The director’s first step is to choose a solid script and build a team of good people to delegate responsibilities to. For your class film project, you may not be able to assign all the necessary jobs out—you may be writing the script, casting a friend in a lead role, and doing all the production planning yourself. Regardless, think about your movie as if it were a real-world gig. This will allow you to see the project through the eyes of the director. With these eyes, you’ll be able to read the script in a new and practical way.

Getting the Script and Working It

Even if you wrote the script yourself, try this thought experiment: Walk out of the room, shut the door, open the door, come back into the room, and see the script waiting there for you. Sit down and begin to read it. Imagine that you have just been offered this script to direct. Will you accept the offer—yes or no?

Choosing your material is the single most important decision you will make as a director, even more important than casting your actors. Make sure that the script works, that the emperor is always wearing clothes. The material you choose defines you as an artist; it says what you are interested in, how you see the world, and what you deem worthy of your and the audience’s time. By saying, “I will direct this script,” you are stating that this project reflects some part of your identity and personal vision that you want to share intimately with as many people as possible. Every movie you make, even a two-minute film for class, makes a statement about who you are. Even a two-minute movie takes time, passion, and attention to detail, and, most important, represents a choice: you are making this movie, not that movie.

In contrast to the days or weeks you may spend on a class project, you might spend two years of your life, or more, working on a single studio feature. Such an enormous time commitment is only worthwhile if it reflects who you are. Moreover, the wrong decision or chain of decisions can be costly. Unfortunately, the professional movie business has many examples of directors so hungry to make their mark that they accept scripts just because it will give them the opportunity to direct—not because the scripts are great or because the stories reflect their values. In most cases, those movies don’t succeed creatively or at the box office, and those directors don’t get many chances to work again.

No matter what kind of movie you are making—class project or webcast, TV show or expensive Hollywood extravaganza—the script will be your formative blueprint. Therefore, as director, you must take responsibility for getting the script right before you start shooting—before you “go to the floor,” in the terminology of the industry. “If it doesn’t work on the page, it won’t work on the stage” is an adage that proves itself true over and over again. Some of the best movies ever made are from scripts that have been worked on for many years by many hands to figure out the right tone—or even what the story is truly about.

In a class situation in which you have written the script yourself, getting it right is more difficult because none of us can really be objective about our own work. It will be helpful to have trusted friends read your script and give their reactions—whether they laughed, felt emotional, liked the characters, or felt involved (or bored) with the story. If you have written a script yourself, you will probably see more in it than is physically on the page. If you are working with a script written by someone else, you are at a creative advantage because you can feel your way through the pages more objectively—more as your eventual audience will.

In either case, read the script as if you are not the writer. You should read it first as the director, imagining how you see the movie, how you feel, and what you will tell the actors to evoke in their performances. Then you should read it as if you are one of the actors: does the script give you the dialogue you need and the context (the situations and character background) to deeply develop the characters into who they really are?

As you read the script, take notes and share them with the writer, or with your writer-self if you are the author (see Action Steps: How to Mark Up Your Script, below). Strive to make the script better in every way. Make sure that it is the right length and that you have only the scenes you need, as it is far cheaper and simpler to cut pages than it is to shoot scenes and not use them. At the same time, check that the script devotes enough pages to the most important scenes—that is, the pivotal scenes of plot and emotion. If the drama isn’t on the page, it won’t be on the screen. In ideal circumstances, directors and writers have close collaborations, although far too infrequently do these collaborations extend all the way through production; many movies would be better if the writer were on-set all the time, able to adjust scenes to the necessities of each day’s work.

Once the script is right, you will need to explain, or “sell,” your vision to your collaborators—the people who will help you realize your movie. In your class project, these people will certainly include your actors. Depending on how many things you are doing yourself and how many team members you have, they may also include your producer, cinematographer, editor, and designer.

You will also need to sell your vision to the people who are funding the budget, particularly if you are making a longer or feature-length movie. These individuals may be independent financiers, a movie studio, a production company, or a board of teachers at your school who need to approve the use of school resources for your project. You will likely have one or more meetings to discuss your project, and you will need to be at your convincing best. Often the director’s enthusiasm, energy, and ability to be articulate and answer tough questions make the difference between approval and skepticism on the part of decision makers. This situation occurs most frequently when high-ticket items are on the table, such as casting choices, expensive visual effects, or extra days of shooting. And yes, as the director, you will wind up making some compromises to make everyone happy and get the film approved for production. Pick your battles, and play to win the ones that are most important.

Casting Actors

Good performances are the lifeblood of a film. Practically any other aspect of a film can be less than optimal, but if the actors play their parts well, the film as a whole can succeed—and vice versa. You can have brilliant performances with poorly designed shots, and the movie will work, but great camera angles won’t save bad acting. To that end, directors often say that 90 percent of their success is based on good casting. Casting traditionally means selecting actors for their roles.

A professional production might be cast-contingent, which means that unless certain actors agree to participate, the movie won’t be made. If the production needs to find actors, the casting director will assemble a list of actors who may be right for the roles, and will bring them in to audition for the director. The casting director’s job is to know the pool of acting talent and keep an eye out for emerging performers. Casting directors also keep good relationships with actors’ agents and managers and often assist in making deals for actors’ services (see Business Smarts: Agents, Managers, and Lawyers, below). However, in a student production, you will probably be your own casting director.

If you know the actor’s work, you may simply offer the role, which means that if he or she says yes, the actor has the part with no audition necessary. But if you have not worked with an actor before, or seen a great deal of that actor’s work on-screen, it is important to hold an audition (see Action Steps: The Audition Process, below). Acting on film requires different nuances than does, say, acting on stage. The filmic tools of close-ups and editing allow actors to be subtle; film acting is more about being than doing, as opposed to stage acting, in which actors must project their emotions to an arena of people. Theater-style acting can feel forced and cheesy on-screen.

You should always video your auditions, because the way an actor appears in the room may not convey itself the same way on-screen. The best film actors have an emotionally transparent quality; their limpid emotions draw the audience in, compelling the audience to empathize and identify with them. You can’t always see this in person, but movie charisma instantly becomes apparent when seen on-screen. (In fact, some directors only look at auditions on video—instead of in person—because they don’t want to be prejudiced by personal interactions.)

It’s customary to have another actor read the scene with the actor you are auditioning. For each role you are casting, use the same reading actor in the opposite role so that you have a clear picture of the auditioning actor’s performance. Once you have held your first round of auditions, you will typically call back your top choices for final rounds. In these callback auditions, you will probably ask the actors to perform longer scenes, and you will try different combinations of actors to find just the right chemistry for your story, because the chemistry between acting partners greatly influences the outcome of each scene.

How do you communicate with actors? Specifically and respectfully. If you have never taken an acting class, you should. Even a few acting lessons will give you a window on the process an actor must go through, because an actor’s job may be one of the most difficult on a film production. Actors must stay in a state of intense concentration, summon up their characters at a moment’s notice and in the short bursts of camera takes, repeat exactly the same action over and over again for multiple takes, and say the screenwriter’s dialogue as if it were their own, often in an order that’s nonsequential from the script. Actors must create complete characters with whole lives, using only the tools of their imagination and the character’s few scenes in the script.

Never forget that the actors may be relying on real, often deeply personal, emotional experiences from their lives to help them build their performance. As the director, you must get what the story needs while being sensitive to the actors, who may literally be baring their souls to the world. Even if a movie is about only one character, the movie does not show every moment of that character’s life—something the actor must know in order for the role to be convincing. The most important thing an actor needs to know is, What does my character want right now? Sometimes this is obvious from the script, but in the best screenplays, the character’s intentions are more subtly rendered; as in life, well-written characters don’t always tell the whole truth. Your job, as director, is to be able to answer questions for the actors; to be able to work with them no matter what kind of actors’ training they practice; to assure them that the set is a safe place for them to display emotions, whether they are dramatic or comedic; and to guide them to discover the characters themselves.

Selecting Department Heads

Just as you take care in choosing the right actor for each role, so, too, must you select your behind-the-camera colleagues with care. The director’s most important collaborators are the director of photography, the production designer, the editor, and, on films with significant visual effects, the visual effects designer or supervisor. When we include the producer in the mix (who, as stated earlier, is the one who usually chooses the director), this cohesive group forms a production’s “inner circle.” These people (or functions, because you may be doing some of these jobs yourself for your class project) form the basis of the creative decision-making relationships.

In considering your possible department heads, focus on personal qualities as well as technical skills. A less-skilled technician often wins a job over a superior craftsperson purely on the basis of being easier to work with. As the director, you need to get a feel for the working relationship you might have with each candidate. Everyone is an artist in his or her own right, and you should treat each of your candidates that way. At the same time, their job is to make a great movie and not let their personal issues or egos get in the way. Choose people with whom you can have open and honest communication, who will not be afraid to tell you you’re wrong, yet will still do what you need even if they disagree. Also, consider whether each person will interact well with the others. For example, the cinematographer needs to have a comfortable and trusting relationship with the actors.

The skills represented by typical department heads are covered in subsequent chapters; here, we’ll look at some of the ways you should go about selecting your creative teammates and the most important criteria to take into account. Of course, each movie is unique and may require additional steps or considerations.