Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/798465
34 DGA QUARTERLY PHOTOS: PHOTOFEST; (OPPOSITE) SHUTTERSTOCK if I can. Generally, it's when things are re- ally hotting up, which is the two weeks just before you start shooting, and you're being pulled in all directions. But really I have to look at the scene at least once before we get on the floor with it, if not more. I prep on the whole very, very heavily, and quite metho- dically. I've gotten over the feeling that I had for a while of being em- barrassed at how pedestrian I am when it actually comes to making the film. Q: Is that because you like to do 20 takes? A: No, I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I've done more than 20 takes of anything. But I'm not a two-take merchant ei- ther. I'm no Soderbergh. Q: Is that slowness about getting the performances or the look? A: The performances, almost always the performances. The other thing I will do, I won't think twice if I set off on a scene, and [after] an hour or two, I think this is wrong, [then] stopping, sending the crew away, re-rehearsing, reblocking and starting again… Q: Do you have a particular way of working with your director's team? A: I have a very brilliant and loyal script supervisor, Jayne-Ann Tenggren, who also was an associate producer on the last Bond movie and is a brilliant mind and knows my taste and we're very in sync. I will work with her and my cinematographer and talk about the scene, then I will bring the actors in and rehearse the scene with her, [with] the cinematographer and the 1st AD watching, and it takes as long as it takes. Then I'll call everyone in and I will explain, having discussed it with my DP, how we are going to shoot the scene. So it's a rather te- dious, methodical beginning to every day, so everyone knows what the goal of the day is. As much as possible I'll describe why I'm shooting the scene that way, so that people understand not just the technical needs of the scene, but what lies behind the technical needs—a way of just giving people on set a feeling of what I'm trying to achieve, so that the cam- era operator, the actor, the gaffer, the grip, everyone is working on the same scene at the same moment. There's a great danger in film that you only de- scribe the component parts and not why you're seeking to put the component parts together in that particular way. I want the scene to be very intimate; I want it to be very exposed; I want to start wide, and I'm going to do a minimum amount of coverage; I'm going to see this scene through the perspective of the central character; I'm going to start this scene out the window, and I'm going to see it in silhouette. It just helps with the understanding. It's easier on a small film: You have a small crew, everyone gets it, you can whisper it, and everyone can hear. But when you've got 200 people waiting for you, there are the inevitable questions: At what point do you want the gun to go off ? At what point does the window smash? How many takes do you think you are going to do? So that's the way I like to do it, and within that structure, then there's a surprising amount of freedom to experiment, to improvise. The thing that can often weigh you down as a director is second- guessing yourself, shooting too much coverage. It's that voice inside you when you've watched people rehearse a stunt for two days, and a giant explosion, and it goes without a hitch, by which I mean, nobody gets hurt, the explosion looks good, you've been shooting it on seven cameras, but that voice inside your head says, "There's a killer shot here and we've missed it, because I didn't put a camera down there." So you turn to the crew and say, "We've got to do it again," even though you know it means they won't see their kids for another 24 hours. Q: But better that you recognize it at the time than too late? A: You have to be the bad guy sometimes. You learn very quickly, as a director in theater or anywhere, that part of your job is to be the per- son they bitch about in the pub at the end of the day, and there's noth- ing you can do to avoid that. If you try to be everyone's friend, you're going to be no one's friend by the end. Q: Do you find that with experience you're better at recognizing those moments? A: You get better at not giving yourself a hard time when you need something and it takes the time it takes—and also, and this is crucial for any young directors, being honest about what you need upfront. Even if there's a risk of somebody saying no—rather than not asking for what you want in case they say no. That's a big difference. A lot of directors think, because of pressure of time and money, "Really what I want is this, but I'm so worried they are going to say no, I'm going to shoot in 18 days even though I really know I need 27. And then I'm just going to maybe go over and hope they don't notice." We've all done that, and that actually is not a good idea. You're much better off trying to fight for the time you need. Of course, it's easy for Mendes melded block- buster action with a brooding character study of James Bond in Skyfall, above, with Daniel Craig; opposite page, Mendes directs the colorful Day of the Dead sequence in Mexico that kicked off his next 007 iteration, Spectre.