DGA Monthly

J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 6 I 9 1 The DGA's Visual History Program is an endeavor designed to explore the art and craft of the Director and the Director's team via peer-to-peer interviews with other Directors, Assistant Directors, Unit Production Managers, Associate Directors and Stage Managers. Created in 2000 by the Special Projects Committee and consisting of more than 250 videotaped interviews, the Visual History Program serves as an invaluable teaching source for those curious about the craft, a preservation of the professional wisdom of DGA members, and a unique repository for Guild history. The interviews, which last between three and eight hours, emphasize reflective and collegial discussions about all aspects of the creative process in film, television and other media. Visual History interviews are accessible to all Guild members as well as to the general public on the DGA website. The Visual History database is fully searchable by topic, and each interview is indexed, allowing for quick retrieval of segments pertaining to specific interests and topics, either within a particular interview or across the entire collection. Featured here are a few excerpts on Directing Television Pilots. Perspectives on Directing Television Pilots from the Visual History Program Archives Continued on page 95 Bill D'Elia on using the senses to establish a "messy" look for the pilot of Boston Legal: "I do the pilot to Boston Legal and I have this idea based on what David [E. Kelley]'s writing. And the idea is not make it like all his other shows, but messy. I've seen documentaries do this kind of thing — rove around and use the zoom — but I've never seen a glossy show do something like that. Because of the mayhem that this show might become, what if we did that with the camera? We use the zoom, went from hands to faces, over to this guy, and then still did traditional coverage. Depending upon the episode, you went crazy or you didn't. And the show was set in Boston, 'What if musically,' I told the composer, 'What if you treated it as if we're in New Orleans? What would it sound like?' So the combination of the wacky visual style and the music not necessarily fitting a legal show in Boston, to my mind, made it feel just a little off, which is how I wanted the show to feel. Because you never would know, 'Is this gonna be a serious episode? A funny episode? An emotional episode? Or all three?' And so use all those tools." Ernest Dickerson on maintaining the roots of a pilot's identity: "Everything starts with the script. It's a story you wanna tell. It's the environment that the story is taking place in. It's the characters. But it has to start with the script. I start reading it and, usually for the first time, I'm just trying to get through the story. But then when I read it again and I'm starting to put what some of the images are. Then I start really thinking, 'What do I want the film to feel like?' Because what it looks like is what it's gonna make it what it feels like. And the style and the story content really kind of comes together. I'll get an idea of what the light should be like, what the environment should be like, and how the light is gonna play in that environment, and start getting an idea of where we wanna go with color, because I love to use color expressively." Rod Holcomb on finding the visual style of ER through real-life observation: "Every visual narrative has to have an anchor and I couldn't figure out what it was until I went to an ER to observe and saw this gunshot victim rolled in on a gurney. Nurses and the doctors jumped onto the thing and the gurney was going down the hallway, but I couldn't watch that. My eye went right down to the gurney wheel that was spinning and twisting and going back and forth all the way down the hallway. I said, 'That's what ER is about. It's everything going into every different direction but going in one direction.' And that became my visual anchor. To do that I had to have the camera moving all the time, because the wheel is always moving and the ER is always moving. And then I got to the location and the floor was so bad I couldn't use the dolly. So I'm thinking, 'Oh man, I don't think these are shots I can do. I can handhold it. I need that flow. You're a victim on the gurney, so how do I do that?' So we said, 'We're going to do it with a Steadicam.' So 90 percent of everything we shot was on the Steadicam." Gail Mancuso techniques to get to know her cast for the pilot of That '90s Show: "So, the first episode of That '90s Show, we had all these new kids, with exception of one or two. Pretty, pretty green. So I did rehearsals off-set and it wasn't even rehearsal. It wasn't anything really about the show. It's more of a get- to-know-you. It's more of like playing, maybe some games. And one of the things I love to do, I said, 'Send me your character's playlist. What music does your character listen to?' And that was like an unbelievable exercise because it also not only helps them, but then we could talk about the music with each other. And then also puts them in that era too. The '90s music and maybe some are throwback '70s."

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