Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1062452
22 DGA QUARTERLY FOCUS every line of dialogue, I'm able to be nimble and adapt with the scripts and the moments. I never have to question what I'm doing as I'm directing the actors or going through the scenes. [With Homecoming], I couldn't spend a lot of time in the writers' room because I was shooting season three of Mr. Robot. I was mostly reacting to drafts and giving notes on that. In general, I'd rather be a lot more inti- mate with the writing as I direct. How do you help the cast know where they are in a given scene when you are shooting multiple episodes and time- lines in a single day? One thing that we do [on Mr. Robot] is a binge- table read. We spend two days [reading scripts from] the whole season. A few weeks before we start shooting, I sit down with every actor, go over their arc and answer any questions they might have. That's because when we get to set, it gets a little crazy. We did that on [Homecoming] too. It was especially important because Julia was con- stantly jumping between two different time- lines (2018 and, four years later, in 2022). Not only were we jumping between episodes, she was essentially playing two different charac- ters and two different sets of memories. The table read was critical and helped ground ev- eryone in terms of their arc. What kind of cameras did you use and why? We really wanted to control the tone that I wanted, again, to hearken back to the classic thrillers. So we used the Panasonic DXL 2 with custom-made Panasonic lenses. They have this kind of earthy, desaturated quality to them that had that vibe we were looking for. How did you approach Amazon Prime's next-episode binge function? That was kind of a challenge to us. This is such a slow burn storyline and the endings don't have those cliffhanging gotcha mo- ments. They're much more nuanced and subtle. So what I wanted was for the end- ings to have a lingering effect on the audi- ence. So even though that [autoplay] icon will pop up on the bottom right, I thought the onus was on us as filmmakers to [cre- ate something] that dares the audience not to click to the next episode, endings that say, "How about you not click on it? How about you stay and watch [until the end]?" How tightly do you choreograph your tracking shots? Everything is precise, calibrated, mapped out, prepared. For example, that long tracking shot in the first episode? We must have rehearsed that a few times before the set was even built. We had chalk outlines on the stage and Julia would come in and we'd just walk it through, time it out, time out the dialogue, decide which props I was going to use. This was the first time you worked with an actor of Julia Roberts' stat- ure. What was that like? The thing about Julia is she has such a high lev- el of craft and skill, and you can constantly rely on it. With some actors, if I have upward of 10 notes, I don't want to give them all 10 notes and overwhelm them. I usually parse them out three or four at a time. With Julia, I found that I could give her as many notes as I had. Not only that, I could adjust the blocking, maybe add a prop here and there, and she could not only take it all in but maybe also elevate it to another level. It was like working with a top-shelf athlete: You always know what you're going to get. ® 6 7 8 9 9 QUESTIONS | CONTINUED SCREENPULL: PARAMOUNT HOME ENTERTAINMENT 5 IF T Y Y E ARS AGO, the director's right to a possessory credit came under attack. Providing artistic recognition for exemplary work, possessory credits in film- making—which at the time included such opening-title declarations as "Alfred Hitch- cock's..." or "A Frank Capra Film" or "A Film by..."—have historically been negotiated individually by each director with the com- pany producing the film. The existence of such credits predates the founding of the DGA, which maintained that every director was entitled to seek and receive one. But in 1966, the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the Writers Guild of America West ratified a contract barring producers from award- ing a possessory credit to anyone other than the writer credited on the film or the author of the source material. In response, the DGA united in protest—filing a lawsuit in Superior Court and sending protest telegrams to the AMPTP which stated that the DGA would not "accept or abide by your attempt to bargain away, in private council to which we were not a party, credit rights of motion picture directors which have been long established by industry custom and practice." A botched compromise resulted in DGA members agreeing unanimously at the 1967 annual membership meetings to continue to dispute the issue. When the DGA threatened the AMPTP with a director strike unless the producers reversed course before the Basic Agree- ment contract expired on April 30, 1968, the AMPTP affirmed the right of anyone, individual or management, to negotiate for special possessory credits—a principle that has been preserved in the DGA Basic Agreement to this day. Protecting the Possessory Credit F M I L E S T O N E » Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock and Elia Kazan were among the directors who were routinely granted possessory credit prior to 1968.