Six New and Interesting Lessons to Help You Become an Influential Director.
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What is the role of a director while shooting a movie?
The most important role for the director is telling the actors how and what to do. In the past, even before cinema, a couple of directors created a special guideline made for directors. This was to help directors tell actors how to talk and behave. A Russian director founded one of the first acting schools more than 130 years ago. Stanislavski was inspired by theater acting and developed a method that helped people become actors. He noticed that some people were naturally good actors and some were not, but he believed that anyone could be an actor with the right training. So to be a good director, you need to learn how to talk to the actors and create the energy required to get the acting you envision and manage the other departments in case they are underperforming or not providing the correct services. The director is also the person in charge of opening and ending the scene, so the scene will go on until the director says cut.
What does a director do before filming?
The director's most crucial job starts before filming. This is called preproduction, which takes place before any filming. Firstly, the director has to take the script and image how the sequences will be delivered and edited and the cinematographical approach for each scene. He will also have to audition the actors, scout talent such as costume design, and create the long-term shooting schedule. It is a long and creative process. The director is in touch with every department while exchanging notes and negotiating everything. It's actually in this stage where the movie is created. The filming is just the execution of the plan developed during this preproduction stage.
Is the pan shot still a go-to filming style in 2022?
Any shot is still in style in 2022, anything you can imagine. I like the pan shot when it is subjective towards the character and shows what they are doing. For example, we can see the character's vision in the first person through their eyes as they look around. But any camera movement is in style, especially if it relates to the story's emotion and the character telling us what is happening.
To what extent are opening weekends for films still important or have times changed? Are different criteria used to measure the initial success of a film?
Great question, this system of releasing films on the weekend was established by the major studios to secure income. It is a marketing strategy used to integrate existing mouth-to-ear marketing after a movie's release. Before this, people would go to the cinema based on word of mouth or newspaper, and then based on what people say they would go decide to see it. Usually, a film would play in theaters for one week, but when fans began asking theaters to continue playing a film, large movie studios and theaters began to play them for more than one week. Eventually, many successful studios began buying and opening their own theater chains.
Now imagine that these cinemas are owned by major production studios and need to system to advertise and control the stability of ticket sales for as long as possible. So they came up with a system based on ticket volumes to create hype around a film. They developed the box office weekend.
Before the internet, the biggest marketing platform was the TV. So the most potent advertising came from there. The film industry created a show called Entertainment Tonight. This show discussed film and acting but also measured the success of a film based on its box office revenue. Now, with this change in narrative, it wasn't anymore about whether or not you like a movie, but rather which movie had the biggest box office release, which meant by correlation it had to be popular.
So we all began to believe that if a movie has a big box office, it must be good. Hereby, they could take control of people's opinions and control a films' fate.
Today, tv is no longer the number one marketing tool, so this method has slowly become outdated and needs to change; therefore, major studios still need to find a new strategy to promote their films.
At the beginning of the internet age, Netflix was still acting like traditional theaters. But they have come to realize that there is a lot more money in producing their own movies in house. And so again, we began to see more and more that Netflix has been creating and producing their own films and buying the rights of less out-of-house films. Basically a repetition of what major studios did previously.
So the idea is to use the best resources and strategies you have to show the greatest number of people that you have an excellent film and create buzz, hype, and energy around its release.
How important is symbolism in filmmaking?
Symbolism is everything; it is the most important component. Even the most basic of stories have many symbols in them. For example, colors are symbols, like red for comedy blue for suspense. Everything you see on screen has some kind of symbolism to it. Actually, when you are watching a movie, you do not think about it, but you will notice that even when establishing a shot, the day the shooting is done and the camera's position all show us clues and information related to the story. In this right, these snippets of information are symbols. Everything has some sort of symbolism in one sense or the other.
When you lack symbolism, you have a documentary instead.
Photo by 愚木混株 cdd20 on Unsplash
For example, in Hotel Limbo, when Tanya was arriving at the airport with her luggage and flowers in her hair, the luggage symbolized her travels, the flowers in her hair represented a new beginning, a spring, in her life as she embarked on a new journey of becoming a hotel owner.
Every good visual artist has excelled in this. For example, a picture of a chair can symbolize loneliness, and a good filmmaker would know how to bring that feeling onto the screen.
What is the purpose of a single take or long shot in filmmaking?
I see two distinct styles of filming, the American and the European.
The American style will establish the shot, which is a large shot; we start with a wide framed shot that goes in closer to a character, which is then followed by a reverse zoom out and then back up close to the other characters. For example, this is similar to an establishing shot that flows from the top of the scene.
The European style is different; they like to shoot shot by shot scene by scene in multiple parts. So they cut the scene into short portions without filming the continuation of all that material from the top. Instead, focusing on just a small piece of the sequence. They then take these shorter cuts and sequence them all together during editing.
So it's your choice depending on your style of work. You can have a few long shots with a lot of flow, where the film is flowing altogether, or many short pieces that you combine into the final film.
Because filmmakers film art and art appeals to your emotions, the decision-making process here is not mathematical. Art does not speak to your logic; it affects the emotional intelligence of the people that are watching. So everything has to be thought of and considered from the side of your emotional intelligence.
The answer depends on the emotions and feelings you want to create. In reality, there is not much difference between the single or long shot, but rather, how you would like to convey your story when editing.
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Look out for our films as well. They are accessible for streaming on a variety of platforms throughout the world. My Wacko Parents, our most recent film, will be available to watch online quite soon. It's a comical movie about a 30-year-old Tanya who has to cope with all the insanity of life and her work despite grappling with her overbearing parents.
