on the importance of crew

Paraphrasing from a blogwar over at esotericrabbit:

---

Chip:and any day of the week....I’d back a director with vision and conviction, over a well written script.

Me: and every time someone backs a director over a well-written script, we pop out another shit movie.

give me a well written script and a tight crew and cast... and i can guarantee you they'll produce a good movie without a director. it happens more than you think :)

Clint: WHAT THE FUCK?> Who controls a crew…who communicates and converses with the DOP and Production Designer (and all the other crew) that the desired texture and atmosphere are evoked in a scene or a shot. I don’t care how many collaborators there are on a piece, without a single vision, a clear insight, someone who intimately understands the tiniest details, can pick the smallest mannerisms in an actors performance, I don’t care if it’s the best script in the world, it will fail! Watch the “Behind the Scenes of Magnolia” and then tell me if PT Anderson wasn’t there, that the film would have been even close to the film that eventually hit the screen! A great script….But fucking spot on direction in my mind…

Me: You must work with pretty shitty crews (and/or exceedingly small productions) to have that misguided attitude.

Crew, at all stages and levels of the game, are highly experienced, highly intelligent people. They're most always more experienced than the director - and often smarter too. The gaffer has probably spent more days on film sets than you (assuming you are a director) will in your entire life. He knows how to light and he doesn't need some smart ass film school graduate to tell him how to light. He knows how to light & he knows what light means. Same goes for your DoP, your Production Designer, your Sound Recordist, etc. and all their crew. Almost everyone on the crew understands how to do their job, including the storytelling aspects. They know how to make something look [insert emotion here]. Hell, its the kind of vague direction most of them deal with all the time. "Can you make this look sad for me?"

... and its not like they need a director to keep the machine running. That's the job of the ADs...

Given all of this, is it that much of a surprise that a crew can make a movie without a director? Hell no.

Can they make a good movie without a director? Hell yes.

Often, its in situations where they're working with inexperienced (or just clueless) writer/directors and everyone *else* on the movie is doing the 'vision thing'. The "director" gives vague direction which, more or less, coincides with the script and everyone else has to 'translate' that direction into something tangible in terms of mise en scene, sound, music... whatever. DoPs do the coverage, designers design, composers write the music, the actors act.. they simply do their thing. The thing they've been doing for a long time and are very good.

And this comes back to the script thing. The better the script is, the more it works, the more that kind of stuff is 'on the page' (not literally tho) and the less need there is for someone to simply "interpret" the script to make it work. Everyone follows the script and it works. The best example? Angel Baby. It won awards for direction but the real story' (cough) is that he really didn't know how to make a film, so the crew did it for him. But it was such a great script, it didn't matter!

his isn't to say a good director isn't important. They are, but the point is a crew don't need a director to make a film but a director needs a crew to make a film. (Truism, I know but something that a LOT of directors forget)

I don't care how brilliant your fucking vision is cause without a great crew, you've got a total of jack and shit.

The irony is that crew WANT to work with good directors. There's nothing like working with someone who inspires you to go the extra thousand miles, who pushes you to do brilliant work, and who brings to the work imagination, insight and intelligence. Crews just have highly developed bullshit detectors cause they've been disappointed thousands of times.

A great film does need a great director to bring everything together in a single (but united) act of expression, but it also needs a great script and a great crew. Anything else is saying that for to produce a great piece of music all you need is a great conductor and who gives a shit about the actual score or the orchestra.

I'm passionate about this because, well, I am. Its something I try to remind myself everytime I enter a production. 'As a director, what am I bringing to the table on this production? Why am I here? What is it I'm doing that is necessary?'.

---

Updates as they happen :) I'm being nasty, I know, I just think young directors seriously underestimate the talent and importance of their crew. Every single person I know in the film industry (and I know quiute a few) is smart, experienced, and dedicated. Amazing people who work in the industry cause they love movies and they love making em not cause they want heaps of money (so little of that around anyway!) They're the kind of people you want to work with not merely boss around.