Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1097515
DGA QUARTERLY 77 ourselves in a kind of dreamlike way. I'm walking in the shoes of the characters, and it's like a dipstick to check my value system or my emotional plumbing. Would I do what that guy did? I'll cry in a movie before I'll cry in a similar situation in real life. Which I think is interesting. In real life, my defenses are up. I'm supposed to be the strong guy. I'm supposed to be the guy that everybody relies on. In a movie theater, I can cry in a way that I can't in real life, which sounds backwards but it's very real. So these emo- tional simulations are very, very powerful for people. F: I think it's a good way to put it. Part of the job of the filmmaker is to support that immersion. And often it relates to how you make choices that you believe the audience would make. So, if you're cutting a scene properly, it's almost like you don't need VR because you're looking where they want to look anyway. C: It's that predictive algorithm that I think you have to create in your own mind as a filmmaker; I need to be able to predict where the audience is looking, and to really make the cuts flow like music. F: It's interesting because then you get a guy like George Miller, who keeps everything dead center while he's doing his fast cuts. And so the effect is like you're on a roller coaster. C: I never noticed that, but in Fury Road or Mad Max... F: …He keeps it in the cross hairs. That's why he can get away with all the things, all the manipulation that I couldn't get away with. He'll throw so much information at you and the effect is like you're strapped in the backseat of a car going 150 miles an hour. And you're getting overloaded, but to an effect that he wants you to have. It's not arbitrary and it's not the whole movie. C: And he'll slow down, and he'll do static set pieces and then use the wide screen, the scope frame, which he loves—very Sergio Leone kind of compositions. The act out for the end of the first act in Fury Road is probably one of the best peak dropoffs, stop-dead-cold moments I've ever seen in a movie. It's just like, "Can this get any crazier?" Then everything stops. Conspicuous vs. Inconspicuous Directing Styles F: I like when directors have a style, like I love the Coen brothers. I love that they're a character in the movie. But for me, personally, I get embarrassed because I didn't come up as a director. And I feel like I have to be in service of the story and take myself out of it. I don't like when somebody says, "That's a great shot." C: Yes, exactly. F: That means they noticed the shot. However, when I'm watching a Scorsese film, I love a great shot. I appreciate it in others. I think it's like music or cooking. Everybody's got a different style. C: It's like Bruce Lee called his way "the way of no way." It's kind of a style of no style. It's getting out of the way of the movie. It's the earnest narrative. I'm too earnest. I wear my heart on my sleeve as a filmmaker. It's just all out there, folks. I'm not trying to inter- pose, you know, some kind of pure camera [technique] or stylistic tropes. I just want you to feel like you're in the moment and not taken out. F: Now one exception is for comedy. I come from comedy, so I will let you see what the camera's doing if it's funny. C: When somebody falls out of frame, the camera doesn't go with them, and then they get back up. F: Exactly. C: Yeah, that's a stylized moment that aids comedy, and the only time I've ever done stylized stuff like that was on True Lies—the only time I ever took a swing at comedy with some success. There were some funny moments. It didn't always work, but the camera was more self-conscious. But if you're creating another world in another time, using Avatar as an extreme example, it's a completely made-up world that we want you to utterly believe. So if you're doing a movie that takes place in an apartment or in a city or whatever, you can do a shot, you know, like (David) Fincher will do, you go through the keyhole and into the stove. Because you're taking the mundane and elevating it cinematically.