Directing The Basics

The director's vision shapes the look and feel of a film. He or she is the creative force that pulls a film together, responsible for turning the words of a script into images on the screen.

As you read through a script, you should begin to imagine how it might play out on screen. You should see the characters come to life. You should envision the lighting and hear the sound. You should be absorbed in the world of the story.

As a director you must envision what your actors are doing and how it will look as part of the final product.

Devoted Storyphiles – those, who mostly focus on telling stories (whether chronologically or not), studying characters and exploring themes. They usually began as screenwriters, or write most of their films on their own. For them, story is the driving force that figures as fundamentals of majority of their films. They also tend to demonstrate sophistication in plot structures, dialogue exchange and characters’ various dimensions.

Performance Patrons those, who tend to closely work with actors and pay great attention to their performance. They strive to get the deepest emotions out of their cast and convey the story through their interactions and relationships. These filmmakers are masters in directing their actors and often leading them to their best performances on screen. Some of them started their career as actors and then progressed to direct films.

Visionary Magicians – those, who stand out for their visual style and technical captiousness. They rely mostly on the language of image and visual symbolism to tell their story, and often demonstrate refinement in technical aspects, including anything from camerwork to editing to visual effects to even music composition. These directors tend to progress in making films of massive scale. Although, while some of them attain masterwork, others may rather concentrate on excelling in filming action. These filmmakers are prominent for their fascinating vision and impressive technical skills. They also had their careers started initially in other fields, such as photography or art direction

What should you do? Know your characters. Be able to tell the characters what they should be feeling, doing, trying to do. As a director you will lead your crew and make sure the film gets done.

When we are talking about directors we are usually talking about actors. How we interact with actors and how we speak to them.

Actors Acting is actually an extremely hard thing to do. Just being on camera gives most people the giggles. So an actor must always be spoken to in a polite and gentle way.

Emotional intelligence: they are flexible in their approach and can deliver a range of emotions. They have a sense of proportion around the project and are sensitive, honest, have a sense of humor and are good at listening to others.

Are they able to give flexibility and expressiveness in voice and movement? Motivation/commitment: They are committed to the project so they have emotional and physical stamina, trust your decisions.

Acting Improv. This technique should be used during rehearsals. Paraphrase dialogue. This makes actors think about what they are saying rather than doing a line reading. Backstory. Use improv for actors to events that happen before the film takes place. This is an alternative to method acting..

Facts. Based upon the bare bones of the scene, use improv to explore Warm up. improvise what happens before the scene or do a silent improv (just actions) to get actors warmed up for the scene. Parallels. If an actor is struggling to show the right emotions it may be because they cannot relate to the events for example if it is in space, so improvise a less dramatic event

CLOSE UP’S Horror films mainly use close up shot’s as it creates atmosphere and it increases the audience’s fear as it shows the facial expression’s of the characters Your Film should be made of mostly close ups.

ESTABLISHING SHOT The establishing shot is a very wide angle that is mostly used in the start of the trailer as it familiarises the audience where the scene is taking place.

Wide shots, large shots showing a lot of the background. These are often used in horror pictures because it gives the feeling of dread as though something is there and you just cant see it yet.