Extracting Directing Lessons
BREATHE!
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1) Core alignment
2) Mastermind
3) Organization
4) Time Management
5) Urgency
6) Focus and Flow
7) Live in the mystery. It is a doorway to magic.
My attempts to organize the lessons learned directing THE KEEPER are a mess, and I acknowledge that. I know I’m jumping around and leaving out steps. You would be right to think that there is a mass of unsorted images and thoughts piled up in my head. But I need to try to boil down the ten most important things I learned, realized, or observed. Why? Because “art” is dependent upon basics integrated at the level of unconscious competence. And the process of creating such a foundation is:
1) Unconscious incompetence. You don’t even know that you don’t know bicycles exist.
2) Conscious incompetence. You know they exist, and that you cannot ride one.
3) Conscious competence. You can ride as long as you totally concentrate
4) Unconscious competence. The “look Ma, no hands!” point.
So…I went into Keeper KNOWING there were important things about directing I didn’t know. The hours of research had indicated the shape of the task, but there is no book on swimming that is equal to being thrown in the pool.
The seven observations overlap, and will be boiled down.
1) Core alignment just means that your actions are an expression of your deep self. You’d do it for the sheer love of it.
2) Mastermind. That means that you have to be aligned with at least ONE other person. And you will choose your team based on at least partial alignment.
3) Organization. The structure of organization, the flow of information and authority needs to be cleanly established. Without this, there is chaos. And you need to review all tasks morning and night and determine what is working and what needs improvement
4) Time Management. You need to know EXACTLY what needs to be accomplished every hour, and have someone watching the clock. This timing needs to be communicated to everyone. Our SFX makeup lady had a countdown timer showing how long she had to complete the monster hands. Brilliant.
5) Urgency. Related to #4. This is the EMOTIONAL content, the physical pace of action. Leaning into the time limitations.
6) Focus and flow. This is one to explore. There was a sense that the weeks of prep left me in the center of the storm. No, I didn’t see everything I needed to, but neither was there panic. Just…focus. And making decisions one at a time as they arose. There was a sense of “conducting the orchestra” as well as “commanding the troops.”
7) Live in the mystery. The “happy accident” is often thought the essence of art. Structure gives freedom, a paradox of art. We decided to save time by joining two different scenes into one MASTER scene, and the quality of performance skyrocketed. The resulting scene is GORGEOUSLY performed and shot, with real complexity and depth. This scene anchors the movie. I think it is the moment our audiences will BELIEVE in these characters. And that is the very most important thing about all fiction, but especially horror. Without BELIEVING in the characters, you just have jump-scares and effects, shadows and sound. We did not “plan” this scene, but it arrived because we had made careful plans, engaged with reality, and then modified. We were flowing, because we were focused on the overall goal, the emotional impact of the piece, the sense of “how do we want audiences to FEEL when the lights go up?” By remembering what was important, we could release the “interesting” and connect to the critical.
And for the record, our actresses KILLED IT. I had never had a chance to be so close to how professionals do it. I’d certainly observed at a distance. But seen up close, it was just like martial arts “flow” exercises, where the energy is generated, offered and returned. Let’s try one more:
8) Be generous. I watched the older actress mentoring the younger. Not just that, but helping her generate emotions. “What do you need from me?” she asked. It was so intimate, so wonderful. And for just a moment, there was a glimpse of something way beyond mere “competence”. There was ART, a living sharing of life-force. For just a moment, I saw what was driving the entire enterprise, the reason every single one of our crew was there: to share in the creation of LIVING MOMENTS, generated by a dropping of ego, possible only in the realm of “Unconscious competence” where the “I” disappears and there is only the “we.” Like good sex, really.
Anyway, I apologize for the rawness of these thoughts, but they are just flowing out as they are. I’ll tighten and polish them later.
Namaste
Steve
www.lifewrite(DOT)com