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How can a specific approach of a director influence how I approach my own work?

  • Writer: Kiani Hyde
    Kiani Hyde
  • Sep 3, 2020
  • 6 min read

Updated: Sep 8, 2020


Why did I choose this question?

I decided on this question because I haven’t had the chance to figure out my own style and approach to my work. I want to know more about how others approach it and gain inspiration from that to create my own style.


What can I look at to help?

What I looked at to help me answer my question was film techniques, directing styles and film auteurship. All of these were quite helpful in my research.

Auteurship in film is the way of looking at films that show that the director is the author of that creative piece (Indie Film Hustle, 2019). It is a reflection of the directors artistic vision, and will often have recognizable or recurring themes and visual cues that tell the audience who the director and their identity is. Directors including Speilberg, Scorsese, and Tarantino all have their own style that can easily be recognised, this can be either the genre they commonly work in or aspects that they repeat in other films.

In my search I found four different styles of directing, these being; the dictator, the negotiator, the creative artist, and the confrontationalist. The dictator has a very assertive role, everything is controlled and not allowing actors to have no say in what happens. The negotiator is where the director focuses on a more improvised approach, using ideas from the cast and crew to shape the work. The creative artist is where the director wants input from the actors but inevitably has the final say. The confrontationalist is someone who is in a constant debate with the cast and crew about creative decisions. (Styles of Directing, n.d.)


Hannah Macpherson is a female filmmaker. Her focus is more on directing, writing and producing. Something that interests her is teenagers and social media, she likes to explore the dark side of social media in her stories and often calls herself a 16 year old trapped in an adult body (Nothing Shines like Dirt, 2018). Macpherson wrote and directed the series ‘T@gged’ which was originally released on go90, an app that only allowed you to view the show on phones or other device (Snow, 2016). She also directed the first film to be shot and released in real time on Snapchat. Her approach is more commonly known as Transmedia Storytelling and this allows her to explore new ways to create films and television, exploring new out of the box ideas. She enjoys telling stories experimentally to challenge and inspire her audience.

I decided to take a quick look at her approach to writing because it is something that I am also interested in.

When it comes to writing she follows the rules when it comes to outline and structure. When she writes she is fast, however, she doesn’t care if she puts out the worst first draft, it's more about the editing. She prefers editing a script because it's easier to narrow down the ideas.


"Copy your heroes, get it out of your system. What's left is what you are the most obsessed with, and becomes part of your own style."

(Anderson-Moore, 2017)


How can I incorporate this into my approach?

For me to find my own style I need to find a style that interests me and work around that to create my own. Out of the four styles that I found, I think the negotiator is the closest to what I can imagine myself being when I get my chance to direct. I like the idea of allowing actors to have their say and bring forward their ideas, I feel like with too much direction some things won't seem natural, so I am open to improvisation.

In high school I worked with a group of five people to create a 7 minute short film. I was credited as director because the film idea was mine, although we all worked together. In the end we shot the film in one day and ended up mostly improvising the scenes and I was happy with how it turned out.

I also need to figure out how I want to tell stories. I like the idea of telling stories that mean something. That short film I made in high school was aimed around bullying, and another one that I was working on was about domestic violence. The film I am currently working on is focused on the protagonists mentality. It seems like I have already found my way to tell stories with films but I need to figure out my own style of approach.

Something I do when I buy a new DVD is go straight to watch the special features (as long as i’ve already seen the film). I’ve seen some where the directors get right into the scene and act out the scene for each character. I think that shows dedication for the job and it's something that has been in my head since I watched because it caught my attention and I like the idea of it.


Wishing to Forget

Wishing to Forget is a 9-minute short film that I have worked on, and for this project I have compiled 6 short scenes out of order relating to one character to represent my question. I worked on this film with a small group of 4-5 other people. I was credited as director, although we all put forward our own ideas for this film. I also wrote the script, however, most of this film was improvised as we were under the time constraint of filming in a single day, with little time to plan before this day.


Clip 1:

This clip is probably the closest to the script out of the others that I have selected. Originally we had someone else cast for our male character but he preferred just to work behind the camera so we found someone else about 2 days before the shoot and I prefered this casting as he added some awkwardness to the character that added to the film so it didn’t seem flat and boring. In the end we decided to use this clip in the final cut even though the way he said ‘Hi’ was an accident, we felt that it made it more real. From this moment on the rest of the film was completely improvised.


Clip 2:

In this clip he actually forgot that we had called action because he was daydreaming. We figured out that we had to come up with a way to explain why he didn't have a change of clothes throughout the whole film while our female character did. This was the final product and none of us could stop laughing.


Clip 3:

This was a really late addition while filming. We quickly found someone we could use that could pass as a bully and told him this is what he needed to do. The first half of this scene was what we told them to do, all the lines were improvised since we got rid of the script earlier that day. The second half of this was completely improvised and we had no idea what he was going to say and then when he walked away he didn’t know where the step was.


Clip 4:

This is only a very short clip that I cut from another scene but we had this one planned out ahead of time. They both knew what they were doing, however we felt it added to the scene when he pulled his phone out and said he had time, she was just supposed to continue talking.


Clip 5:

The point of this clip was to have a second introduction and get her attention. When he first met her it was incredibly awkward and there were parts that weren't shown in clip 1. We liked how he was enthusiastic while also being awkward.


Clip 6:

I think in this scene neither of them knew what to say, this was one of the last scenes we shot and I think their brains were scrambling for words. Both the cameraman and I were standing there wondering what was happening, because for this scene we almost just let them go for it. We don't know why we continued to have the camera rolling at the end when they looked around and just kept screaming ‘yeah’.


Who am I?

After reading about different styles of directing I think I am somewhere between the negotiator and the creative artist. I like the idea of improvising as long as it continues along with the story and details that are given.

I looked at Hannah Macpherson’s style and approach to directing and I learnt to think outside the box, approach my work in different ways. I can’t put her style into my own but I can learn from her and continue to be inspired by her style.


Bibliography:

 
 
 

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© 2019 by Kiani Hyde.

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