Ben Affleck had to get out of town.

His first two movies, Gone Baby Gone (2007) and The Town (2010), had been set in his hometown. “I had to get out of Boston and stop making movies there, at least for one movie, otherwise no one would ever consider me for a movie that took place south of Providence,” Affleck told Rolling Stone. “I honestly felt like I would kind of end up being pigeonholed as Boston Crime Guy.”¹ That’s when Affleck decided to direct Argo, a political thriller set in Iran during the 1979 hostage crisis, which won the 2012 Best Picture Oscar.

He got out of Boston, but he didn’t go alone. Affleck surrounded himself with seasoned talent, many of whom had worked on more movies than he had. Rodrigo Prieto, the cinematographer, had more than 40 films under his belt, including Amores Perros (2000), Brokeback Mountain (2005), and Babel (2006). Production designer Sharon Seymour had worked on more than 25 movies, including Affleck’s first films. Composer Alexandre Desplat had scored more than 140 titles, including The King’s Speech (2010) and movies in the Twilight and Harry Potter series. Editor William Goldenberg had cut more than 25 films, including Seabiscuit (2003), Gone Baby Gone for Affleck in 2007, Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), and right after Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, which he coedited with Dylan Tichenor in 2012. Ben Affleck “understood exactly what he wanted to do from the day he started shooting,”² recalled Goldenberg, who won the Academy Award in 2013 for Best Achievement in Film Editing for Argo.

Affleck and his producing team had assembled a team of virtuosos, just as you would do if you had to assemble a symphony orchestra. Indeed, making a movie is often compared to an orchestra, with the director as the conductor. All the orchestra members are exceptional musicians in their own right, of course, but have you ever heard an orchestra try to play without a conductor? The violins might drown out the piccolos, and the timpani might hit its thunderous boom at the wrong moment. Only with the conductor in charge can the orchestra play harmoniously, in the same tempo, and with the appropriate dynamic, emphasizing just the right musical phrases at the right times. That’s because the conductor has prepared every part of the symphony and is therefore in a position to lead all the players.

As the director, you’ll begin your work way before the first word of dialogue is spoken, and you won’t stop until your movie is in front of its audience, long after the last scene is shot and the last set is struck. Throughout, you’ll rely on four guiding principles: (1) faithfulness to the story being told, (2) practical common sense, (3) your ability to collaborate and empower your fellow artists, and (4) following your gut in order to execute your vision for the material.

If your image of a director is someone who sits on a canvas-backed chair and calls out “Action” and “Cut,” your image needs an upgrade; in fact, that’s as true today for student films as it is for big studio productions. It should go without saying that every director is required to be a great visual storyteller with a keen eye for detail. Today’s director must also have a good working knowledge of every aspect of filmmaking, from communicating well with actors and telling the story, to budgeting and financing, to planning design and visual effects, to marketing and promotion. Moreover, today’s director must feel comfortable leading a disparate team of people with a variety of skills in a multidisciplinary, multimedia environment in which there may be differing, if not competing, agendas of what the film should be.