Directing Television

Nick Bamford

• Publisher: A&C Black Academic and Professional
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781408157060
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Television

Television is a demanding industry and at the centre of the creative process is the pivotal role of the director. Do you have the right skills to make quality programmes that resonate with audiences? Directing Television offers you a contemporary survival guide.
TV directors need a sense of vision, effective management of cast and crew, mentoring and problem solving skills and most importantly the ability to tell a visual story. See inside the everyday realtivies of TV programme making with this essential guide, written by a Nick Bamford a freelancer director and media trainer with over 25 years of experience of making every type of genre from studio work to outside broadcast. Directing Television offers contemporary skiils in each process from pre-production, development, casting, contributors, locations, programme structure, equipment, call sheets, scripting drama, planning the shoot, the importance of screen grammar and camera basics, through to the final edit. It covers a range of programme styles: factual and reality TV, drama, observational docs, comedy and specialist programmes as well as case studies and `war stories' from real TV experience.
Benefit from professional advice and develop your creative directing skills today!

PART 1
Pre-production

1 Introduction

I have been involved in making TV programmes for more than thirty years now, during which time the way in which they are made, the equipment used and the way they look on the screen have changed almost out of recognition.

When I started, programmes were either shot in the studio on large, heavy cameras mounted on massive cast-iron pedestals and recorded on tape two inches wide running on machines the size of two dishwashers—you needed to be a strong man to carry two 90-minute tapes!—or they were filmed on location using stock which was so expensive to buy as well as to process that saying ‘Turn over’ was a serious commitment only made when you were more or less certain of getting something usable. The sound was recorded on a separate machine and synced in the cutting room, where an Editor and his Assistant could spend several days doing a first assembly of a five-minute film.

In either case if I, the Director, so much as touched a piece of equipment, much less framed a shot, then the entire crew (and at least six people were needed even to record a one-man piece to camera on location) would be liable to walk out on strike.

Now, as often as not, much of the programme is shot by the Researcher on a camera you could fit in a handbag, the rushes can be carried home in a matchbox or squirted through a Wi-Fi connection direct to the cutting room, and you can fine-cut a five-minute film in a morning.

When I started there were effectively just two employers in the UK—BBC and ITV (though they were then, of course, fifteen or so different companies), and a television Director was a rare beast indeed. Now there are thousands of employers creating video for hundreds of outlets and the Producers and Directors who make them are as numerous as plumbers. Yet the job of directing television or video remains fundamentally the same as it was in the days of silent movies—it is telling stories using moving images.

With the advent of cheap digital equipment anyone can make a film. When I started you would need to invest at least £250,000 in equipment, all of which required highly trained operators before you could even think about it. Now most of us carry phones in our pockets which can record video and most laptops come with a basic editing programme ready installed.

So anyone can make a TV programme, surely? After all, we’ve all seen some. A quick glance through YouTube or even some of the lower-budget TV channels demonstrates clearly that this is not the case.

The problem is that when you do a job so much in the public eye the skills involved are not as readily visible as the end product. It’s a bit like acting—actors learn lines, stand on a stage and say them. Anyone can do that, surely? A comparison of your local am-dram’s production of King Lear and the RSC’s again demonstrates that that is not true. In either case the average viewer has no concept of the amount of work and skill which has gone into what they are seeing, nor will they necessarily understand why one is a good watch and the other isn’t. The work is, or should be, invisible.

If you look at a Persian carpet, an intricately carved cathedral or a well-painted picture you can see the work which has gone into it. With a film or TV programme all you see is the images which made the final cut. Unless you’ve actually worked in the industry you have little or no concept of how what you’re seeing is just the tip of the iceberg. You don’t know why only those images came to be chosen, how many were not chosen, or the considerations behind shooting them in the first place. It looks so easy. Making a film nowadays is easy, but making a good one is not.

With today’s ready access to film-making equipment, many people are having a go without any training, or even study of the work they are seeking to emulate. They have either never considered, or they have forgotten that there are more than a hundred years of received wisdom to draw on, all of which will help make their work watchable. There is an accepted ‘rule book’, but how many of today’s would-be film and programme makers even know it exists?

Of course there’s nothing wrong with breaking the rules—all great artists throughout history have done that, and pushing the boundaries of any art form is essential if the work is not to become stale and derivative. But throwing away the rule book rarely results in something lasting—one glance at the architecture of the 1960s proves that. Each new generation of artists builds on foundations laid down by its forefathers, and if there are no foundations the building tends to fall down very soon.

So this book aims to look carefully at those foundations as well as to give a few insider tips which this particular brickie has discovered in a lifetime of building on them. I wouldn’t presume to tell anyone how to make a TV programme, but I can explain how I have made them over thirty years in the business, and what I have learned from those who made them before me or with me.

I also wouldn’t presume to suggest that this book is in any way comprehensive. I’ve never directed live news, on location in a war zone, light entertainment in a studio or a sports outside broadcast, for example. All of these have their own particular techniques which you will need to learn from those who have the experience. Then again, some aspects of the job are common to every programme you’re likely to make.

1 What is directing?

When I applied for a job recently the Producer—perfectly understandably—asked to see an example of my work. He wanted to see my ‘style’. I gladly sent him a programme I had recently made but found myself doubting whether he would be impressed by what he saw, and whether I would want to work with him. I sincerely hope I don’t have a ‘style’. I have directed drama, documentary—observational and scripted—and factual entertainment of all kinds on all subjects from cars and planes to houses and plants, aimed at audiences of all ages and interests. How appropriate would it have been constantly to use some kind of personal style to mark out my work in all these disparate areas? I hope that my ‘style’ is a good story well told, by whatever means.

That’s not to say that I don’t have methods I use to tell stories—methods that a diligent student who had nothing better to do than to study the spectrum of my work might detect. But with each programme I make I adopt a style suitable to that programme. It might be dictated by the subject matter, by the target audience or by the format if it’s one in a factual entertainment series.

I never heard back from the Producer—he clearly wasn’t impressed. And it’s probably just as well as I doubt we would have seen eye to eye.

That experience highlighted for me what directing television is really about and one thing it isn’t about is stamping your ego on everything you do. Of course there are screen Directors whose work you will seek out because their name is on it, but they are almost all working in feature films. Any regular cinema-goer is likely to be able to reel off at least half a dozen Directors whose work they admire, but how many regular TV viewers could name as many Directors in that medium? There are a handful—mainly working on those increasingly rare major one-off dramas or documentaries—but even then I suspect that though their names are well-known in the industry (and their work should most definitely be studied by anyone wishing to make such films) few of the viewing public would know them.

And that’s as it should be. After all, the viewer has turned on the TV to see a story, to find out some information, to be entertained in some way or other, or maybe to see a favourite actor or Presenter. They have not turned on to watch the Director being clever. If they are amongst the cognoscenti who recognise a good Director’s name they are likely to respect the fact that he tells a good story, not to admire the way he uses the camera or cuts his shots together. A Director who seeks to impose his arbitrary personal style on everything is interposing himself between the story and the viewer, who is not in the least interested in him or his work.

Many years ago I worked on a well-known series with a very young Director who had done astonishingly well to get to make films for the programme in his early 20s. During a long drive together we were talking about our work and he confessed that he made films not to please the viewer but to impress the Producer. His work was certainly visually striking but, in my view, too often failed to tell the story, his main aim being to create images which would catch the eye. It was all about him and not about his subject matter. I understand why he did that—as a young man trying to make his mark in a very competitive world he wanted to be noticed. Unfortunately for the viewer there are some Producers who are impressed by this kind of thing but a good, perceptive one will not be.

The fact of the matter is that good direction is invisible—a wholly transparent conduit between the story and its protagonists and the viewer. If the direction is noticeable it is usually bad, because it is clouding that transparency. That is as true on stage as it is on the screen. If I go to see The Cherry Orchard I want to see what Chekhov has to say, not how clever the Director is. If it’s a play I know well I might be interested to see how a particular actor portrays a character, or how a particular Director illuminates the text, but it’s still the author’s play I want to see. And those in the audience seeing it for the first time expect to see the author’s work as clearly as possible. If the Director’s interpretation gets in the way of that then it is doing the piece a disservice. And the same is entirely true on screen. Just as you wouldn’t stay long with a writer who is more interested in showing off how clever he can be with words than about communicating what he has to say, so your audience won’t stay with your film for long if you are just trying to dazzle them with visual fireworks.

So directing is emphatically not about showing off or imposing your style on your work, but it is still very much about authorship. Just as a writer uses words to tell his story, so you use images and sounds. As soon as you frame a shot, ask a contributor a question or cut two shots together you have taken possession of your material and begun to fashion it in the way you want—you have begun to tell the story your way. But the big difference between directing for the screen and writing that book is that the former is rarely if ever a one-man job. There are a lot of creative people involved.

So how do you take control and author your piece? What is the job of directing television? As the name might suggest, it’s the same as the policeman directing traffic. You’re making sure everyone’s going in the right direction. And just as the driver should not be watching the policeman’s performance (hard not to in the case of some of the white-gloved Roman performers I observed a year or two ago on a shoot, I grant!) but merely seeing where his hand is pointing, so the viewer should not be watching the television Director’s performance—but rather looking where he is pointing. Television is about teamwork and the Director is the team leader. The England football captain doesn’t score all the goals himself, but he does make sure the team work together so that one member can deliver the ball into the net.

That said, of course the TV Director of today is expected to be able to shoot and edit as well as direct the piece. Some enjoy that overall control, but as a general rule I don’t. I have learned so much over the years from the Cameramen and Editors I have worked with. They have made my films better and made me a better Director, and I have passed on ideas from one to another, just as I am now endeavouring to pass on some of what I have learned through this book. Even if you are the kind of all-rounder who can do all these jobs extremely well it’s very hard to do them all at the same time. It would be wrong to say I don’t enjoy using a camera myself—I do very much if that’s all I’m doing. It’s when I’m trying to interview the contributor, offer him an eyeline, keep the camera framed and ensure I’m getting good sound all at the same time that I feel I’m not as much in control as I would like to be. And while there are clearly occasions when one man and a camera can get a story in a way a full crew can’t there always has to be a second, third, fourth pair of eyes somewhere in the production process for reasons I will discuss later in the book.

2 Telling the story

Almost without exception, any film you make, and any show you direct will be telling a story of some kind. It will have a shape and seek to engage the viewer’s attention so that he stays with it till the end. Even if it’s The News it is a succession of stories, with an overall running order designed to keep the viewer on board. If it’s a quiz show it’s the story of the winner’s journey to the main prize. Even a comedy panel show has a structure in the form of the score, running gags, the relationship between the chairman and the panellists, and so on. Gardeners’ World may be a show giving advice on how to make your garden look great, but each film within it will have a shape and will save the best begonia till last, and the most interesting or impressive film will be the last in the programme.

Storytelling is probably the oldest art form known to man. People have been telling stories as long as they have been able to communicate with each other, and although communication methods are changing and developing faster now than any of us could once have imagined, the job of the storyteller remains the same: engage your audience, involve them in the story, make them care about the characters in it, build it to a climax and offer some resolution or conclusion.

A television Director is working in the same tradition as Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Dickens. In a crazily fast-changing world, those are anchors to hold on to— and some of history’s great storytellers might just have more advice to offer a television Director than YouTube does!

Who Does What?

The array of titles used by people in television can be bewildering. If I had a pound for everyone who has asked me the difference between a Producer and a Director … These titles often mean different things in different companies an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Part 1: Pre-production
• Part 2: The Shoot
• Part 3: Post-production
• Afterword: The Freelance Life
• Glossary
• eCopyright