Case Study: It’s All in How You Say It

Name: Steven Poster, ASC, director of photography for over 50 films, including Rocky V (1990), Donnie Darko (2001), Daddy Day Care (2003), Southland Tales (2007), and The Box (2009)

Film: Donnie Darko (2001), the first movie directed by Richard Kelly

Situation: Shooting the “Entering the School” sequence on schedule and on budget, and giving the director what he really wanted without compromising the producers or saying the one word that shouldn’t be in a DP’s vocabulary

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A scene from Donnie Darko (2001), shot by Steven Poster.

Although Donnie Darko was Richard Kelly’s first feature, he was already a fully formed director—he knew exactly what he wanted, and his ideas were completely viable for the movie. My task as director of photography was to help him explore and exploit his ideas so that the story he wanted to tell could get on the screen.

The producers, however, weren’t so sure he was up to the task. My challenge came early in our shooting schedule, when we had one day to shoot the sequence where Donnie jumps off the school bus and enters his high school. This would occur 15 minutes into the movie and introduce several major characters. Every time the camera landed on a major character, we’d ramp up the frame rate to slow motion for a moment, and then we’d continue on at normal speed until the introduction of the next character. All of this was going to be timed to “Head over Heels,” sung by Tears for Fears.

Richard insisted that the sequence be shot in one two-and-a-half-minute take. I didn’t have enough crew or equipment to accomplish this, and I knew it was an impossible task. Because I had a closer relationship to the director than the producers did, they asked me to say no to Richard. I told them I would not do that but would figure out a way to solve the problem instead. I told them we’d rehearse the shot.

The next Saturday, a small core group assembled at the high school location: Richard and me, the Steadicam operator, the gaffer, and the first AD. As soon as we got there, Richard said, “Let’s go in.”

“Why don’t you and the Steadicam operator go in first to get your bearings?” I suggested. “And here’s a stopwatch,” I said, handing him one.

Twenty minutes later, Richard came out. “We’ll do it in four separate shots,” he said.

And that’s what we did.

Could I have figured out a way to do it in one shot? Of course. It would have been expensive, and it would have taken far more screen time than the song he wanted playing over the sequence. In my heart, I didn’t think that he really wanted the single-shot version in the movie, because it didn’t fit the story.

But I never said no to the director; he came to it himself.

Takeaway: There are many ways of explaining a situation to a director without saying that something can’t be done.