First Time Director. Gil Bettman

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СКАЧАТЬ your first directing gig until the minute you step on the set, you should do all in your power to prepare yourself to make every one of your decisions well-informed. There is an old Hollywood saying which best expresses the logic behind overestimating what is expected of you as a first time director: “You are only given a couple of chits in this business. You've got to make every one of them count.” You've had to chew glass to get this first directing gig, so make it count. Prepare and then prepare some more. There is no such thing as being over-prepared.

      As I pointed out in the preface, because you are not, as yet, a bankable director, your breakthrough directing gig is going to inevitably be a day late and a dollar short. The bean counters are going to force you to make do with a little less of everything, and that includes preproduction time. None of your principal collaborators or the crew will be put on salary until the last possible minute. This means that you, as well as all your staff, are not going to have enough time to adequately prepare before you start shooting. Since the director is responsible for everything, you, all by yourself, will have to compensate for the fact that your support staff are going to be flying along by the seats of their pants. The only way to do this is to work tirelessly day and night, weekends and weekdays, from the moment you even think that you might land this directing job until the first day of shooting.

      Even though you are actually starting too late when you first come on board as the director, the start of principal photography will seem to be an eternity in the future. The natural inclination will be to put off making final decisions. Don't. Start nailing anything down, provided it won't cost you real money if in the end it does no Because more than anything else,t come to pass. Half of what you nail down will have to be ripped out, but half will stay. As the start of production nears, and it seems as if almost every important decision has been left until the last moment, you will be very glad that you finalized any chunk of business early on.

      Filmmaking is a collaborative art. So it follows logically that in filmmaking, relationships are everything. Some of the most crucial relationships for a first time director are with those individuals who precede him onto the project. Generally speaking, the producer, if he is not going to act as his own line producer, will hire a line producer and perhaps even a Unit Production Manager (a UPM) before he hires a director — if he's smart. Why? Because more than anything else, the producer wants the line producer and the UPM to make the movie for the money in the budget, and to squeeze the most out of every dollar in the pot. The line producer and the UPM are the budget watchdogs. They are in charge of the money side of the film. (Ideally, you are in charge of the creative side.) It is impossible for them to do their job well unless you cooperate with them. If you are too artistically inclined to respect the constraints of the budget, theirs is a lost cause. The only way they can relax and do their jobs well is if they can trust you to be the kind of director who can fit the square peg in the square hole — who can make the movie for the money he is given.

      I have always found that those who are just expeditors — namely the line producer and the UPM — will not venture into your territory and impinge on your creativity, if you do not venture into their territory and impinge on their efforts to stay within the budget. And the converse of this axiom is also true. If you seem to put your creativity ahead of their budget, then they will put their budget ahead of your creativity. Avoid this situation at all costs. Their reputations — their ability to get hired and rehired on a regular basis — are almost solely dependent on their ability to bring the movie in on budget. It is human nature that they will strive to preserve that reputation at all costs. Sure, they want to make a well reviewed, well received film. But more than that, they want to work again. Beware! If, in the course of trying to realize your artistic aspirations, you threaten their budget, then you threaten their very livelihood.

      Many first time directors, myself included, are determined from the day they are hired to make a film that is so amazing, so stellar, so earth-shattering in its brilliance, it will immediately catapult them into the top tier of living directors. That is an admirable ambition and one that the first time director should hang onto it with all his might. He will need that purpose to power himself over some of the huge obstacles he is going to encounter on the road to making a film which succeeds just enough to get him hired to direct a second film. The problem with this towering desire to become the next Spielberg or Tarantino is that it becomes so overpowering, the first time director is ready to sacrifice anything and everything to make it happen, including the budget which the line producer and the UPM hand him when he comes in for his first day of work. He does so at his own peril.

      The first budget and schedule that come out in preproduction are never the last. Everything constantly changes throughout the preproduction period because you keep revising your game plan. The day-out-of-days changes, the schedule changes, and the construction costs go up and down as shoot days on practical locations are swapped with work to be done on sound stages. If you have inadvertently put the line producer or the UPM in an adversarial position, the next time they revise the budget and the schedule they will give you less of all that you wanted more of. And if you fight back, the next time you will get even less. If you keep it up, when you start shooting, they are going to be breathing down your neck. They will force your first assistant director (1st AD) to work against you, instead of for you. They will consult with you about your production needs in a cursory way or, even worse, they will start dictating to you what they are going to dole out in time, money, and material. This attitude will keep you from making the film you want to make. Whatever they unilaterally decide to give you will in fact not really be tailored to what you actually need to realize your vision. So, in the end, you will be able to do less artistically.

      From the day you start to work, show the utmost respect for the budget. Study the budget and the schedule in the form that relates most directly to you: the production board. If you do not understand how to read “the board,” talk to a director friend who is an expert, and learn how — immediately. It is boring work, not very glamorous, but you have got to do it if you want to realize your vision. Unless you are a science nerd or a policy wonk, the budget and, to a lesser extent, the “one-line” schedule, will confuse you a little. When you get confused, take notes and then ask the line producer or the UPM to explain whatever you don't understand. Let them clarify the logic of the way they have structured their guidelines. Everybody likes to talk about what they do best, so by asking these questions you ingratiate yourself with these key players. More importantly, you give them the impression that you are the kind of director who will tailor his artistic vision so that it can be realized for the money in the budget.

      If you have nurtured these key relationships throughout preproduction, then when you start shooting, the line producer and the UPM will feel that they can take you at your word. You have done yourself a huge favor. If they trust you, they will give you enough slack in the reins so that, when disaster strikes (as it inevitably will), you have enough room to wriggle out of trouble. If they don't trust you, they'll keep you on a short leash and when disaster strikes, they will limit your options for rectifying the problem; your chances of recovering successfully will be compromised. You will end up even more over budget, as well as less successful in realizing your artistic vision, than if you had been allowed the freedom to create your own solutions.

      When I was fresh out of UCLA film school and working at Universal Studios as an associate producer on McCloud — certain that any day I would get a break and be tapped to direct an episode of Marcus Welby, M.D., like the great Spielberg or the lesser known Randal Kleiser (who went on to direct Grease and have a long and successful career as a feature director) before me — if I had read any of the above, I probably would have rejected it all as overly cautious and artistically unambitious. At that time, I remember I had once heard it said, “The only reason a director gets fired off a picture is if his dailies aren't good enough.” I think whoever made this point to me backed it up by noting that Spielberg, who had just finished shooting Jaws, had spent 120 days and some astronomical amount (at the time), like $10 million, to complete the picture — even though the initial schedule and budget gave him 60 days and half the money. Whoever was СКАЧАТЬ