Directors set the tone of a film. They decide the pitch at which a performance is given. The accenting of a given theme. The length of a given shot can change how an audience perceives the themes. Douglas Sirk took soap opera-ish scripts and made complex films from them that had to be "read" visually. Whatever you see in a film was because of the ultimate decision of the director to include it.
The director also sets the story context in which the actor performs. He answers the question, "What's my motivation?" Shots are filmed out of sequence most of the time, the director's job is to ensure that each shot's performance matches their intended role throughout. Example: A villain being revealed in a film. I often know who the bad guy is in such movies or shows because the actor is unintentionally behaving like they're hiding something. I can't exactly put my finger on it but it's the body language and tone of someone who's slightly too self-assured to be just another character. You know the intent of the writing was that that character should come off like all the others in at their level in the screenplay but the actor's performance sticks out like someone who knows something nobody else knows. The only case this works is when that character is truly innocent. The director's job is to spot these performance problems and correct them on the day. He didn't catch that the hidden-villain actor was inconsistent with the innocent characters. I was the lead in a student film because I helped out on some simple scenes for a friend's short assignments. I was passable, I guess, so he placed me in a longer piece. The problem on the various shoot days was that he gave me virtually no direction so I had no context for how he desired to portray the character. I didn't know even where to begin. He was never clear so I couldn't establish that character's emotional schema. I had no acting training but I instinctively knew my own method -- get all the information I can about a character's operating assumptions (motivation et al) and impose that mindset on myself by amplifying or suppressing my own natural reactions to suit that character. To be frank, it took a lot out of me. I could never rid myself of the feeling of being totally exposed -- like I was displaying too much of my emotional reality for the world to see. I sincerely accessed real emotions so when I spoke a line, it was emotionally true so it would be portrayed as true on camera. Lacking solid direction, I wasn't able to nail down my emotional context -- I wasn't able to speak the lines as believably as I would've liked in that longer piece. This wasn't the fault of any of any of us because it was a first-year student film and none of us had really done any role in that regard: direction, acting, etc. Also, it was one guy being camera man, director, and sound guy all at once. He did great for having to focus on all those technicalities. I didn't catch the acting bug. I felt too exposed and probably hadn't processed a lot of the violence and torment I had fought through in jr high and the first half of high school. Expressing any vulnerability after that was like defying all the hard lessons I had learned to survive. Without a truly good director, I don't think actors can pull off notable performances -- unless you're among the very few who can get into character like second nature. You can spot those kinds of actors in how they perform with green-screen work. Some actors can't sell that they're interacting unless they can see it. Others can perform expertly in any scenario. The character is so well assimilated that the actor can react to anything convincingly. But those actors are very rare.
It would be interesting to see a video about producers because it seems to be a far more nebulous and less understood role in filmmaking than directing.
It isn't rocket science,dumbass. Screenwriters write the damn thing including creating characters and dialogue. Directors just take the real life elements and brings the screenplay to the physical and visual... And producers don't do anything except fund the film!
@TheEternalOuroboros Wrong, dumbass. That's a DISTRIBUTOR. A producer simply Funds a film like I said!, why people always try to argue against me when I'm right? That's why Will Smith gets a producer credit on every single Cobra Kai episode, despite not working on the show at all, because he bought rights to The Karate Kid and Funds the show.
I think part of the disconnect is that we don't have a different word for "directing" i.e. choosing shots and executing them, to separate it from the penumbra of other responsibilities that a "film director" may have, at least in the modern, post-New Hollywood era. In classical Hollywood a director was often assigned a screenplay and a cast and told to do a job. For accomplished modern directors, who are often their own producers, their responsibilities go far beyond choosing shots -- it encompasses choosing what scripts to work on, choosing the actors, choosing the other professionals who work on the film (photographer, editor, score composer, etc.) For major modern directors (Spielberg, Scorsese, Nolan, etc.) I don't think it's entirely inaccurate when we ascribe them "authorship" of a film, because those directors are in fact influencing every part of the film production. If they were making TV, they'd be referred to as "showrunners."
A great example of this is Tomas Alfredsson. Guy literaly made two masterpieces of cinema, "Let the Right One In" and "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", and the absolute trainwreck called "The Snowman". One of the main reasons why the film failed miserably was because the weather conditions were a huge obstacle that severely damaged the shooting schedule to the point that Tomas couldn’t make the film the way he wanted. It doesn’t matter how good you are if the work environment is unsustainable.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is very good, but people exaggerate how good it is. I still think the much less flashy mini series with Sir Alec Guinness is the best version of the novel. The best way to do the Smiley novels justice would be multiple seasons of TV, with enough space for the characters and world to be fully realized. Jared Harris would be wonderful as George Smiley.
@@halimghaniGilliam is extremely talented, but I think he has some weird hang ups that don’t always feel sincere to me, that everything has to look like some kind of rococo circus. The Fisher King may be his greatest work.
The director is the connective tissue between all the departments to create a cohesive whole. They ensure everything fits together to effectively convey the story. Directors collaborate with the various departments, weigh their ideas alongside their own, and give the final approval on what stays in the movie or not (though this is often influenced by investors, financial constraints, or departmental pressures). Ultimately, the director bears creative responsibility for whether the movie "works" or not. How a director works, and how much they’re involved in a specific department, depends on their interests and background. A former cinematographer or someone with a strong visual sensibility like Ridley Scott might be deeply involved in the camera department, creating detailed shot lists or storyboarding their vision. Others might not even know what focal lengths are and simply rely on the DP's expertise, approving shots with a quick glance through the viewfinder (I'm looking at you Kevin Smith). I don't think Woody Allen didn’t suddenly became a better director - I think he just started working with a more competent DP. My guess is Moviewise is a visual thinker, and so naturally emphasize angles and composition. Costume design, color grading, location scouting, screenwriting, acting and so on, are all departments a director can be deeply involved in... or not. A former actor, for example, might spend most of their time working closely with the cast, ohers might find it useless. The approach to directing actors also varies culturally. In the West, stars might ignore a first-time director, while in Asia, directors often have absolute authority over all departments. Learning about directing solely by interpreting movies is inherently flawed because all we get to see is the final product, the interplay of all departments. This often leads to over-interpretations, like seeing shapes in clouds (or in Kubrick's films). The truth is filmmaking is often more practical than artistic. Decisions are driven by the need to convey information, the constraints of the era, available equipment, or the budget. Techniques like close camera angles symbolizing emotional closeness, or desaturation signifying unfulfilled characters, are quite established and not profound. They certainly don’t require a "genius". Maybe Kurosawa didn’t intend to convey loneliness with a wide shot. Maybe he just wanted to showcase the beautiful landscape, and it all came together in the edit with the music. We’ll never know for sure, and that’s okay. As for auteur theory, it’s not inherently bad, as Moviewise suggests. Originally, it simply argued that a director’s voice, much like that of an author of a book, can emerge from the collaborative chaos of filmmaking. But of course by now it's been exaggerated to the point where most would claim the director single-handedly wills the movie into existence, which is of course absurd.
I remember reading an interview with Ronald Harwood; he related how he and Janusz Kaminski sat on stage with Julian Schnabel, after a film-festival screening of The Diving Bell & The Butterfly. Apparently Schnabel went on and on about how great a director he was. After an hour of unending self-promotion, Kaminski turned to Harwood and said, ‘after all, all I did was turn up and sweep the floor each day’.
Hey man, i appreciate your work. I discovered your channel and have watched more than 80% of your videos. I learned more about cinema in last 7 days than last 2 years. Thank You alot
Directors are in charge of every creative element of the film and setting the “direction” of each key creative working on the picture, setting the tone, and the thematic perspective; so much more than just coming up with the shots. They guide and coach the performances, they collaborate and influence and have final say of the set and costume design, the sound design, music, colour correction… the director is the captain of the creative ship and the Shepard of the project; the core collaborator with every role attached to telling the story.
I've seen so many people say "This director has gone down hill because his recent movies are bad", when the director is the same as ever, the movies just had terrible writing (which is becoming all too common lately). Thanks for sharing that commentary from The Third Man, it describes the topic perfectly.
It’s part of the issue with modern Hollywood’s obsession with the two in one writer/director. Because the same person wrote and directed the film, it’s easy to conflate the two roles when in reality someone could be a great writer but terrible director or vice versa.
The different directing approaches to the one Woody Allen joke is a fantastic example of what film directing and filmmaking is about. I think a lot of people who love movies go their whole lives without ever knowing or appreciating that one facet of the pretty complicated process of movie making. Once again, thanks so much for your work, mysterious Moviewise person! :)
Not that I disagree, but if directors are responsible for “shots,” what do cinematographers do? Don’t think you quite covered this specifically, so curious on your take.
The director and the Cinematographer are the same except the director is more creative, focusing on composition, framing, coverage, and blocking, while the Cinematographer focuses on aperture, exposure, lighting, lenses and which camera to use to capture what the director visualizes. The Director answers WHAT DO WE SHOOT? The Cinematographer answers the HOW DO WE CAPTURE IT?
i agree with a lot of that but how can you say they’re the same but have entirely different jobs and responsibilities, they really aren’t the same at all
Alongside the cinema cartography and archival channels, Moviewise is making the most tasteful and most entertaining video essay's on cinema yt has to offer imo - total genius
I don't know if someone has commented on this below, but I fall very much on the side of Good Film = Good Direction. The film director is like the project manager. It is his responsibility to create a product that satisfies the requirements in the best possible way, with the resources at his disposal. He gathers his team together. He plans the product. He reviews their work and directs rework and even personnel replacement as necessary. If a director gathers a team that is so good that the best thing he can do is just keep out of the way, then he has fulfilled his job perfectly and as long as the finished product is a good film, he is a good director. I liken it to an orchestral conductor. So many people will say a conductor just waves his hands until the music stops and then turns around and bows, but nothing is further from the truth. Each musician masters his or her instrument and performs the piece, but the conductor plays the orchestra and can draw the best out of it, or can squash all of the life out of the piece being performed. The conductor is not going to get a spectacular performance out of second rate musicians, but he can kill a performance of masters. A good performance of an orchestra with masterful musicians equals a good conductor. We can get into what the effect outside forces, such as the producer, may have on the director or the film, but all else being equal, Good Film = Good Direction. I have to say that I love Moviewise and watch these videos all the time. I've seem almost all of them. Please keep making these very entertaining videos.
Exactly, in television there's a term for this -- the showrunner. And good show = good showrunner, typically. Hence the directors of TV shows don't tend to get credit for things outside their purview. But for films it's the director who is usually the "film runner" i.e. project manager.
Yeah, the analogy I usually use is the CEO approach to be a (American) football head coach. They don't call plays for either side of the ball, but hire good assistants and handle more big picture issues for the team. There are head coaches who call plays, they'd probably be akin to those who are writer-directors. In other words, different ways to do it. One not necessarily better than the other.
One of my favorite famous lines, “You’re right, I did lose a million this year. And I expect to lose a million next year. At this rate I’ll have to close this place down in… sixty years.” It’s an example of a great moment in cinema that can, in good faith, be wholly attributed to Orson Welles. Even though, like you said, we can’t always know with a certainty whose influence is felt in this case, out of the multiple screenwriters of Citizen Kane, but Welles was one of them in addition to directing and acting in this scene. Is it necessary to know on a granular basis if Mankiewicz wrote that line specifically? No, although if it is known that he did, one could put an annotation saying so. But regardless, it would in no way be inaccurate to say that we can thank Orson Welles for this moment. If we assume he didn’t write it, Welles still planned the context of it in the writing room of what was said, he shot it in the frame choosing the staging and composition where it was said, and stood on set in camera controlling the delivery of how it was said. The only thing stopping him from speaking to us directly is the fact that he’s portraying a character in a fictional story.
they're the executive foreman on all creative decisions, following the schedule creating the schedule, getting the shots shot on schedule, producing the final film, they're the pit boss manager of the entire project. Thanks for calling me a nobody.
your review was prosaic without shrubbery, a truly despondent exercise in symbolic horticulture 13:05 "The only job that a director can do in a film of real value, is to do something more than will happen automatically" - Orson Welles
I tend to prefer direction that serves the story rather than direction that looks clever. Consider Birdman vs. 1917. Both movies are shot so they look like a single camera filmed the entire movie in one shot, an impressive achievement in both cases. In Birdman I often found myself marveling at how clever the shot was, but not caring about what was happening in the story (this is in no way to throw shade on Michael Keaton or the other great actors). Contrast this with the same technique used in 1917, where I was unable to relax because I was in the trenches with the main character, knowing danger could appear at any time.
THIS. Sorry Moviewise - direction that calls attention to itself without communicating anything - is NOT good direction. The Woody Allen Joke part of this video is the core of it - there are infinite ways to visually present a great drama or screenplay. In both theater and film, the director sets that direction and brings the other creative contributors along to fulfill that vision. That process can be tightly predefined like Disney or Hitchcock - or more open ended, and more collaborative. A clever camera or staging choice THAT SERVES THE DIRECTOR'S VERSION OF THE STORY is great direction.
Moviewise also prefers direction that doesn't draw attention to itself. Michael Curtiz, John Ford and Joseph L. Mankiewicz are some of his favorite directors. The classic Hollywood directing style, which is his favorite, is all about being invisible.
Yes, Birdman has that style for the sake of style thing going on, but what doesn't these days? Personally, the continuous shot trick may be nice I guess, but 100% what makes the movie great are the characters and the constant clash between "real art" and "pop culture". Aside from the daughter, every single character is placed on one side or the other of the spectrum. That's ALL screenplay.
Thank you. It’s the collaboration that can make any film become something timeless, but the words and the story written on the paper needs to be good enough to captivate the director in the first place.
I've watched all of your videos, and this may be my favorite. Your belief in objective quality (which most video-essayists lack) is extremely refreshing, and I'm glad to see it applied to a topic that's usually muddy with pretentious vagueness. Many thanks, and much respect.
As a hyphenate (writer/director/editor; mostly for commercials and short films), the edit has been key for the reception on the pics I worked on, One project that I directed for a fashion brand, where I wrote the script - IMHO a clever one - was cut down due to that filming was working next to the fashion shoot for said brand, So schedule was slashed right before production could begin. I worked around it and still created a coherent story and a solid edit. However, midst of post production, the heads at the firm switched. And demanded a new edit with footage that was never scripted, storyboarded nor shot. I had to spend 2 days showing the new lead all the footage from a 4 day shoot (mind you; we had twin sets of cameras, so there was LOADS of camera angles and footage to plow through, which I already had). It landed in me having to do another edit to music that did not fit the vibe of the images at all. Needless to say; it never landed on my reel; because the end result became an abomination that I couldn't stand for.
If you argue that Bava, Suzuki, and Argento made bad films, maybe you should elaborate on what you define as a "bad fiilm" (I can agree with Argento). For, the way I understand your argument, you could easily add Ingmar Bergman to that list. He made films with weak screenplays that are only good because of his direction, e.g. The Hour of the Wolf, The Magician, The Virgin Spring.
Great video, but shots are still not all their work. They pitch actors, discuss their parts, try to take out of actor the most they can, they deside whether to have another take and so on. So I at least disagree with the part about actors. Yeah, you expect them to act well either way, but somehow Penelope acts great only with Pedro and Mann, and she is wooden with other directors.
in the Woody Allen analysis Woody is making a purely verbal joke! the joke is words. That's why is funny. its about words. like a pun. There are things like "visual jokes" and jokes that rely on visuals and words, and there's slapstick. That's why your analysis is incomplete if not wrong. Do horror: "if the film is scary then it is well directed." Disprove this(using horror)! lets see if your analysis works there. is the scripts scary by itself? do it, lets see something. Heck even do a thriller, let's see how not bogus your analysis is. if a thriller is thrilling then its well directed. let's see.
Tried watching A CRISI IN SIX SCENES last night, unwatchable, like at 15% speed storytelling. When did Woody fully lose it or has it been a steady decline?
I don’t think you got the point. Moviewise was replying to the comment that woody’s early films are funny so they must be well directed. In this case, the comedy is done mainly verbally, therefore not much visuals are required to keep them funny. That of course doesn’t mean that you cannot deliver comedy through visual gags, it was just one case of the screenplay doing the work instead of the directing. An opposite case would be longlegs which Moviewise mentions in the same video 😂. A film that delivers on the expectations of its genre through its direction rather than its screenplay. In one case the screenplay is commendable while the other is nothing special, and in the other case it’s the opposite. That’s all it is.
Here you offer quite a literal-minded, narrow and rigid interpretation of the video's argument. There is nothing "purely verbal" about any moment of any film. In the example he uses, the verbal punchline lands more resoundingly because it is kept offscreen--a visual choice in concert with the dialogue.
@@lanolinlightHe went through all the possible ways the joke could’ve been shot. And while the one where it’s off screen is pretty darn good, his examples show that it’s not on some godly pedestal and that other versions would work just as well, because the humor (in this instance) comes from the script and less so the direction.
@@edmundcastle8201 But it does come from the direction. The close-up on the face correlates with the text. Add to that the weird hairdue, the straight to camera performance and the mentioned off-screen punchline. If it were directed in any other way, like doing a 360 round trip around Allen, it would lose focus. I think it works because it's simple and effective.
I know an editor. I once asked him: "Everyone credits the director with doing the job of the writer. Everyone credits the DP with doing the job of the director. Everyone credits the camera operator with doing the job of the DP. So what does everyone think YOU do?" He didn't know, but he agreed that it probably wasn't editing.
I have the impression that actors are also to often credited/blamed for what is really due to good/bad screenwriting. It's hard to impress the audience when the script gives you just bad lines, and much easier if all your lines are great.
The idea of "bad direction" in movies is often an oversimplified myth perpetuated by armchair critics who mistake personal taste or genre preference for objective assessment. Let’s be clear: direction is not inherently "bad" just because a film doesn’t align with your expectations. A director’s role is multifaceted, balancing storytelling, visual language, actor performances, pacing, and tone-elements that are often misunderstood or overlooked by casual viewers. First, what people call "bad direction" is frequently a deliberate artistic choice. A slow-paced scene or an unconventional camera angle might seem awkward to some but can serve a purpose in the narrative or evoke a specific emotional response. Look at directors like Lars von Trier or David Lynch-divisive in their methods yet celebrated for their bold visions. Calling their work "bad" often reflects a lack of engagement with their creative intent, not a genuine failure in execution. Second, audiences tend to conflate their dissatisfaction with broader production issues-poor CGI, weak scripts, or even miscast actors-and blame the director for the final product. This is unfair. A director operates within constraints, often fighting studio interference, budget limitations, or market pressures. They aren’t omnipotent architects; they’re collaborators navigating a labyrinth of creative and logistical challenges. Finally, history has repeatedly proven that so-called "badly directed" films can later be hailed as masterpieces. Alfred Hitchcock's *Vertigo* was initially dismissed as overwrought, only to later be celebrated as one of the greatest films of all time. Such examples reveal that what’s perceived as "bad" direction often reflects contemporary biases, not enduring artistic failure. The next time you're tempted to dismiss a film due to "bad direction," ask yourself: Are you critiquing the filmmaker’s craft or simply reacting to your own expectations? The line between visionary and misunderstood is thin-perhaps it’s worth reconsidering where you stand. #FilmDebunked #DirectorialVision #CinemaCritique
"Stupidity is laziness. Stupidity is a guy who lives, and he says to himself: that's enough for me. That's enough for me. I'm alive, I'm fine, that's enough for me. And he doesn't kick himself in the ass every morning by saying: it's not enough, you don't know enough things, you don't see enough things, you don't do enough things. It's laziness, I think it's stupidity. A kind of fat around the heart that happens; fat around the brain. I think that's it." Jacques Brel
Jesus, this was really top, top quality. About the general premise, almost nothing truer has ever been said. C'est gros comme une maison, as Truffaut might have said (and poor old François was much more a woo-woo pedlar in his criticism than in his actual films which are pretty rigorously narrative-driven). As for Sarris, did he run over your cat or something? Jeez, that was a trip out to the wood shed and no mistake. But a wonderful video, funny, clever and really beautifully written. Thank you. I've lived long enough to hear someone say lèse-majesté on UA-cam. What a world!
Many directors, from Howard Hawks to Robert Altman, are known for rewriting on the set from day to day. Some of them can do it and some can't. Some of them want to work that way and some don't. Altman liked to encourage the actors to improvise -- sometimes providing them with the basic situation for a scene or a set-up, miking them, and then letting them improvise without necessarily knowing if they're even on camera or not. ("If you do something interesting, maybe you'll wind up in the movie," Altman supposedly told them on the set of a "Nashville" party scene.) But the screenplay is not just the dialogue. It is also the structure and how the story is told -- but films can be entirely reshuffled and reshaped in post-production in ways undreamed of in the screenplay. Whole stories can be changed -- just as an entire performance (and its meaning in context) can be altered with something as simple as substituting a few alternate takes in which the actor was trying out different approaches to a character within a scene. Or take a look at the original 1984 studio release of "Once Upon a Time in America" and compare it to Sergio Leone's "director's cut" -- they're completely different movies. I remember wondering why Quentin Tarantino (whose one strength as a writer, I think, is his approach to structure) put the Jonah Hill scene in "Django Unchained" where it obviously does not belong. Only later did I read that he had to move it from where it was in the screenplay because it was disrupting the pacing of the film. Of course, he's the writer AND the director (with a lot of clout) so he can do whatever he wants. He had to compromise... with reality, and with himself.
@@GaryTongue-zn5di Lawrence Bender was his partner and producer from "Reservoir Dogs" through "Inglourious Basterds." Tarantino lost me after that (and after the death of Sally Menke who was his most important creative collaborator), so I admit I didn't remember who produced the subsequent films. I lost interest.
2:50 I don't know, the Watchmen movie has almost the same story as the comic, but Snyder's "cool" direction makes the story go from a mockery of the concept of a superhero world, to a dark and serious superhero story.
I remember watching the highly lauded Apollo 13. I was a big fan of Phillip Kauffman's brilliantly directed The Right Stuff, and was hoping for something similar. Despite the optics, Apollo 13 was uninspired directing at its most pedestrian. Cookie cutter editing and an orchestral score that was slathered over almost the entire production. Maybe if Kauffman hadn't made The Right Stuff I would have appreciated Apollo 13 more, but what I saw was one film was made by an artist and the other was made by a Hollywood craftsman. It also proved your point. Audiences are more attuned to the script and actors than they are to directing. Bad directing always gets a free pass when the script is good.
'To make a good film, you need three things: a good script, a good script and a good script.' - variously attributed to Chaplin, Hitchcock and Buñuel. I like to think they all said it. On the other hand, though also regarding your point about the things for which directors unfairly get credit, Alexander Mackendrick, who both wrote and directed, talks about a former crew member who, when asked about Mackendrick, replied, 'Oh yes. Sandy worked on several of *my* films.' The man was a set builder. Mackendrick said his use of 'my' was entirely correct: that the film was a product of all such contributions and would stand or fall only on them all succeeding.
reminds me of the Billy Wilder quote where someone asked him if directors need to know how to write and he responded with something like "its not necessary that a good director knows how to write, but it helps if he knows how to read"
Regarding auteur theory, the quotation by Truffaut at c. 07:20 points towards a different, more fundamental problem: bad translation. It's something that plagues critical writing in particular since the results tend to read more as transliterations than translations, and so what would make a perfectly cromulent style in French is transmuted into something more, well, terrible. So auteur theory really comes from the idea that a director's body of work will have something/some things in common. Such as the use of colour palettes by Refn, for example, or Von trier's stylistic diversity that serve to heighten the filmic nature of his work. Lynch's use of imagery, particulary the almost Manichean duality of 1950s wholesomeness/the underworld's underbelly, is another. And yes, it does contain a lot of elements best credited to others, because ideally the director chooses to work with these--hence Lynch', & bergman's & Cronenberg's & &tc's preferral to use a familiar cast in many of their films. Likewise the familiar use of Elman's soundtracks by Burton, Badilamenti's by Lynch, & so forth. And frankly, the shots should really be credited to the DP, the editing to the editor, & the director to the coordination of the whole. Their work is more that of a conductor, making sure everyone is working in concord. That said, there is that continual push-pull dynamic between directors & producers, with the balance of power constantly aspiring, as it were, towards the producers, so often enough directors are blamed for stuff that falls into the purview of the producers. Viz. Lynch's adaptation of Dune; contrast with Mel Brooks' advocacy for Lynch in re. The Elephant Man. So directors are essentially glorified coxswain's reminding the crew to work in concord, in tandem, whilst others, such as Uwe Bool are best described using the same term, albeit hevily pruned to just under the first syllable. I'd like to say, regarding that last remark, that I'm "just putting it out there" but I don't wanna get done for indecent exposure.... P.S.: The general state of art criticism is abysmal, anyways, especially regarding statements of fact. P.P.S.: Sarris doesn't have the room to develop & justify his impressionistic style, hence the truncated analyses lend themselves to a condensed risibility. So, in seeking to convey the core essences of the directorial styles, Sarris has taken the pith & thrown away all the rest. P.P.P.S.: Bad directors make more indifferent films than bad ones, no? P.P.P.P.S.: The Boris joke works because he's breaking the wall, so the "optional shots" would profit by preserving. P.P.P.P.P.S.: Soderburg reminds me of Attenborough's Life on Earth series when he set out to shoot the difficult/impossible.
Brilliantly put, very much agree about the Boris joke, none of those angles he suggested work because as well as the one that was chosen, because its a fourth wall joke.
If only we could do the following experiment: Take the same script, same cast, same crew, but different directors. Let's see how different the films turn out to be, or not. Then we will have some real answers.
Hello sir, I'm an aspiring filmmaker. I'm very thrilled after watching this video. It helped me understand the work directors do and cleared up many misconceptions I had. I used to believe that successful directors were some kind of perfect humans, which led to me experiencing imposter syndrome. I'll save this video so that, in the future, if I ever get ahead of myself and my ego inflates, it will humble me and remind me that filmmaking is not a one-man show but a collaborative process.
But the director chooses to participate having read the script. If the screenplay is bad and the movie ends up bad, its still majorly on the director’s decision to even work with a bad screenplay
hey can you please tell where is your video about todd field's tar???
Місяць тому
If I remember correctly, I think you should check out the 4 videos he did 1 year ago about the Oscar nominees, screenplay, direction, etc. I don’t think he made a video about that movie specifically but he definitely mentions it in some of those videos.
I did make a Tár review but I’ve deleted every review from the channel by now. I may upload it on my Patreon someday. I just didn’t want the channel to have regular reviews.
3:11 - Actuallyyy ... The storyboards provide shot direction and it isn't always (rarely, in fact) the director involved with that. However, the director does choose to create a new shot on the fly and let the editor select between them or tell the editor to use that shot. The director does, however, often choose distance, movement and camera position. Also, you seem to be confusing cinematography, lighting and staging departments for direction in some cases.
I have to disagree with this somewhat. Sure a screenplay establishes a lot. But the director picks a screenplay to work on, or to pass on a screenplay based on what's in their own head about it. That's a skill in itself. some directors want word exact performances. Others like to have the actors riff from the screenplay as a base. Characters? Something is in the screenplay, but personalities can wind up completely different from what the writer intended. Locations? The director has a lot of control over what those locations turn out to be, and locations routinely get cut or changed for practical reasons during production. You say that you can't complement a director for the fact that a character shot another character, but then also talk about Indiana Jones and the time the team had to improvise and do something that wasn't in the script and he shot a guy. I'm sorry, but you can't actually credit that to the screenwriter, even if you think it was something that was "supposed" to come from them. And tons of shot choices come from the DP or people other than the director. The director is overseeing all of production, but it's silly to say that every shot comes from the director. That's not at all how many sets work. And the editor has a ton to say about shot choice and shot timing, sometimes making a scene quite different from what the director intended and throwing away the shots that the director chose. And you totally dismiss the director as guiding the performances. I'd suggest watching the Tina Fey film Whiskey Tango Foxtrot as a counterpoint. It has an absolutely stacked cast, on par with many of the greatest films. And yet it wasn't a successful film at all, and a lot of that has to do with the direction letting great actors loose to do their thing, and them clearly not getting consistent direction about tone and how to be in the same movie. There are tons of bad movies with great actors in them so pointing at AugustOC and saying it has a solid cast so the director had nothing to do with the performances is entirely unconvincing. It's not about the director being an auteur. It's just a reality that directors are involved in decisions that effect every department, not just the camera. Those impacts can be vague and hard to articulate, and vary wildly between specific projects. But no, you can not judge me as a director based on just shots. That's silly. There are lots of shots I can't even really take credit for.
@@MealDealSupreme Yeah. I'm not some world class director that anybody should be studying, but I did direct an indie feature that's in post production right now. We were super low budget so I wore more hats than a "real" director. But I learned enough about the experience by doing it to know that there's a million decisions that need to be made to get something on a screen and the director is ultimately responsible for them. Some directors are super focused on shot making. But frankly my relationship with my DP meant I was much more focused on other things, like directing performance, and there were dozens of times my DP would do something and go "You like this?" and I'd check the monitor and be surprised but like it and we'd go with that. It's still 1000% my movie and looks quite different from other stuff that DP has shot. And for another example, one actor bailed at the last minute and got replaced with somebody who didn't have enough time to learn ten pages of technical dialogue. (And related to the scheduling issues, the original location got booked, so we wound up at a second choice studio that was laid out different from where I planned shooting.) So the final edit for that scene is gonna be choppy as hell. Frankenlines over inserts of hands typing. Jumpy cuts. All sorts of weird shot choices to cover up the work needed to tighten the dialogue because the actor who came in last minute wasn't given the rehearsal time to nail it on the day. Not their fault -- just how it goes sometimes. Somebody will look at that scene and go, "What weird shot choices the director made." And the reality is that scene just had to turn out way different from what was in my head, and doesn't match my shotlist. Some of that wound up beyond my control. But the many things I *actually* did to get that scene made up of those shots apparently don't count.
@guaposneeze I've only directed shorts, but the amount of effort that goes into every decision (especially if producing as well) makes me call bullshit on just judging it by the shots. It's making a decision for every little thing on set, or building a vision between so many departments that allows you to let them work in their best way. According to this guy a director and a cinematographer are the same thing. What about sound design? That's a full on creative process with another person too, as is editing, production design, performances, it's more than just slamming the camera down and saying action.
Coming from a similar experience, I agree with you completely. He’s not wrong about the importance of the screenplay, but he collapses the job of directing into something cheap and simplistic
Directors choose locations - so the type of trees are kinda important to his 'vision'. The difference between reading a book and seeing the movie version is monumental - often it's the trees, or the urban landscapes that play a fundamental backdrop to the the actors standing in front of it. I have in mind that shot from taxi driver where Travis is leaving work - the director chose a very long lens to compress the depth of field and glue Travis into the desolation around him. These are not random choices, they're the magic element, often together with the cinematographer, that make it a movie and not a written screenplay
As much as I hate Sarris' take on Auteur theory, I think he was right about those trees. He wasn't implying an abject quality to them (like this essayist does for Good Directing and Bad Directing), he's talking about the choice made to show those trees. Griffiths are wide, they're warm, they're shown with a nostalgic look. Antonioni's are stark and distant, thin. There's a reason they're being shown. To this guy there's only choices, and no artistic decision behind why, only what's good or bad (Beautiful shot good, ugly shot bad, flowery writing good, simple writing bad). It's the whole point of art!
Dear Moviewise, 1st off, I [probably] agree with most of what you're saying. but I think that the bit of [something of] "it should be split up between writers and directors" should be expanded to [perhaps among others] directors, screenwriters, cinematographers and editors. and 2nd off, I'd [probably] like to suggest some ideas for [probably] people to do future videos about: Paul fejos, Aleksandr Ptushko, Preston Sturges, Norman Lear, the three silent clowns, Jacques Tati, Pierre Etaix, Jerry Lewis, Charley Bowers, Chuck Jones, William Cameron Menzies, Jackie Chan, Edward Yang, Samuel Fuller, Yasujiro Ozu and Richard Lester. Good luck.
Does the usage and placement of the score has anything to do with the film's direction? Yesterday i watched The Letter, directed by William Wyler and Scored by Max Steiner. I had mixed feelings about it's quality compared to Jean De Muir's version. The thing that made me think the most is when where Bette Davis is emotionally lying about what her shooting mr. Hammond, and Steiner's music literally exploded on my tv speakers right befor she had a mental breakdown. This same technique was used another 2 or 3 times in the film. I felt a lot more emotion when this happened. I kept thinking if using music to influence the viewers either positively or negatively was a good directing choice or a bad directing choice, but now i'm questioning if it even is a directing choice?
It's very much a directing choice, and it cannot be good or bad inherently because it depends on the film. This video is a very simple look at directing.
Depends on the context - what character is saying it, in what scene, etc. But generally I agree, I think simple and clear writing is preferable to purple prose.
It is possible to use a large number of closeups to great effect. In the 50's version of the tv show Dragnet, they cut different shots of the suspect they're interviewing together. We see the suspect's hands fidget, their eyes shift, etc, showing us how nervous he or she is. Compare that to the 60's version of the same show, where the interviews were mostly talking heads.
11:20 I’m changing career! My many years of experience writing for B2B have prepared me well to write reams of nonsense🤩 Only instead of listening to corporate briefings, I’ll just watch movies instead 👍 Thanks Moviewise, you succeeded where many career councilors had failed.
Excellent video. It's always great to hear you. You make me see in a new and fresh way to the movies. Great example Longlegs, impressive direction, but very boring plot.
i wasn't impressed by either, i'm not sure how that flick got the acclaim it did of course saying something has a "bad plot" also makes my eyes roll plot schmott, i say we should rather be focused on story, theme, narrative, character, scene, subject, and dialogue
@charoleawood I was very interested in it, but for a thriller about the FBI chasing a psychopathic killer with also some sort of enigma, it was very disappointing, admittedly a very simplistic description, but that's what I got out of it. I got bored.
Great video. Does this mean that Pauline Kael was right when she rejected auteur theory, but claimed that the screenwriter is the primary “author” of the film?
There's a 1974 interview with Francis Ford Coppola in which Coppola essentially argues for the writer as the biggest influence in the film. Most notably, he also says that a director such as Alfred Hitchcock, who worked heavily in collaboration with his writers when writing the screenplay of any of his movies, is a writer as well. A lot of the auteur directors really were writers as well in how heavily they participated in the writing process and chose what scripts to work on even for directors who weren't credited on-screen with any writing, such as Hitchcock. I don't remember who said it, but there's a quote from an anime director saying that he was able to get ahead of directors who were better than him just because he was seen as an auteur. But we should better appreciate great directors who aren't necessarilu auteurs.
I disagree on the Woody Allen example. I think the way he shot it is actually the most funny of all the versions you exemplified because it's the one where there's a reversal of our expectations. We think he is talking to the audience without her listening, so when he is addressing her it ends up like an reversed breaking of the fourth wall (building the fourth wall?) which I think adds a layer to the joke.
a great screenplay w/ a bad director will often result in something of value to the audience, but a bad script in the hands of a great director will not -billy wilder
I hate, hate, hate that people give writers so little credit.
listed to Harlan Ellison's take on that subject.
Directors set the tone of a film. They decide the pitch at which a performance is given. The accenting of a given theme. The length of a given shot can change how an audience perceives the themes. Douglas Sirk took soap opera-ish scripts and made complex films from them that had to be "read" visually. Whatever you see in a film was because of the ultimate decision of the director to include it.
The director also sets the story context in which the actor performs. He answers the question, "What's my motivation?" Shots are filmed out of sequence most of the time, the director's job is to ensure that each shot's performance matches their intended role throughout.
Example: A villain being revealed in a film. I often know who the bad guy is in such movies or shows because the actor is unintentionally behaving like they're hiding something. I can't exactly put my finger on it but it's the body language and tone of someone who's slightly too self-assured to be just another character. You know the intent of the writing was that that character should come off like all the others in at their level in the screenplay but the actor's performance sticks out like someone who knows something nobody else knows. The only case this works is when that character is truly innocent.
The director's job is to spot these performance problems and correct them on the day. He didn't catch that the hidden-villain actor was inconsistent with the innocent characters.
I was the lead in a student film because I helped out on some simple scenes for a friend's short assignments. I was passable, I guess, so he placed me in a longer piece. The problem on the various shoot days was that he gave me virtually no direction so I had no context for how he desired to portray the character. I didn't know even where to begin. He was never clear so I couldn't establish that character's emotional schema.
I had no acting training but I instinctively knew my own method -- get all the information I can about a character's operating assumptions (motivation et al) and impose that mindset on myself by amplifying or suppressing my own natural reactions to suit that character. To be frank, it took a lot out of me. I could never rid myself of the feeling of being totally exposed -- like I was displaying too much of my emotional reality for the world to see. I sincerely accessed real emotions so when I spoke a line, it was emotionally true so it would be portrayed as true on camera.
Lacking solid direction, I wasn't able to nail down my emotional context -- I wasn't able to speak the lines as believably as I would've liked in that longer piece. This wasn't the fault of any of any of us because it was a first-year student film and none of us had really done any role in that regard: direction, acting, etc. Also, it was one guy being camera man, director, and sound guy all at once. He did great for having to focus on all those technicalities.
I didn't catch the acting bug. I felt too exposed and probably hadn't processed a lot of the violence and torment I had fought through in jr high and the first half of high school. Expressing any vulnerability after that was like defying all the hard lessons I had learned to survive.
Without a truly good director, I don't think actors can pull off notable performances -- unless you're among the very few who can get into character like second nature. You can spot those kinds of actors in how they perform with green-screen work. Some actors can't sell that they're interacting unless they can see it. Others can perform expertly in any scenario. The character is so well assimilated that the actor can react to anything convincingly.
But those actors are very rare.
On set, and in post, the Director is the Decider. Got it, moving on, trim three frames from the tail, moving on...
@@geoffhoutman1557sometimes the director does not have anything to do with the editing process and may as well be a stooge
It would be interesting to see a video about producers because it seems to be a far more nebulous and less understood role in filmmaking than directing.
It isn't rocket science,dumbass.
Screenwriters write the damn thing including creating characters and dialogue.
Directors just take the real life elements and brings the screenplay to the physical and visual...
And producers don't do anything except fund the film!
As far as I am aware; a producer just ensures the film gets *seen*.
@TheEternalOuroboros
Wrong, dumbass. That's a DISTRIBUTOR. A producer simply Funds a film like I said!, why people always try to argue against me when I'm right? That's why Will Smith gets a producer credit on every single Cobra Kai episode, despite not working on the show at all, because he bought rights to The Karate Kid and Funds the show.
Money
The director of this video is a genius. Love the script. Love the editing. Love the voice over. A movie wise director!
His casting was inspired as well.
So many metaphors!
It's the video's script, dummy.
So far... Best channel about Cinematography. Please don't change.
Absolutely
One of the only video essay channels where i feel like I'm learning things
I think part of the disconnect is that we don't have a different word for "directing" i.e. choosing shots and executing them, to separate it from the penumbra of other responsibilities that a "film director" may have, at least in the modern, post-New Hollywood era. In classical Hollywood a director was often assigned a screenplay and a cast and told to do a job. For accomplished modern directors, who are often their own producers, their responsibilities go far beyond choosing shots -- it encompasses choosing what scripts to work on, choosing the actors, choosing the other professionals who work on the film (photographer, editor, score composer, etc.)
For major modern directors (Spielberg, Scorsese, Nolan, etc.) I don't think it's entirely inaccurate when we ascribe them "authorship" of a film, because those directors are in fact influencing every part of the film production. If they were making TV, they'd be referred to as "showrunners."
A great example of this is Tomas Alfredsson. Guy literaly made two masterpieces of cinema, "Let the Right One In" and "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", and the absolute trainwreck called "The Snowman". One of the main reasons why the film failed miserably was because the weather conditions were a huge obstacle that severely damaged the shooting schedule to the point that Tomas couldn’t make the film the way he wanted. It doesn’t matter how good you are if the work environment is unsustainable.
I agree. But there are also insane magician like Werner Herzog and Terry Gilliam who can make brilliant movies in most extreme condition/production 😅
@@halimghaniYeah but they are literally godamnd magicians and two of the greatest of all time!
@@lacinebutacagmailReal
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is very good, but people exaggerate how good it is. I still think the much less flashy mini series with Sir Alec Guinness is the best version of the novel.
The best way to do the Smiley novels justice would be multiple seasons of TV, with enough space for the characters and world to be fully realized. Jared Harris would be wonderful as George Smiley.
@@halimghaniGilliam is extremely talented, but I think he has some weird hang ups that don’t always feel sincere to me, that everything has to look like some kind of rococo circus. The Fisher King may be his greatest work.
The director is the connective tissue between all the departments to create a cohesive whole. They ensure everything fits together to effectively convey the story. Directors collaborate with the various departments, weigh their ideas alongside their own, and give the final approval on what stays in the movie or not (though this is often influenced by investors, financial constraints, or departmental pressures). Ultimately, the director bears creative responsibility for whether the movie "works" or not.
How a director works, and how much they’re involved in a specific department, depends on their interests and background. A former cinematographer or someone with a strong visual sensibility like Ridley Scott might be deeply involved in the camera department, creating detailed shot lists or storyboarding their vision. Others might not even know what focal lengths are and simply rely on the DP's expertise, approving shots with a quick glance through the viewfinder (I'm looking at you Kevin Smith). I don't think Woody Allen didn’t suddenly became a better director - I think he just started working with a more competent DP. My guess is Moviewise is a visual thinker, and so naturally emphasize angles and composition.
Costume design, color grading, location scouting, screenwriting, acting and so on, are all departments a director can be deeply involved in... or not. A former actor, for example, might spend most of their time working closely with the cast, ohers might find it useless. The approach to directing actors also varies culturally. In the West, stars might ignore a first-time director, while in Asia, directors often have absolute authority over all departments.
Learning about directing solely by interpreting movies is inherently flawed because all we get to see is the final product, the interplay of all departments. This often leads to over-interpretations, like seeing shapes in clouds (or in Kubrick's films). The truth is filmmaking is often more practical than artistic. Decisions are driven by the need to convey information, the constraints of the era, available equipment, or the budget. Techniques like close camera angles symbolizing emotional closeness, or desaturation signifying unfulfilled characters, are quite established and not profound. They certainly don’t require a "genius". Maybe Kurosawa didn’t intend to convey loneliness with a wide shot. Maybe he just wanted to showcase the beautiful landscape, and it all came together in the edit with the music. We’ll never know for sure, and that’s okay.
As for auteur theory, it’s not inherently bad, as Moviewise suggests. Originally, it simply argued that a director’s voice, much like that of an author of a book, can emerge from the collaborative chaos of filmmaking. But of course by now it's been exaggerated to the point where most would claim the director single-handedly wills the movie into existence, which is of course absurd.
I remember reading an interview with Ronald Harwood; he related how he and Janusz Kaminski sat on stage with Julian Schnabel, after a film-festival screening of The Diving Bell & The Butterfly. Apparently Schnabel went on and on about how great a director he was. After an hour of unending self-promotion, Kaminski turned to Harwood and said, ‘after all, all I did was turn up and sweep the floor each day’.
Hey man, i appreciate your work.
I discovered your channel and have watched more than 80% of your videos.
I learned more about cinema in last 7 days than last 2 years.
Thank You alot
Directors are in charge of every creative element of the film and setting the “direction” of each key creative working on the picture, setting the tone, and the thematic perspective; so much more than just coming up with the shots. They guide and coach the performances, they collaborate and influence and have final say of the set and costume design, the sound design, music, colour correction… the director is the captain of the creative ship and the Shepard of the project; the core collaborator with every role attached to telling the story.
Entertaining and informative! Like how you are layering great cinema techniques and quality work with comedy!
I've seen so many people say "This director has gone down hill because his recent movies are bad", when the director is the same as ever, the movies just had terrible writing (which is becoming all too common lately).
Thanks for sharing that commentary from The Third Man, it describes the topic perfectly.
It’s part of the issue with modern Hollywood’s obsession with the two in one writer/director. Because the same person wrote and directed the film, it’s easy to conflate the two roles when in reality someone could be a great writer but terrible director or vice versa.
The different directing approaches to the one Woody Allen joke is a fantastic example of what film directing and filmmaking is about. I think a lot of people who love movies go their whole lives without ever knowing or appreciating that one facet of the pretty complicated process of movie making. Once again, thanks so much for your work, mysterious Moviewise person! :)
That Woody Allen sequence is hilarious and a great lesson in directing
Directors DO infuence an actor's performance. I've seen world famous actors put out shitty performances due to poor direction 🤷♂️
I 10000% agree.
another joyful, witty video from the best movie channel out there 🤩👏 the part with the ''trees analysis'' was priceless 😂🤣
Not that I disagree, but if directors are responsible for “shots,” what do cinematographers do? Don’t think you quite covered this specifically, so curious on your take.
The director visualizes the shot, then transmutes it to The cinematographer & he/she captures it, hopefully adding something to it.
The director and the Cinematographer are the same except the director is more creative, focusing on composition, framing, coverage, and blocking, while the Cinematographer focuses on aperture, exposure, lighting, lenses and which camera to use to capture what the director visualizes.
The Director answers WHAT DO WE SHOOT?
The Cinematographer answers the HOW DO WE CAPTURE IT?
@@TheRulerRoderickSutton Agreed.
i agree with a lot of that but how can you say they’re the same but have entirely different jobs and responsibilities, they really aren’t the same at all
Alongside the cinema cartography and archival channels, Moviewise is making the most tasteful and most entertaining video essay's on cinema yt has to offer imo - total genius
I don't know if someone has commented on this below, but I fall very much on the side of Good Film = Good Direction. The film director is like the project manager. It is his responsibility to create a product that satisfies the requirements in the best possible way, with the resources at his disposal. He gathers his team together. He plans the product. He reviews their work and directs rework and even personnel replacement as necessary. If a director gathers a team that is so good that the best thing he can do is just keep out of the way, then he has fulfilled his job perfectly and as long as the finished product is a good film, he is a good director.
I liken it to an orchestral conductor. So many people will say a conductor just waves his hands until the music stops and then turns around and bows, but nothing is further from the truth. Each musician masters his or her instrument and performs the piece, but the conductor plays the orchestra and can draw the best out of it, or can squash all of the life out of the piece being performed. The conductor is not going to get a spectacular performance out of second rate musicians, but he can kill a performance of masters. A good performance of an orchestra with masterful musicians equals a good conductor.
We can get into what the effect outside forces, such as the producer, may have on the director or the film, but all else being equal, Good Film = Good Direction.
I have to say that I love Moviewise and watch these videos all the time. I've seem almost all of them. Please keep making these very entertaining videos.
Exactly, in television there's a term for this -- the showrunner. And good show = good showrunner, typically. Hence the directors of TV shows don't tend to get credit for things outside their purview. But for films it's the director who is usually the "film runner" i.e. project manager.
Yeah, the analogy I usually use is the CEO approach to be a (American) football head coach. They don't call plays for either side of the ball, but hire good assistants and handle more big picture issues for the team.
There are head coaches who call plays, they'd probably be akin to those who are writer-directors. In other words, different ways to do it. One not necessarily better than the other.
One of my favorite famous lines,
“You’re right, I did lose a million this year. And I expect to lose a million next year. At this rate I’ll have to close this place down in… sixty years.”
It’s an example of a great moment in cinema that can, in good faith, be wholly attributed to Orson Welles. Even though, like you said, we can’t always know with a certainty whose influence is felt in this case, out of the multiple screenwriters of Citizen Kane, but Welles was one of them in addition to directing and acting in this scene. Is it necessary to know on a granular basis if Mankiewicz wrote that line specifically? No, although if it is known that he did, one could put an annotation saying so. But regardless, it would in no way be inaccurate to say that we can thank Orson Welles for this moment.
If we assume he didn’t write it, Welles still planned the context of it in the writing room of what was said, he shot it in the frame choosing the staging and composition where it was said, and stood on set in camera controlling the delivery of how it was said. The only thing stopping him from speaking to us directly is the fact that he’s portraying a character in a fictional story.
they're the executive foreman on all creative decisions, following the schedule creating the schedule, getting the shots shot on schedule, producing the final film, they're the pit boss manager of the entire project. Thanks for calling me a nobody.
your review was prosaic without shrubbery, a truly despondent exercise in symbolic horticulture
13:05 "The only job that a director can do in a film of real value, is to do something more than will happen automatically" - Orson Welles
Thanks!
Thank you very much!
I tend to prefer direction that serves the story rather than direction that looks clever. Consider Birdman vs. 1917. Both movies are shot so they look like a single camera filmed the entire movie in one shot, an impressive achievement in both cases. In Birdman I often found myself marveling at how clever the shot was, but not caring about what was happening in the story (this is in no way to throw shade on Michael Keaton or the other great actors). Contrast this with the same technique used in 1917, where I was unable to relax because I was in the trenches with the main character, knowing danger could appear at any time.
THIS. Sorry Moviewise - direction that calls attention to itself without communicating anything - is NOT good direction.
The Woody Allen Joke part of this video is the core of it - there are infinite ways to visually present a great drama or screenplay. In both theater and film, the director sets that direction and brings the other creative contributors along to fulfill that vision. That process can be tightly predefined like Disney or Hitchcock - or more open ended, and more collaborative.
A clever camera or staging choice THAT SERVES THE DIRECTOR'S VERSION OF THE STORY is great direction.
Moviewise also prefers direction that doesn't draw attention to itself. Michael Curtiz, John Ford and Joseph L. Mankiewicz are some of his favorite directors. The classic Hollywood directing style, which is his favorite, is all about being invisible.
Yes, Birdman has that style for the sake of style thing going on, but what doesn't these days? Personally, the continuous shot trick may be nice I guess, but 100% what makes the movie great are the characters and the constant clash between "real art" and "pop culture". Aside from the daughter, every single character is placed on one side or the other of the spectrum. That's ALL screenplay.
Amazing video. Best one yet. YOUR "screenplay" is top notch on this one! haha You should make a "here is what a _____ actually does" series!
Thank you.
It’s the collaboration that can make any film become something timeless, but the words and the story written on the paper needs to be good enough to captivate the director in the first place.
I've watched all of your videos, and this may be my favorite. Your belief in objective quality (which most video-essayists lack) is extremely refreshing, and I'm glad to see it applied to a topic that's usually muddy with pretentious vagueness. Many thanks, and much respect.
Every day a director does something different. Some days he's a general, others a coach, others a firefighter.
New rating system dropped: Antonioni tree --- D.W Griffith tree.
The new Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down
As a hyphenate (writer/director/editor; mostly for commercials and short films), the edit has been key for the reception on the pics I worked on,
One project that I directed for a fashion brand, where I wrote the script - IMHO a clever one - was cut down due to that filming was working next to the fashion shoot for said brand, So schedule was slashed right before production could begin. I worked around it and still created a coherent story and a solid edit.
However, midst of post production, the heads at the firm switched. And demanded a new edit with footage that was never scripted, storyboarded nor shot. I had to spend 2 days showing the new lead all the footage from a 4 day shoot (mind you; we had twin sets of cameras, so there was LOADS of camera angles and footage to plow through, which I already had).
It landed in me having to do another edit to music that did not fit the vibe of the images at all. Needless to say; it never landed on my reel; because the end result became an abomination that I couldn't stand for.
Yeah. While I found this vid really thought-provoking, one of those thoughts was: but what about the editor?
If you argue that Bava, Suzuki, and Argento made bad films, maybe you should elaborate on what you define as a "bad fiilm" (I can agree with Argento). For, the way I understand your argument, you could easily add Ingmar Bergman to that list. He made films with weak screenplays that are only good because of his direction, e.g. The Hour of the Wolf, The Magician, The Virgin Spring.
Great video, but shots are still not all their work. They pitch actors, discuss their parts, try to take out of actor the most they can, they deside whether to have another take and so on.
So I at least disagree with the part about actors. Yeah, you expect them to act well either way, but somehow Penelope acts great only with Pedro and Mann, and she is wooden with other directors.
in the Woody Allen analysis Woody is making a purely verbal joke! the joke is words. That's why is funny. its about words. like a pun. There are things like "visual jokes" and jokes that rely on visuals and words, and there's slapstick. That's why your analysis is incomplete if not wrong. Do horror: "if the film is scary then it is well directed." Disprove this(using horror)! lets see if your analysis works there. is the scripts scary by itself? do it, lets see something. Heck even do a thriller, let's see how not bogus your analysis is. if a thriller is thrilling then its well directed. let's see.
Tried watching A CRISI IN SIX SCENES last night, unwatchable, like at 15% speed storytelling.
When did Woody fully lose it or has it been a steady decline?
I don’t think you got the point. Moviewise was replying to the comment that woody’s early films are funny so they must be well directed.
In this case, the comedy is done mainly verbally, therefore not much visuals are required to keep them funny.
That of course doesn’t mean that you cannot deliver comedy through visual gags, it was just one case of the screenplay doing the work instead of the directing.
An opposite case would be longlegs which Moviewise mentions in the same video 😂. A film that delivers on the expectations of its genre through its direction rather than its screenplay.
In one case the screenplay is commendable while the other is nothing special, and in the other case it’s the opposite. That’s all it is.
Here you offer quite a literal-minded, narrow and rigid interpretation of the video's argument. There is nothing "purely verbal" about any moment of any film. In the example he uses, the verbal punchline lands more resoundingly because it is kept offscreen--a visual choice in concert with the dialogue.
@@lanolinlightHe went through all the possible ways the joke could’ve been shot. And while the one where it’s off screen is pretty darn good, his examples show that it’s not on some godly pedestal and that other versions would work just as well, because the humor (in this instance) comes from the script and less so the direction.
@@edmundcastle8201 But it does come from the direction. The close-up on the face correlates with the text. Add to that the weird hairdue, the straight to camera performance and the mentioned off-screen punchline. If it were directed in any other way, like doing a 360 round trip around Allen, it would lose focus. I think it works because it's simple and effective.
Moviewise still stands to be the best film discussion channel on UA-cam.
As a filmmaker, this channel is everything to me
I know an editor. I once asked him: "Everyone credits the director with doing the job of the writer. Everyone credits the DP with doing the job of the director. Everyone credits the camera operator with doing the job of the DP. So what does everyone think YOU do?" He didn't know, but he agreed that it probably wasn't editing.
"A director doesn't need to know how to write, however it helps if you know how to read!"
Billy Wilder
I have the impression that actors are also to often credited/blamed for what is really due to good/bad screenwriting. It's hard to impress the audience when the script gives you just bad lines, and much easier if all your lines are great.
The idea of "bad direction" in movies is often an oversimplified myth perpetuated by armchair critics who mistake personal taste or genre preference for objective assessment. Let’s be clear: direction is not inherently "bad" just because a film doesn’t align with your expectations. A director’s role is multifaceted, balancing storytelling, visual language, actor performances, pacing, and tone-elements that are often misunderstood or overlooked by casual viewers.
First, what people call "bad direction" is frequently a deliberate artistic choice. A slow-paced scene or an unconventional camera angle might seem awkward to some but can serve a purpose in the narrative or evoke a specific emotional response. Look at directors like Lars von Trier or David Lynch-divisive in their methods yet celebrated for their bold visions. Calling their work "bad" often reflects a lack of engagement with their creative intent, not a genuine failure in execution.
Second, audiences tend to conflate their dissatisfaction with broader production issues-poor CGI, weak scripts, or even miscast actors-and blame the director for the final product. This is unfair. A director operates within constraints, often fighting studio interference, budget limitations, or market pressures. They aren’t omnipotent architects; they’re collaborators navigating a labyrinth of creative and logistical challenges.
Finally, history has repeatedly proven that so-called "badly directed" films can later be hailed as masterpieces. Alfred Hitchcock's *Vertigo* was initially dismissed as overwrought, only to later be celebrated as one of the greatest films of all time. Such examples reveal that what’s perceived as "bad" direction often reflects contemporary biases, not enduring artistic failure.
The next time you're tempted to dismiss a film due to "bad direction," ask yourself: Are you critiquing the filmmaker’s craft or simply reacting to your own expectations? The line between visionary and misunderstood is thin-perhaps it’s worth reconsidering where you stand. #FilmDebunked #DirectorialVision #CinemaCritique
Now THIS is film criticism! Great video!
A new upload from Moviewise?! Today is going to be a great day! Cheers, friend.
"Stupidity is laziness. Stupidity is a guy who lives, and he says to himself: that's enough for me. That's enough for me. I'm alive, I'm fine, that's enough for me. And he doesn't kick himself in the ass every morning by saying: it's not enough, you don't know enough things, you don't see enough things, you don't do enough things. It's laziness, I think it's stupidity. A kind of fat around the heart that happens; fat around the brain. I think that's it."
Jacques Brel
MW:you know if you think I'm wrong you could just pause the video
the audience: I will when I disagree
Another great video, thank you!
Jesus, this was really top, top quality. About the general premise, almost nothing truer has ever been said. C'est gros comme une maison, as Truffaut might have said (and poor old François was much more a woo-woo pedlar in his criticism than in his actual films which are pretty rigorously narrative-driven). As for Sarris, did he run over your cat or something? Jeez, that was a trip out to the wood shed and no mistake.
But a wonderful video, funny, clever and really beautifully written. Thank you. I've lived long enough to hear someone say lèse-majesté on UA-cam. What a world!
Could never understand why some movies were nominated for best movie awards but the directors were not. Now I know, thanks.
Just like me.
Moviewise and Cinema Tyler ON THE SAME DAY!
Sarris missing the material wood for the metaphorical trees.
Many directors, from Howard Hawks to Robert Altman, are known for rewriting on the set from day to day. Some of them can do it and some can't. Some of them want to work that way and some don't. Altman liked to encourage the actors to improvise -- sometimes providing them with the basic situation for a scene or a set-up, miking them, and then letting them improvise without necessarily knowing if they're even on camera or not. ("If you do something interesting, maybe you'll wind up in the movie," Altman supposedly told them on the set of a "Nashville" party scene.) But the screenplay is not just the dialogue. It is also the structure and how the story is told -- but films can be entirely reshuffled and reshaped in post-production in ways undreamed of in the screenplay. Whole stories can be changed -- just as an entire performance (and its meaning in context) can be altered with something as simple as substituting a few alternate takes in which the actor was trying out different approaches to a character within a scene. Or take a look at the original 1984 studio release of "Once Upon a Time in America" and compare it to Sergio Leone's "director's cut" -- they're completely different movies. I remember wondering why Quentin Tarantino (whose one strength as a writer, I think, is his approach to structure) put the Jonah Hill scene in "Django Unchained" where it obviously does not belong. Only later did I read that he had to move it from where it was in the screenplay because it was disrupting the pacing of the film. Of course, he's the writer AND the director (with a lot of clout) so he can do whatever he wants. He had to compromise... with reality, and with himself.
You left out that Tarantino is also producer for his films.
@@GaryTongue-zn5di Lawrence Bender was his partner and producer from "Reservoir Dogs" through "Inglourious Basterds." Tarantino lost me after that (and after the death of Sally Menke who was his most important creative collaborator), so I admit I didn't remember who produced the subsequent films. I lost interest.
2:50
I don't know, the Watchmen movie has almost the same story as the comic, but Snyder's "cool" direction makes the story go from a mockery of the concept of a superhero world, to a dark and serious superhero story.
That example proves the videos entire point.
After watching this video, I became a true Good Griffith tree. Thank you Moviewise.
T-shirt?
What's the movie clip at 15:34? The "sit down" bit? Looks fun
Peking Opera Blues (Hark Tsui, 1986)
Ta. Clip's only 3 seconds long but I like its energy :)
@@MoviewiseAnd the one right before it, please?
I remember watching the highly lauded Apollo 13. I was a big fan of Phillip Kauffman's brilliantly directed The Right Stuff, and was hoping for something similar. Despite the optics, Apollo 13 was uninspired directing at its most pedestrian. Cookie cutter editing and an orchestral score that was slathered over almost the entire production. Maybe if Kauffman hadn't made The Right Stuff I would have appreciated Apollo 13 more, but what I saw was one film was made by an artist and the other was made by a Hollywood craftsman. It also proved your point. Audiences are more attuned to the script and actors than they are to directing. Bad directing always gets a free pass when the script is good.
'To make a good film, you need three things: a good script, a good script and a good script.' - variously attributed to Chaplin, Hitchcock and Buñuel. I like to think they all said it.
On the other hand, though also regarding your point about the things for which directors unfairly get credit, Alexander Mackendrick, who both wrote and directed, talks about a former crew member who, when asked about Mackendrick, replied, 'Oh yes. Sandy worked on several of *my* films.' The man was a set builder. Mackendrick said his use of 'my' was entirely correct: that the film was a product of all such contributions and would stand or fall only on them all succeeding.
A good script is aways a good script but in the wrong directing hands will always be a bad movie.
@@mackychloe Sure, but I think the point is, without it, you're stuffed even if you have a good director.
@@mackychloe This is, by the way, a point you can find all the way back in Aristotle's Poetics: spectacle is nothing without a plot.
@@JohnMoseley Agreed. there's no UA-cam videos about directors making great movies from bad scripts.
reminds me of the Billy Wilder quote where someone asked him if directors need to know how to write and he responded with something like "its not necessary that a good director knows how to write, but it helps if he knows how to read"
6:21 what about bad acting because the director imposed them to deluver that scene in an unnatural manner?
Regarding auteur theory, the quotation by Truffaut at c. 07:20 points towards a different, more fundamental problem: bad translation.
It's something that plagues critical writing in particular since the results tend to read more as transliterations than translations, and so what would make a perfectly cromulent style in French is transmuted into something more, well, terrible.
So auteur theory really comes from the idea that a director's body of work will have something/some things in common. Such as the use of colour palettes by Refn, for example, or Von trier's stylistic diversity that serve to heighten the filmic nature of his work. Lynch's use of imagery, particulary the almost Manichean duality of 1950s wholesomeness/the underworld's underbelly, is another.
And yes, it does contain a lot of elements best credited to others, because ideally the director chooses to work with these--hence Lynch', & bergman's & Cronenberg's & &tc's preferral to use a familiar cast in many of their films. Likewise the familiar use of Elman's soundtracks by Burton, Badilamenti's by Lynch, & so forth.
And frankly, the shots should really be credited to the DP, the editing to the editor, & the director to the coordination of the whole. Their work is more that of a conductor, making sure everyone is working in concord.
That said, there is that continual push-pull dynamic between directors & producers, with the balance of power constantly aspiring, as it were, towards the producers, so often enough directors are blamed for stuff that falls into the purview of the producers. Viz. Lynch's adaptation of Dune; contrast with Mel Brooks' advocacy for Lynch in re. The Elephant Man.
So directors are essentially glorified coxswain's reminding the crew to work in concord, in tandem, whilst others, such as Uwe Bool are best described using the same term, albeit hevily pruned to just under the first syllable. I'd like to say, regarding that last remark, that I'm "just putting it out there" but I don't wanna get done for indecent exposure....
P.S.: The general state of art criticism is abysmal, anyways, especially regarding statements of fact.
P.P.S.: Sarris doesn't have the room to develop & justify his impressionistic style, hence the truncated analyses lend themselves to a condensed risibility. So, in seeking to convey the core essences of the directorial styles, Sarris has taken the pith & thrown away all the rest.
P.P.P.S.: Bad directors make more indifferent films than bad ones, no?
P.P.P.P.S.: The Boris joke works because he's breaking the wall, so the "optional shots" would profit by preserving.
P.P.P.P.P.S.: Soderburg reminds me of Attenborough's Life on Earth series when he set out to shoot the difficult/impossible.
Brilliantly put, very much agree about the Boris joke, none of those angles he suggested work because as well as the one that was chosen, because its a fourth wall joke.
If only we could do the following experiment: Take the same script, same cast, same crew, but different directors. Let's see how different the films turn out to be, or not. Then we will have some real answers.
Have you seen Challengers? I think it was an OK script that was brilliantly directed. Curious to hear your thoughts on it.
Great video! Have you seen Megalopolis yet, or written about it anywhere? I’m so curious to hear your thoughts.
Appreciate every time you review books and recommend some better ones 😊
Hello sir, I'm an aspiring filmmaker. I'm very thrilled after watching this video. It helped me understand the work directors do and cleared up many misconceptions I had. I used to believe that successful directors were some kind of perfect humans, which led to me experiencing imposter syndrome. I'll save this video so that, in the future, if I ever get ahead of myself and my ego inflates, it will humble me and remind me that filmmaking is not a one-man show but a collaborative process.
This is brilliant. Thank you.
What's the Kirk Douglas movie after Boogie Nights at 0:52/0:58?
What's a clinical camera movement ?
“There should be things in the film that look…like MAGIC.”
But the director chooses to participate having read the script. If the screenplay is bad and the movie ends up bad, its still majorly on the director’s decision to even work with a bad screenplay
hey can you please tell where is your video about todd field's tar???
If I remember correctly, I think you should check out the 4 videos he did 1 year ago about the Oscar nominees, screenplay, direction, etc. I don’t think he made a video about that movie specifically but he definitely mentions it in some of those videos.
i guess he did
titled "is tar the best film of 2022"
or something like this
I did make a Tár review but I’ve deleted every review from the channel by now. I may upload it on my Patreon someday. I just didn’t want the channel to have regular reviews.
My man just said Mario Bava and Dario Argento make bad films and thought we wouldnt notice
😬
To be fair he didn't say all of their movies were bad, just that they made some bad movies that were directed well
How you explain the quality difference on movies with same script but different director?
is that rock at 9:17 supposed to look like a skull or is it just me
3:11 - Actuallyyy ... The storyboards provide shot direction and it isn't always (rarely, in fact) the director involved with that. However, the director does choose to create a new shot on the fly and let the editor select between them or tell the editor to use that shot. The director does, however, often choose distance, movement and camera position.
Also, you seem to be confusing cinematography, lighting and staging departments for direction in some cases.
23:28 Is that werner herzog?? What's he doing there? what's that film?
Indeed it’s him. That’s Harmony Korine’s Julien Donkey-Boy.
I have to disagree with this somewhat. Sure a screenplay establishes a lot. But the director picks a screenplay to work on, or to pass on a screenplay based on what's in their own head about it. That's a skill in itself. some directors want word exact performances. Others like to have the actors riff from the screenplay as a base. Characters? Something is in the screenplay, but personalities can wind up completely different from what the writer intended. Locations? The director has a lot of control over what those locations turn out to be, and locations routinely get cut or changed for practical reasons during production. You say that you can't complement a director for the fact that a character shot another character, but then also talk about Indiana Jones and the time the team had to improvise and do something that wasn't in the script and he shot a guy. I'm sorry, but you can't actually credit that to the screenwriter, even if you think it was something that was "supposed" to come from them.
And tons of shot choices come from the DP or people other than the director. The director is overseeing all of production, but it's silly to say that every shot comes from the director. That's not at all how many sets work. And the editor has a ton to say about shot choice and shot timing, sometimes making a scene quite different from what the director intended and throwing away the shots that the director chose.
And you totally dismiss the director as guiding the performances. I'd suggest watching the Tina Fey film Whiskey Tango Foxtrot as a counterpoint. It has an absolutely stacked cast, on par with many of the greatest films. And yet it wasn't a successful film at all, and a lot of that has to do with the direction letting great actors loose to do their thing, and them clearly not getting consistent direction about tone and how to be in the same movie. There are tons of bad movies with great actors in them so pointing at AugustOC and saying it has a solid cast so the director had nothing to do with the performances is entirely unconvincing. It's not about the director being an auteur. It's just a reality that directors are involved in decisions that effect every department, not just the camera. Those impacts can be vague and hard to articulate, and vary wildly between specific projects.
But no, you can not judge me as a director based on just shots. That's silly. There are lots of shots I can't even really take credit for.
It's such an attempted rebbutal of Auteur theory that it denies what a director actually does on set lol
@@MealDealSupreme Yeah. I'm not some world class director that anybody should be studying, but I did direct an indie feature that's in post production right now. We were super low budget so I wore more hats than a "real" director. But I learned enough about the experience by doing it to know that there's a million decisions that need to be made to get something on a screen and the director is ultimately responsible for them. Some directors are super focused on shot making. But frankly my relationship with my DP meant I was much more focused on other things, like directing performance, and there were dozens of times my DP would do something and go "You like this?" and I'd check the monitor and be surprised but like it and we'd go with that. It's still 1000% my movie and looks quite different from other stuff that DP has shot.
And for another example, one actor bailed at the last minute and got replaced with somebody who didn't have enough time to learn ten pages of technical dialogue. (And related to the scheduling issues, the original location got booked, so we wound up at a second choice studio that was laid out different from where I planned shooting.) So the final edit for that scene is gonna be choppy as hell. Frankenlines over inserts of hands typing. Jumpy cuts. All sorts of weird shot choices to cover up the work needed to tighten the dialogue because the actor who came in last minute wasn't given the rehearsal time to nail it on the day. Not their fault -- just how it goes sometimes. Somebody will look at that scene and go, "What weird shot choices the director made." And the reality is that scene just had to turn out way different from what was in my head, and doesn't match my shotlist. Some of that wound up beyond my control. But the many things I *actually* did to get that scene made up of those shots apparently don't count.
@guaposneeze I've only directed shorts, but the amount of effort that goes into every decision (especially if producing as well) makes me call bullshit on just judging it by the shots. It's making a decision for every little thing on set, or building a vision between so many departments that allows you to let them work in their best way. According to this guy a director and a cinematographer are the same thing. What about sound design? That's a full on creative process with another person too, as is editing, production design, performances, it's more than just slamming the camera down and saying action.
Coming from a similar experience, I agree with you completely. He’s not wrong about the importance of the screenplay, but he collapses the job of directing into something cheap and simplistic
film name? 15:29
Reign of Terror (Anthony Mann, 1949)
My new favorite video of yours.
Very good Explanation 🗻❕
Could you also clarify what a director of photography actually do??
I think this is caused by the fact a lot of directors also have either writing or producing credits as well
One of your best. Yes to all of this.
Directors choose locations - so the type of trees are kinda important to his 'vision'. The difference between reading a book and seeing the movie version is monumental - often it's the trees, or the urban landscapes that play a fundamental backdrop to the the actors standing in front of it. I have in mind that shot from taxi driver where Travis is leaving work - the director chose a very long lens to compress the depth of field and glue Travis into the desolation around him. These are not random choices, they're the magic element, often together with the cinematographer, that make it a movie and not a written screenplay
As much as I hate Sarris' take on Auteur theory, I think he was right about those trees. He wasn't implying an abject quality to them (like this essayist does for Good Directing and Bad Directing), he's talking about the choice made to show those trees. Griffiths are wide, they're warm, they're shown with a nostalgic look. Antonioni's are stark and distant, thin. There's a reason they're being shown. To this guy there's only choices, and no artistic decision behind why, only what's good or bad (Beautiful shot good, ugly shot bad, flowery writing good, simple writing bad). It's the whole point of art!
Dear Moviewise, 1st off, I [probably] agree with most of what you're saying. but I think that the bit of [something of] "it should be split up between writers and directors" should be expanded to [perhaps among others] directors, screenwriters, cinematographers and editors.
and 2nd off, I'd [probably] like to suggest some ideas for [probably] people to do future videos about: Paul fejos,
Aleksandr Ptushko,
Preston Sturges,
Norman Lear,
the three silent clowns,
Jacques Tati,
Pierre Etaix,
Jerry Lewis,
Charley Bowers,
Chuck Jones,
William Cameron Menzies,
Jackie Chan,
Edward Yang,
Samuel Fuller,
Yasujiro Ozu and Richard Lester.
Good luck.
0:56 what is the name of this film?
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
Thanks! @@Moviewise
Does the usage and placement of the score has anything to do with the film's direction?
Yesterday i watched The Letter, directed by William Wyler and Scored by Max Steiner. I had mixed feelings about it's quality compared to Jean De Muir's version. The thing that made me think the most is when where Bette Davis is emotionally lying about what her shooting mr. Hammond, and Steiner's music literally exploded on my tv speakers right befor she had a mental breakdown. This same technique was used another 2 or 3 times in the film. I felt a lot more emotion when this happened.
I kept thinking if using music to influence the viewers either positively or negatively was a good directing choice or a bad directing choice, but now i'm questioning if it even is a directing choice?
It's very much a directing choice, and it cannot be good or bad inherently because it depends on the film. This video is a very simple look at directing.
"the sun is rising" is better writing.
Depends on the context - what character is saying it, in what scene, etc. But generally I agree, I think simple and clear writing is preferable to purple prose.
@@HalucygenoI might add that it will also depend on what emotion or tone the author is trying to convey.
Whenever I see your videos, it reminds me that I am an aspiring filmmaker.
But how do you explain the difference bettwen Alfred Hitchcock`s and Gus Van Sant`s Psycho?
Im not saying that Gus is a bad director.
It is possible to use a large number of closeups to great effect. In the 50's version of the tv show Dragnet, they cut different shots of the suspect they're interviewing together. We see the suspect's hands fidget, their eyes shift, etc, showing us how nervous he or she is. Compare that to the 60's version of the same show, where the interviews were mostly talking heads.
11:20 I’m changing career! My many years of experience writing for B2B have prepared me well to write reams of nonsense🤩 Only instead of listening to corporate briefings, I’ll just watch movies instead 👍 Thanks Moviewise, you succeeded where many career councilors had failed.
Excellent video. It's always great to hear you. You make me see in a new and fresh way to the movies.
Great example Longlegs, impressive direction, but very boring plot.
i wasn't impressed by either, i'm not sure how that flick got the acclaim it did
of course saying something has a "bad plot" also makes my eyes roll
plot schmott, i say
we should rather be focused on story, theme, narrative, character, scene, subject, and dialogue
@charoleawood I was very interested in it, but for a thriller about the FBI chasing a psychopathic killer with also some sort of enigma, it was very disappointing, admittedly a very simplistic description, but that's what I got out of it. I got bored.
@@recetasfaciles2816
certainly, i was bored too, i thought Longlegs was a bad movie and a very average budget horror picture
@@charoleawoodIdk about average, it certainly tried a lot more than the average horror film does
Great video. Does this mean that Pauline Kael was right when she rejected auteur theory, but claimed that the screenwriter is the primary “author” of the film?
14:30 - "The blood of Uranus can never be destroyed".
Yeah, you didn't choose that line reading for it's potential for film criticism.
There's a 1974 interview with Francis Ford Coppola in which Coppola essentially argues for the writer as the biggest influence in the film. Most notably, he also says that a director such as Alfred Hitchcock, who worked heavily in collaboration with his writers when writing the screenplay of any of his movies, is a writer as well. A lot of the auteur directors really were writers as well in how heavily they participated in the writing process and chose what scripts to work on even for directors who weren't credited on-screen with any writing, such as Hitchcock.
I don't remember who said it, but there's a quote from an anime director saying that he was able to get ahead of directors who were better than him just because he was seen as an auteur. But we should better appreciate great directors who aren't necessarilu auteurs.
I heard someone recently say Hitchcock was great because he directed a lot of mediocre/bad screenplays well
@@artirony410Hitchcock's directing could really elevate a lot of middling, even mediocre, screenplays.
I disagree on the Woody Allen example. I think the way he shot it is actually the most funny of all the versions you exemplified because it's the one where there's a reversal of our expectations. We think he is talking to the audience without her listening, so when he is addressing her it ends up like an reversed breaking of the fourth wall (building the fourth wall?) which I think adds a layer to the joke.
Seijun Suzuki took pulpy stories and elevated them into art, and I think more than just a few.
"Most of what directors are credited for comes from the screenplay." As a writer, I am nodding with a very annoyed look on my face right now.
Exactly! Too many people Credit the clever dialogue and References and Meta in "Scream" to Wes Craven when that was ALL Kevin Williamson!
a great screenplay w/ a bad director will often result in something of value to the audience, but a bad script in the hands of a great director will not -billy wilder
did you watched movies of kira muratova?
godard and gasper noe made great films without screenplays what you take on that