Directors Tell the Story

Chapter 12

All the Other Stuff

It would seem the simplest kind of scene to direct is with two people, sitting quietly in a room, talking about some personal issue. (Bethany gets a lot of these on Brothers & Sisters.) But even two-person scenes can have hiccups that cause them to be difficult to shoot: the actors don’t like the script; they don’t trust you as their director; the camera operator is out sick and his replacement isn’t up to par; the backing outside the window is too close, forcing you to block the scene somewhere you hadn’t planned; and so on. The point is that directing even a simple scene can be tricky. And then you get the really tricky ones: those that include animals, children, intimacy, special effects, visual effects, choreography, ...