Screen Direction

“people want to work faster or show that they can use less light, but they don’t look for the proper light the scene needs. That isn’t cinematography, that’s recording an image. … I was never happy in any set to just see available light,” said Storaro, who has won Oscars for Apocalypse Now, Reds and The Last Emperor.

DM: The way I generally work is that I do try to leave as many decisions as I possibly can to the day of, because it feels like that’s where you’re most in tune to what’s going on. I sort of feel like my job is to be a conduit to opportunities, to maximize the creativity of the day itself—because that’s when the cameras are running. That’s the important thing to me. Some of these shots you need to think about it advance; you need to have some ideas for them. And some of them are things where you just go, “Well, let’s try that.” As I get more confident as a filmmaker, I don’t need to prepare so much in advance. I can trust that I and my team can come up with a solution.

I’ve received two simple pieces from Bob Zemeckis. One aspect of a scene was technically stuck on something that wasn’t working quite right. These simple words from Bob inspired us to re-focus, and get past our roadblock: “Progress, not perfection.” Late one night, I was fretting about the fact that a show has been jolted in to a bit of a chaotic state. His words, which totally put me back on track to push though the tough times, were: “If there’s one thing I know is true, it’s that all great art comes from chaos.”

I was doing a presentation on Body of Lies for the Directors Guild, and Ridley Scott and I recorded a video to play during the presentation as he couldn’t attend due to his schedule. He was asked is there any advice that he would give someone who walks onto his set. He said, “be transparent, tell the truth.” It may seem simple and obvious, but people tend to tell director what they think he/she wants to hear and directors often don’t appreciate that.

Some first time directors fear that their films will lack creative spontaneity if they over-prepare and don’t leave enough room to “find it on set”. But this notion really couldn’t be further from the truth. The more you prepare, the more efficient you will be on set, and the more time you’ll have to experiment with new ideas and allow some serendipitous moments to happen. Without preparation, all your time on set will be eaten up by trouble shooting.

“Let’s just make it the best we can.” That doesn’t mean making it better or avoiding how others have done it because, let’s face it, battles have been done every which way. It just means understanding the story and trying to service it the best way you can for the money and time you have. Most of all, it means choosing a point of view.

I think Spielberg’s phrase “pull it off” says it all. That’s exactly what a producer is asking himself when he sizes up a director. Can she pull it off? And if your gut tells you no, then you damn well don’t give her millions of dollars to make a movie. But what we’ve learned from the blind auditions in the orchestras is that, in some cases, she could pull it off and your gut is likely to underestimate her ability.

I was taking all these lessons, not from the result because you don’t learn from the result, but from the process: What did I not do in pre-production, what did I not do in production, what did I do in post and editing.

Unlike male directors who are allowed a flop or two, female filmmakers are held to a higher standard, she quickly found.

“Sometimes having momentum is what gets your movie made. You start getting people excited about it. This is happening. ‘I’ve got this actor, this is when the weather is happening.’ You want to keep that momentum going or else it slows down and then it never gets made,” she explained.

To attract other actors to the project, Hardwicke created a look book for each of the film’s key roles so that even the smaller characters would be interesting to play. “Let’s infuse each character with personality, specificity,” said Hardwicke.