Directors reflecting on directing

Want to know what directors think of the directing process? Hear from experts including Oliver Stone, Lena Dunham and Sam Mendes, as they reflect on their careers and share advice that has helped them in the film industry…

Creator, actor and director of comedy-drama television series Girls, Lena Dunham believes that collaboration between actors and creatives is paramount. She says a great performance on-set is made “between the director and the actor and that it involves the vison that the director and writer first brought to the project mixed with the new take the actors had on it.”

All directors have different approaches and styles, and Dunham agrees “directors come in all shapes and sizes.” But she reassures: “to be a successful director, I don’t think there’s one single quality that you need.” However, she does pick out “compassion” as a useful trait for a director because “you need to be able to connect to the actors, understand what they’re feeling, understand that they’re in a vulnerable position. Connect to your crew and what their stresses are, see how you can help bolster themselves. You need to be compassionate.”

As the premise of Girls was drawn from Dunham’s own life experiences, she also encourages aspiring directors to “tell a story that feels true to you. Don’t try to make something that you think other people want to see, make the thing that you want to see. And you’re not the weirdest person in the world, so other people will want to see it too.”

Director of Snowtown and Macbeth, Justin Kurzel considers the most challenging part of his job to be the process of juggling budget and vision during pre-production. He describes it as “a delicate dance between what’s on the script and actually what you can make.” For Kurzel, “the toughest part of the process is how you start to manipulate the script into something that can be realised within the resources that you’ve got.”

His favourite part of his role is “shooting,” because he enjoys “feeling as though anything could happen on that day.” He describes this process as “catching butterflies. The greatest part of my day is between action and cut and I think that’s when things happen that can’t be storyboarded, when you’ve got two actors that are genuinely listening to each other and are involved.”

He explains it’s also important for the director to be on hand and involved on set. He shares how “being there and not being over in a monitor and just sort of staying there the whole day and directing through proxy or distance” is key to successful direction. He says: “there is a very visceral thing about what [actors] are doing, it’s difficult and awkward and emotional and slightly crazy and you have to want to be there and enjoy it because that’s what they’re dealing with.”

He also says it’s important to keep persevering as you forge your path as a director, saying: “I think you need to be tough. Tough not in a brutal way or in a kind of alpha way, I just think you need to be tough and roll with it because it’s never going to be perfect. It’s a very hard industry and the demands on you as a director are great, you’ll lose many times so you have to keep going, keep going, keep going.”

BAFTA-winning director for This Little Life, Sarah Gavron became interested in film in her late teens. She recalls, she “started having ideas for stories and realised that I was imagining films about the world around me.” She was inspired by the likes of “Stephen Frears, Mike Leigh, Ken Loach and Terrence Davies,” who were creating films about the world around them in the same way she aspired to. However, she lacked the confidence to give it a go herself until seeing films by Jane Campion, when she realised “wow, there are women doing this and I want to do it.”

Studying at film school, Gavron learned she needed to be “true to myself.” She says: “I had to find my own voice. I had to do a story that made sense to me.” Film school gave her the opportunity to connect with writers, but she also recommends being “a runner, be anything on set” to gain some practical experience. And recalls: “the first time I ever stepped onto a professional film set I was the director and that’s a crazy thing.”

A lesson Gavron learned from one of her influences, Stephen Frears, was that directing is “the art of knowing when not to interfere. Sometimes you just have to let people do their job, they are the masters of their craft.” Adding: “you don’t necessarily have to endlessly go ‘this is the way it should be’ because that can restrict things.”

She also encourages aspiring directors, especially women, to preserve and believe in their ability to tell stories: “I think it’s just about having, as a director,  conviction. Being passionate about the sorry you want to tell and not being deterred. And it’s not being worried if it feels like a boys club, it’s just that you’ve got something precious, you want to tell it, you know how to do it, go out there and do it.”

Sam Mendes, a BAFTA-winning director with credits including American Beauty, Revolutionary Road and Skyfall, says one of the key things he has learnt is to maintain relationships with your team. Sharing that the role he works closest with on set is “almost always has been my cinematographer” he says “for me that’s my rock. It seems to be the way into every scene is visual and so I’m always hand in glove with him or her.” He also advises other directors that “I think if you find a team that you love and a team that really understands the way you work and wants to work with you, you should keep hold of them.”

As a director across stage and screen, he  shares one of the works that influenced him early on was “a Wim Wenders movie called Paris, Texas.” He describes it as “a great mythic contemporary film written by a great playwright – Sam Shepard. [It] married both theatre and film in one movie.” But Mendes also shares he is still being “influenced by so many different films all the time.”

He also highlights the importance of taking inspiration from a range of genres to inform your creative style. He recalls growing up “watching television comedy mostly” and being influenced by “a lot of the Peter Sellers movies along with the Python TV shows.” From comedians, he learnt “rhythm and timing” which he’s applied to “all genres of movies, not just comedy.” He says “in a way, film directing is your very own particular rhythm honed,” and watching comedy can help to develop this.

Director of Frank and Room Lenny Abrahamson describes the pre-production process for a director, in which he finds casting an integral part, as “very instinctual”.  He recalls being surprised in the audition process as “quite often I’ve been really bowled over by people I would not have thought about in that part. But when they come in and they inhabit the role, even if they’re not right ultimately, in that moment you get to spin off a version of your film with that person and you learn loads about that film in listening to [that actor].” The process also often leads him to rewriting scenes because when hearing an actor read for a scene, “you can start to feel what’s working and what isn’t.”

Thinking about what to do when things go wrong on set, he says “the most important thing is to be able to calmly note that.” As he explains, as a director, it’s important to work to maintain your composure when things don’t go to plan, saying: “I just think you train yourself to be big enough to not freak out. Just watch it and feel: what don’t you believe about it? What feels wrong? What tunnel have you got yourself caught in, that you thought was important and now isn’t?” He encourages directors to not be afraid to “take 10 minutes and have that conversation,” with the cast and crew to work together and achieve a better outcome.

BAFTA-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone rose to prominence as a screenwriter before directing political dramas Born on the Fourth of July, JFK and Nixon. He grew as a director by “trying to know more about the subject matter and being curious about not only the world around me but my own consciousness of it.”

Reflecting on what has influenced his film career he says one of the biggest impacting factors has been “the experience of life, I suppose. That very raw, frontline experience. You are the only one living your life.” For example he says he drew on lived experience to inform his filmmaking in Platoon, which he describes as “semi-autobiographical. It was about my time in Vietnam in 67-8 and I never thought it would get done, one day it did.” He encourages budding directors to learn from their own life experiences, saying: “the best advice you can give a director is to be open to life, and try to be self-conscious of it as it goes, try to see what’s unique about it and what’s original.”

He also shares that “all kinds of collaboration go on throughout the process” and reflects how he enjoys this method of working together. He says: “collaboration is fascinating because actors do always bring a different tenor to this thing, as well as the director of photography, the production designer, the producers.” But he encourages young directors to keep their vision at the forefront of their work, saying I do urge any young director to keep in mind the spirit of the thing… keep the essence of what I see as the movie.”

Stone doesn’t take for granted any of the films he has been able to make, and admits he “can’t ever tell any young filmmaker that it gets easier. You might think it gets easier, but maybe you’re not trying your hardest. So every film is a privilege to make and it should be treated as such.”