Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1515068
The AD and the Director. Is it a weak director? Is it a strong director, but weak in technique? Is it a director, strong in technique, but weak in philosophy, afraid of their actors? They often try to hide their fear of the actors by over-engagement. Do they feel under assault? Many directors are in abject terror from day one, or even prior to day one. There are two groups in the director community; those that have established their autonomy by success in the market and success in the critical world, and by their repeated engagement by major funding sources for their work. Then there's the other group who are still clawing their way to some degree of career stability, but are most often surrounded by a committee of second-guessers who are there with good intent and under great levels of compensation, by the way, to protect the director from themselves and to validate and justify their purpose. Many TV shows have 10, 12, 15, 18, 20 people with the title of producer, and they're mostly writers, but they'll sit at the set in a chair watching a monitor of the scene with headphones on and on their cellphones, and they're pulling down six, seven figures a year to do that. Meanwhile, we're out there actually making it happen for far, far less. So that interferes with the director's progress to mature into a skilled confident creative person. For me, the best strategy has been to always approach the work as a filmmaker, akin to musicians in the orchestra. First, self-identify as an artist with a special instrument, then apply this instrument to telling stories with film through sound. We interpret directorial intent through emotion and tonality. We connect the characters to the audience. Every artist contributing to a film is a technician with their medium. We are as well. We make many creative decisions every day. We interpret and capture performance in context to story arc, character arc, and directorial intent. We do this in collaboration with the other film artists, above and below the line. We come together to tell the story. Nothing less…