Q: This is a show with such a specific visual language. How did you get up to speed on the cinematic grammar of Better Call Saul? A - Andrew Stanton: “I don't know what other directors do. I haven't really talked shop, though I certainly probably will over time. But for me, what I do, is that if I'm lucky and it's an established show and they've found their language, is I watch the previous season without the sound on so I don't get distracted by actually getting caught up in the story. If they've done a really good job, I'll just keep getting caught up in the story, and I want to see what they're doing and not doing with the camera and the lighting and the staging.
“This is a horrible simplification, but if you're comparing the last two jobs I've done: Stranger Things is very much out of the playbook of Spielberg and Cameron, while when you look at Saul, from my reference, it was out of Kubrick. It was still cameras, not a lot a lot of crazy movement, and really cool graphic shots, trusting the things that were happening in the shot and not feeling like you had to be fancy in any way. They love wide angles. They love to find interesting ways to look at something that might otherwise be boring in somebody else's hands, and I'm always appreciative of that. It's never gratuitous. The thing that blew me away and made me giddy was it's all in their scripts. They really dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t.’ They understand their characters and everything that's changing to a microscopic level, and it's awesome.
Q: When you say it's all in the script, how much of the visual storytelling is on the page, and where do you have the ability to improvise? A: Well, they're not telling you how to frame things. They're just telling you what's important about the visual. It's all storytelling. You're just following the narrative, and they're very clear about why and where they're focusing their attention, but they're not going to tell you how to focus. So how you decide to introduce two houses inside a giant warehouse? It's up to me. You like to give coverage, because at the end of the day it's their show and you want them to be happy with the work. So in the best scenario, they like the cut of what you've chosen. Then in the next best scenario, they like something else you've chosen, but they've just picked another angle. It's kinda left up to you to decide how you'd want to dramatize this visually. I don't want to use the word "easy," but it's so comfortable because you know you're in good hands and you just know you're telling a very strong story, so it leaves room in your brain that might be, in weaker material, just trying to figure out how to tell the story at all, and you can spend more of your brainpower toward how best to tell it.
– from Finding Nemo Director Andrew Stanton's 'Better Call Saul' Debut Goes Dark (Literally) by Dan Fienberg, THR
