When the director must have the thinking

The Thinking You Must Have to Be a Director

As the commander-in-chief of a movie or TV show, what thinking skills does the position of director actually require? Take a look at my introduction!

Strategies for Reading a Script

There are three key questions that surface when first reading a script:

1. What is the genre, or story form? Each story form has a different dramatic framework, character presentation and plotting.

2. Who are the main characters and what are their goals? There should be a main character with a clear, distinct and unique goal.

3. What is the character arc? Or in other words, how do experiences in the story change the main character? You should be able to determine where the character is at the beginning of the story and understand how the character will change as the story unfolds.

Another set of questions to answer when rereading a script:

1. What is the premise of the story? The premise of the story - sometimes referred to as the backbone, the main conflict, or the driving force - is ideally that the main characters are faced with two opposing choices. These two choices are often related to important relationships presented in the narrative.

2. Is the premise consistent with the main characters and their goals? It should be consistent. For example, if the main character in The Great Judgment is a successful lawyer, then the premise of regaining dignity for a prodigal life would not be ****triggering. There must be a correlation between the premise and the main character.

3. Is the transformation of the main character believable, meaningful, and emotionally satisfying?

4. What is the plot of the movie and how well is it being applied? Ideally, plot works most effectively when it has forces embedded in it that run counter to the goals of the main characters. In A Very Long Engagement (2004), a young woman cannot believe that her fiancé was killed in World War I. The devastation of the war, and the need to find his broken heart, are the reasons for this. The devastation of the war, and the plot of finding him and reuniting him, seems closer to fantasy than to real possibility. Plot doesn't work unless it puts some sort of obstacle in the way of the main character's realization of his goal. Consider the voyage of the great ship in Titanic, which is an example of what makes a plot fruitful. The ship sinks and Rose's love becomes a memory rather than a reality. Setting up a plot in a story can be a director's 'shortcoming, so a lot of work needs to be done in this area.

5. How do you make the secondary characters, who represent those two choices of the premise, fit in with the premise? Are they two walled-off camps - the helpers and the hurters? Is one helper more important than the others? Why is that? The villain will be the most vital of all the characters, determining the strength of the main characters' reactions, the trajectory of their character arcs, and how we feel about the main characters at the end of the movie. The stronger the villain, the more heroic our main characters end up feeling. By their very nature and action, secondary characters play a special role in the script. The closer their resonance is to real people rather than simple story elements, the richer the script becomes. Even though we are experiencing the story through the main characters, secondary characters can help the script seem more believable and engaging.

Westerns also tend to talk about values, the idyllic, untraceable past that represents positive forces, and civilization and progress that represents negative forces. Each genre takes different shapes. What is a dramatic arc? How does it serve the goals of the main characters? If the script doesn't also conform to genre expectations, do the changes make the script better, fresher, more powerful ...... or vice versa? Now that you've read the script twice and taken copious notes, it's time to read the script three times. Third readings are essential in order to explore the dimensions of a script that can catalyze a director's thinking.

Toward Interpretation

Think of this round as an application of textual interpretation. A proven way to do this is to speculate on the underlying possibilities of the story in the dimensions mentioned below: the existential dimension, the psychological dimension, the social dimension, the political dimension. Each dimension weaves a different story.

The second prism available to directors in developing their auteur thinking is the relationship that can be built between narrative and current issues. Every time period has its own instantly recognizable issues. Look at 2005, for example, when big issues included the role of religion in life, globalization, environmental challenges, privacy, equality (e.g., women's rights in a male world), and, of course, modernism versus tradition. There are many other endemic, local topics, but these big issues deserve attention on a more urgent personal, national, and international level.

If a director is passionate about society, the issues of the time are a prism through which to interpret the script, and are relevant to it. They also give the director a platform to express his or her personal beliefs, or a tool to engage the audience. Zeitgeist issues can materialize in a particular way in a director's thinking. Steven Soderbergh often borrows zeitgeist issues to make his narratives more compelling. Power and its sidekick, corruption, drive the story of drugs in Drug Network. At the center of Soderbergh's revenge story, Under the Bodhi Tree, on the other hand, is parenthood. Considering the issues of the times in the interpretation of the text helps to expand the director's thinking.

Sound, which conveys the director's ideas, is another means of moving the director from textual interpretation to directorial thinking. Sound can reflect the character of the director very well. Stanley Kubrick's view of human progress was ambitious, ironic, and passionate. The technical or scientific viewpoint identifies mankind as progressing; Kubrick did not. The Coen brothers also have a Kubrickian skepticism, but they are much more playful in stating their views on the subject.

There are some directors who recognize the problem of sound so well that, for them, conveying a point of view takes precedence over dramatic considerations. They opt for storytelling forms that are sound-oriented - particularly satire, historical drama, allegory and non-linear storytelling. Without exception, these genres employ strategies of distance, such as irony, so that we do not identify and emotionally vicariously relate to the main characters. Their structure also helps us to distance ourselves from the main characters. The viewer does not become emotionally identified with the characters while watching. The director's relationship with the audience is more direct because there is no emotional relationship between the audience and the main characters involved. Voice expression is the most direct tool used to develop the director's mind.

It would be disingenuous to say that the development of the auteur's mind does not include marketing considerations. Aside from sound, marketing is the most important and deliberate consideration in the development of an auteur's mind. For the director, it may be the single most influential factor. Sensation means box office. Sensationalism can be created by plot, sexual subtext, violent subtext, or exaggerated tone or style. In the case of Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill [2003]), Bernardo Bertolucci (Paris [The Dreamers, 2003]), John Woo (Mission Impossible II [2000]), and Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction, 1987]), madness and commercialism have traditionally followed the work of the director. In the development of the director's mind, promotional marketing is a powerful shaping force.

Choosing the Director's Mind

You've completed a full script analysis, determined which aspect of the story drew you in, and now you have five choices for constructing the Director's Mind. Each choice offers a different path; focus on one of the following:

1. Character Arc - Use the main characters and their transformation as a tool.

2., Drama Arc - Plot is the driving force. The struggle between the main character and the villain determines the direction and shape of the dramatic arc.

3., the idea of the latent text - the narrative can be flat (such as the romantic nobility of King Arthur) or complex and entangled (such as the Silence of the Lambs). Character arcs and dramatic arcs are incorporated into the subtext in the process of highlighting the subtext.

4. Voice - for example, directors who deal with war (e.g., Malick's The Thin Red Line), family values (e.g., the Coen Brothers' Raising Arizona), or ethnic sidelights (e.g., Holland's Europa, Europa [Europa Europa, 1990]) thinking that would dominate the narrative structure.

5., the deepest values of your life - some directors' spiritual personalities are revealed in the way they cut through the narrative, for example: the humanism of Jean Renoir's films; Ilya Kazan's not-so-controversial construction of class, race and generational differences; Roman Polanski's exploration of the loneliness of existence; and the way he explores the power of the human spirit in his films. Polanski's vision of existential solitude; and Sergei Eisenstein's Marxist aesthetics.

Once your directorial mindset is defined, you need to conceptualize the techniques for directing your actors, and the camera strategies that fit your directorial mindset. Remember, the more multilayered your approach, the more creative you'll be, while also being willing to take some commercial risks.