff, are not going to have enough time to adequately prepare before you start shooting. Since the director is responsible for everything, you, all by yourself, will have to compensate for the fact that your support staff are going to be flying along by the seats of their pants. The only way to do this is to work tirelessly day and night, weekends and weekdays, from the moment you even think that you might land this directing job until the first day of shooting.
Even though you are actually starting too late when you first come on board as the director, the start of principal photography will seem to be an eternity in the future. The natural inclination will be to put off making final decisions. Don't. Start nailing anything down, provided it won't cost you real money if in the end it does no Because more than anything else,t come to pass. Half of what you nail down will have to be ripped out, but half will stay. As the start of production nears, and it seems as if almost every important decision has been left until the last moment, you will be very glad that you finalized any chunk of business early on.
Filmmaking is a collaborative art. So it follows logically that in filmmaking, relationships are everything. Some of the most crucial relationships for a first time director are with those individuals who precede him onto the project. Generally speaking, the producer, if he is not going to act as his own line producer, will hire a line producer and perhaps even a Unit Production Manager (a UPM) before he hires a director — if he's smart. Why? Because more than anything else, the producer wants the line producer and the UPM to make the movie for the money in the budget, and to squeeze the most out of every dollar in the pot. The line producer and the UPM are the budget watchdogs. They are in charge of the money side of the film. (Ideally, you are in charge of the creative side.) It is impossible for them to do their job well unless you cooperate with them. If you are too artistically inclined to respect the constraints of the budget, theirs is a lost cause. The only way they can relax and do their jobs well is if they can trust you to be the kind of director who can fit the square peg in the square hole — who can make the movie for the money he is given.
I have always found that those who are just expeditors — namely the line producer and the UPM — will not venture into your territory and impinge on your creativity, if you do not venture into their territory and impinge on their efforts to stay within the budget. And the converse of this axiom is also true. If you seem to put your creativity ahead of their budget, then they will put their budget ahead of your creativity. Avoid this situation at all costs. Their reputations — their ability to get hired and rehired on a regular basis — are almost solely dependent on their ability to bring the movie in on budget. It is human nature that they will strive to preserve that reputation at all costs. Sure, they want to make a well reviewed, well received film. But more than that, they want to work again. Beware! If, in the course of trying to realize your artistic aspirations, you threaten their budget, then you threaten their very livelihood.
Many first time directors, myself included, are determined from the day they are hired to make a film that is so amazing, so stellar, so earth-shattering in its brilliance, it will immediately catapult them into the top tier of living directors. That is an admirable ambition and one that the first time director should hang onto it with all his might. He will need that purpose to power himself over some of the huge obstacles he is going to encounter on the road to making a film which succeeds just enough to get him hired