Directors Tell the Story

Master the Craft of Television and Film Directing

Bethany Rooney, Mary Lou Belli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317359234
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Move over, movies: the freshest storytelling today is on television, where the multi-episodic format is used for rich character development and innovative story arcs. Directors Tell the Story, Second Edition offers rare insight and advice straight from two A-list television directors whose credits include NCIS, NCIS New Orleans, Nashville, Criminal Minds and many more.

Here, in one volume, learn everything you need to know to become an excellent director, not merely a good one. Covering everything through prep, shoot, and post, the authors offer practical instruction on how to craft a creative vision, translate a script into a visual story, establish and maintain the look and feel of a television show or film, lead the cast and crew, keep a complex operation running on time and on budget, and effectively oversee editing and post-production. Directors Tell the Story provides behind-the-scenes access to the secrets of successful directors, as well as exercises that use original scripted material.

This newly updated edition features:

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• All-new "From the Experts" sections with insider info known only to working professionals

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• Profiles of top film and TV luminaries with advice and tips

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• Additional "How I Got My First Job" stories from directors currently in the trenches

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• Useful instruction to help you put directing techniques into practice

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• A companion website featuring directing tutorials and video interviews with the authors

Bethany Rooney has directed over two hundred episodes of prime-time network shows, including NCIS, The Originals, Nashville, NCIS New Orleans, and Criminal Minds. She teaches the Warner Brothers Directing Workshop and serves on numerous committees at the Directors Guild of America.

Mary Lou Belli is a two-time Emmy Award winning producer, writer, and director as well as the author of two books. She directed NCIS New Orleans, Monk, Hart of Dixie, The Game, Girlfriends, and The Wizards of Waverly Place. She teaches directing at USC's School of Cinematic Arts.

Section One

Prep

Overview

What is prep? Prep (preparation) is the critical time period of a week to ten days before principal photography begins, which is when a director prepares for the upcoming shoot. It happens during the film or television show’s preproduction period.

What does a director do during prep? The director interprets the script and selects every element that will appear in the frame. It is a time to gather the troops and share the vision as the leader of the upcoming episode. The director reads the script and breaks it down for story, character, style, and color. The director casts, or chooses, the actors who will appear in this episode along with the series’ regulars. It is a time to discuss tone with the episode writer and have countless meetings with department heads to answer their questions so that they (and their crews) can have everything ready. The director scouts and chooses locations during prep.

Finally—and probably most important—the director plans how to shoot the episode and generates shot lists or storyboards (or both) that will be his roadmap during the shoot.

Chapter 1

Breaking Down the Script for Story

The late great director Sydney Pollack said, “The director is the teller of the film, the director tells the movie, like you would tell a story, except in this case you’re telling a movie.”¹ So how do you become a good teller? One of the most important skills a director needs is to be able to read well! The director’s first task is to interpret the script, so it is critical that you develop the ability to read and understand the material. You have to be able to break down the story into its parts and map out how those parts add up to the whole.

The good news is that people have been telling stories forever: Homer writing about Odysseus, troubadours singing epic tales, cowboys spinning yarns around campfires. Storytellers intuitively knew what the writers of television scripts try to achieve with every episode they create: that a story is a journey.

As the director, you must read the script and be able to see how to take the viewer along on the trip as you tell the story. You want to inspire your audience to feel as you did when you first read the script—to experience the highs and the lows, the tears or the laughter that the screenwriter inspired in you—while they are watching the pictures you created in our visual medium. Ideally, you will not only recreate the script in picture form but also elevate it by making the words come to life.

The first step in accomplishing this goal is reading and interpreting the script.

READING WELL: YOUR SECRET WEAPON

So how do you, the director, acquire this basic tool in your arsenal of needed skills? You read … a lot. In fact, you read everything you can. You go along for a ride with each and every book, story, and script you read. Then you look at the ride that you took and figure out how you got there. By analyzing every story you’ve read, you’ll start to see the similarities and differences between them. You’ll notice that some engage you and others don’t. You’ll see why our brethren in the Writers’ Guild are to be respected and admired for their skill at constructing a script that has an interesting plot and enough pathos to engage us for an hour (including six commercial breaks).

You know that basic dramatic structure has three parts: the rising action, the climax, and the dénouement. An inciting action can kick off the story and complications keep your attention. Once you are engaged and along for the ride, there will be more complications and turning points to keep you interested, and it will all build to one big moment: the climax of the story. The resolution, or dénouement, brings you home or completes the story. The basic concept is to make sure that the story points follow each other logically. You should ask yourself whether each event leads to the next and provides both the information and the emotional arc that you need.

You might ask why a director has to know about screenwriting and dramatic structure. The simple answer is that an architect cannot design a beautiful building without first having the knowledge of how to build that structure. Otherwise, he will design a building that will fall down. A director similarly needs to know how a story is structured in order to tell it beautifully.

An architect cannot design a beautiful building without first having the knowledge of how to build that structure. Otherwise, he will design a building that will fall down. A director similarly needs to know how a story is structured in order to tell it beautifully.

Without the building blocks of structure, a story will collapse. If you are lucky enough to direct a script that is already in great shape, you can move on to your other directing tasks, explanations of which constitute the rest of this book. But if the script needs work, your efforts will be more complex. Either way, the director’s first job is to break down the script for story.

READING FOR FUN AND TO GET THE BIG PICTURE

How do you begin? You read it. Your first read should be just for fun because this is the only read when every element of the story is a surprise. You will hopefully have an emotional response to the story. Notice where that happens: it will be key to your directing the episode and the choices you make. You want your audience to experience those feelings at the same places in your completed film. Next, summarize the story for yourself in one sentence. Writers call this the logline. You’ve seen these one-line summaries countless times in TV Guides or on your TiVo summary: So and so does so and so and it results in so and so.

Also ask yourself: what the idea is behind the episode. Sidney Pollack gave a great example of this when describing one of his critically and financially successful hits in which Dustin Hoffman, in a brilliant comic turn, portrayed an unhappy, out-of-work actor who impersonates a woman in order to get a job. Pollack often said, “The idea in Tootsie is that a man becomes a better man for having been a woman.”²

Writers call this the logline: So and so does so and so and it results in so and so.

In the television shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Sex and the City, it is simple to identify the idea behind the episode: the voiceover at the beginning of the episode tells you. What the show is about, or its central theme, is important to keep in mind while you’re directing, so every scene helps illuminate that concept. But it’s also important to keep in mind that the theme is not the plot; the theme is illustrated by the plot. Pollack gives you an example in the “better man for having been a woman” phrase. You should be able to describe the theme simply: for example, an underdog classic, a faith-versus-science struggle, a tale of redemption, a fish-out-of-water story. We are using the same themes today that the ancient Greeks and Romans employed; a TV director today is a modern-day Homer. The plots are most definitely different, but the themes are universal.

There are other things that you should also note during the first read, beginning with the basic structure of the story. If it’s a procedural drama, there might be a tried-and-true formula that is the spine of every story. Let’s take the popular and well-crafted Law & Order and its many spinoffs. It starts with a crime that is investigated by the officers (the Law part) who find the culprit who has perpetrated the crime. Then the lawyers (the Order part) prosecute the suspect; it ends in the climax, when we find out whether the culprit is going to jail for the crime. The episode concludes with a quick wrap-up based on the verdict of the trial.

While you are doing that initial read of a procedural or law-based drama, you should be curious about who did the crime. Law & Order purposely leads you down a circuitous path before the story reveals who actually did it. It makes the viewer feel clever for following along, and it gives them insight into the way the police officers’ minds and jobs work. Once you know who did it, the viewer should be rooting for the culprit to be taken down and then either rejoice in the satisfaction of justice being served or empathize with the prosecutors and detectives who got ripped off if the culprit goes free. After the first read, you should know the emotional arc on which you want to take your audience because you’ve just experienced it yourself. Regardless of the genre, take care to note your emotional reactions at each point of the script, because from this point on, the director is the stand-in for the audience. You are creating a story and orchestrating every single element so that the audience will have the same emotional responses you had when reading the script. Everything you do as a director is intended to duplicate for the audience what you first felt when you read the script.

You are creating a story and orchestrating every single element so that the audience will have the same emotional responses you had when reading the script. Everything you do as a director is intended to duplicate for the audience what you first felt when you read the script.

From the Experts

Peter Jankowski, the President and Chief Operating Officer of Wolf Films Inc., the company responsible for the popular Law & Order series, its spinoffs, as well as Chicago PD, Chicago Fire, and Chicago Med, shared some insights with us:

Dick Wolf has a sign on his desk that reads, “It’s the WRITING stupid.” I’ve always felt that the success of the Law & Order brand was based on extremely complex writing. The template for the shows was always story driven. The A story leads to the B story, which leads to C. What it comes down to in television, which is a machine that eats scripts, if you don’t have great scripts, you don’t have great shows.

Law & Order is a vastly different kind of storytelling, a different pace, than an ER or our other shows, Chicago PD and Chicago Fire, in which the characters drive the stories. It’s a different kind of cutting than an action driven drama. And the cities also make a difference. NY is more vertical, high stress, intellectual while Chicago is more Midwestern … and as a result, more affable. The cities have vastly different energies and so do their respective shows.³

IDENTIFYING THE VARIOUS STORIES

Next, you need to identify the basic plot or “A” story. In a Law & Order script, it might look something like this:

• Someone is found murdered.

• The police investigate witnesses. (This plot point may have several subdivisions.)

• The police make an arrest.

• The prosecuting attorneys introduce their witnesses; the defense attorneys pick them apart.

• The defense attorneys introduce their witnesses; the prosecuting attorneys pick them apart.

• The attorneys make their closing arguments.

• The jury gives the verdict.

• The murderer goes to prison or is set free.

After figuring out the “A” story, see if there is a “B” story or a “C” story or subplot(s).

These often have something to do with a character’s personal life. Sometimes they echo, replicate, or complement the “A” story. Other times, they stand completely on their own. Let’s take a “B” story from Cold Case. The actor Danny Pino plays Scotty Valens, a detective whose mother has been raped, but she has not told anyone. He learns about the rape through another case he is investigating. Over several episodes, the detective uses his influence and accesses enough information to figure out who committed the crime and sees the rapist suffer for the pain he inflicted on all the rape victims, especially the detective’s mother. In another “B” story from NCIS New Orleans, the actress Shalita Grant plays Sonja Percy, a federal undercover agent who has infiltrated a gang that deals drugs and arms. She helps ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Frontmatter Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Frontmatter Page01
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• Section One Prep
• Section Two Shoot
• Section Three Post
• Section Four Being a Director
• Appendix
• Glossary
• Index