Film Craft 103: The Director - 1. Introduction

Hi, I'm Michael Wohl and this is going to be a great course about film directing. And we're going to start with a simple question. What does a film director do? Well, the director's role is to ensure that what gets recorded by the camera effectively tells the story in the script. And if there is no script, then to ensure that whatever story is unfolding in front of the camera is captured effectively. That's it. One thing. But it's arguably the most important job of all, because if you fail, the whole project fails. Now, because this job is so important, a smart producer tries to surround her director with a lot of help. And the bigger your crew, the more you can have one person doing each individual job. So you've got someone whose only job is to watch continuity, to make sure that the actor lifts the glass of wine on the same line each take, and that there's the right amount of wine in the glass each time you start the scene. And you've got a focus puller whose sole job is to make sure that the camera is always in perfect focus. And so on. Because if the director is worrying about continuity or camera focus, or a hundred other details, she's less likely to be able to keep her eye on that big picture. And remember, nobody else is doing that. So if you neglect that job in favor of obsessing about which lens to use or some other minute technical detail, and I've seen many directors fall into exactly that trap, just remember, no one else is paying attention to that big picture stuff. And if that doesn't work, well, it doesn't matter so much what f-stop you settled on.