First Time Director. Gil Bettman
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this towering desire to become the next Spielberg or Tarantino is that it becomes so overpowering, the first time director is ready to sacrifice anything and everything to make it happen, including the budget which the line producer and the UPM hand him when he comes in for his first day of work. He does so at his own peril.
The first budget and schedule that come out in preproduction are never the last. Everything constantly changes throughout the preproduction period because you keep revising your game plan. The day-out-of-days changes, the schedule changes, and the construction costs go up and down as shoot days on practical locations are swapped with work to be done on sound stages. If you have inadvertently put the line producer or the UPM in an adversarial position, the next time they revise the budget and the schedule they will give you less of all that you wanted more of. And if you fight back, the next time you will get even less. If you keep it up, when you start shooting, they are going to be breathing down your neck. They will force your first assistant director (1st AD) to work against you, instead of for you. They will consult with you about your production needs in a cursory way or, even worse, they will start dictating to you what they are going to dole out in time, money, and material. This attitude will keep you from making the film you want to make. Whatever they unilaterally decide to give you will in fact not really be tailored to what you actually need to realize your vision. So, in the end, you will be able to do less artistically.
From the day you start to work, show the utmost respect for the budget. Study the budget and the schedule in the form that relates most directly to you: the production board. If you do not understand how to read “the board,” talk to a director friend who is an expert, and learn how — immediately. It is boring work, not very glamorous, but you have got to do it if you want to realize your vision. Unless you are a science nerd or a policy wonk, the budget and, to a lesser extent, the “one-line” schedule, will confuse you a little. When you get confused, take notes and then ask the line producer or the UPM to explain whatever you don't understand. Let them clarify the logic of the way they have structured their guidelines. Everybody likes to talk about what they do best, so by asking these questions you ingratiate yourself with these key players. More importantly, you give them the impression that you are the kind of director who will tailor his artistic vision so that it can be realized for the money in the budget.
If you have nurtured these key relationships throughout preproduction, then when you start shooting, the line producer and the UPM will feel that they can take you at your word. You have done yourself a huge favor. If they trust you, they will give you enough slack in the reins so that, when disaster strikes (as it inevitably will), you have enough room to wriggle out of trouble. If they don't trust you, they'll keep you on a short leash and when disaster strikes, they will limit your options for rectifying the problem; your chances of recovering successfully will be compromised. You will end up even more over budget, as well as less successful in realizing your artistic vision, than if you had been allowed the freedom to create your own solutions.
When I was fresh out of UCLA film school and working at Universal Studios as an associate producer on McCloud — certain that any day I would get a break and be tapped to direct an episode of Marcus Welby, M.D., like the great Spielberg or the lesser known Randal Kleiser (who went on to direct Grease and have a long and successful career as a feature director) before me — if I had read any of the above, I probably would have rejected it all as overly cautious and artistically unambitious. At that time, I remember I had once heard it said, “The only reason a director gets fired off a picture is if his dailies aren't good enough.” I think whoever made this point to me backed it up by noting that Spielberg, who had just finished shooting Jaws, had spent 120 days and some astronomical amount (at the time), like $10 million, to complete the picture — even though the initial schedule and budget gave him 60 days and half the money. Whoever was watching the dailies, probably Sid Sheinberg and Lew Wasserman, had loved every day of them, and wisely decided to let Spielberg finish the picture at his own pace, spending whatever it cost to get it done the way he wanted. Young and arrogant as I was, I was inclined to believe that the best way to catapult myself into the top tier of working directors was to shoot artistically or technologically inspired footage on my breakthrough directing job (whenever it came along) and trust that the producer, the studio, and whoever was paying the bills and could fire me, would be so impressed with my directorial virtuosity, they would let me complete the picture — no matter what it cost.
Any first time director who thinks he can get away with this kind of fiscal irresponsibility on his breakthrough directing gig is going to be digging himself an early grave. Jaws was not, by any means, Spielberg's first directing job. He got his break on the TV show Night Gallery. After that, he directed a special episode of the fore-mentioned Welby, an episode of Columbo, and another half dozen episodes for Universal Television. He was a “very good boy” and did all these shows on schedule and for the budget. But the directing job which made almost everyone stand up and take notice and say, “This kid is a director, a talent!” was the TV movie Duel, starring Dennis Weaver. With Duel, Spielberg established that the innovative way he set up and moved his camera enabled him to make cinema, in general, and action, in particular, more visually dynamic, more hard-hitting and suspenseful than it had ever been done before. He also shot Duel on a shoestring budget in record time. All of the old studio hands, the UPMs and the line producers whom I later worked with as a director on BJ and the Bear and Knight Rider, could not stop marveling at how he had gone to the Mojave desert with a scaled down crew made up of a bunch of journeymen Hollywood technicians and come back, in something like 15 days, with an undeniably brilliant film in the can. Yet his earlier success on Welby, Night Gallery, and the other episodic TV shows were the priceless chits with which he had built up enough credibility as a director. By the time he took on Jaws, he was the hot young thing. It had become accepted that he could take a script and turn it into a blockbuster piece of entertainment. So he went ahead and blew his budget on Jaws and survived to work another day, but only because he had already broken through and established himself as a bankable director.
I cannot think of a single name director in Hollywood who was not a model of fiscal propriety on his breakthrough gig. Even those who, as their directing careers progressed, became notorious for always falling behind schedule and going over budget — such as James Cameron, Francis Coppola, or Stanley Kubrick — all, when they were young and starting out, played by the budgetary rules. Cameron did it on Piranha and again on Terminator. Coppola did it on Finian's Rainbow. Kubrick did it on The Killing and Paths of Glory.
There is another path. Many directors of note were chosen to direct their breakthrough films the same way that Napoleon became the Emperor of the French Republic — they anointed themselves. They actually had more of a right than Napoleon, because, unlike the French Emperor, their breakthrough films never would have happened if they had not made them happen by raising the money themselves. In most cases, they also wrote the script (which is another way in which they made the film happen). This cadre of directors includes almost all of those who are thought of as independent and artistically gifted and inclined: Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, John Sayles, Robert Townsend, the Coen brothers, Doug Liman, Whit Stillman, Neil LaBute, Robert Rodriquez, Kevin Smith, Todd Solondz, John Paul Anderson, and whoever else is going to break through this year at Sundance.
Generally speaking, these directors were the producers of their own first films and so were the power behind their own thrones. In most cases they hired all the production staff — the line producer, the UPM, and the 1st AD — and worked together with all of them to craft the budget. These circumstances made it unnecessary for them to forge a successful working relationship with the budget watchdogs. In reality, they had to act as their own budget watchdog. If they had gotten careless and spent too much money on the first half of their film, there would not have been enough money to finish. If the film had not been finished, it never would have made its way into a festival, never would have won a prize, never garnered glowing reviews, and never been distributed in theaters. In short, it would not have done what it was intended to do: launch that director's career. Instead, it would have ended up being an exercise in futility.
With this sword hanging over their heads, most of these gifted