Do we really need directors?
As the screen industry evolves,
the lines are becoming blurred around what constitutes a director but in a piece that first appeared in Encore, Kingston Anderson says the role is more important than ever.
In any creative endeavour there is always a singular vision that takes the idea, story or concept and shapes the elements to create the ‘work’. For the screen, this is the director. Although the writer, composer, cinematographer and many others all make important contributions, it is the director who forges these elements into a whole. In some cases it might be a writer/director like Stuart Beattie or a composer/cinematographer/editor/director like Ivan Sen, but in each case it is the role of the director to ‘direct’ the whole vision of the work.
An Australian cinematographer who directed his first film several years ago summed it up well. He commented that when he was shooting a film as a cinematographer he was the one asking the questions. When he became the director, everyone was asking him questions. And he had only himself to ask for answers. In a practical sense, this illustrates the central role of the director. The ‘auteur theory’ that the director is the real author of a film has been hotly contested, particularly by writers. It is clear that the writer is the author of the script but I would still support the idea that the director is the author of the film.
Even in the evolving world of interactive storytelling and non-linear story construction, a unifying hand is required to bring together the diverse pieces into a whole on the screen. This can be seen in interactive games, in multi-narrative storytelling multimedia projects. Behind each work will be the guiding hand of the person I would name as the director.
I am glad this point has been boldfacedly raised at last.
Money People ( what used to be called the Money Men) and the lust for more and more box office returns from greater numbers of thrill seekers, have made a total joke of the already questionable MGM “ars gratia artis,” and a true billion dollar “sausage factory” industry out of film making.
This is a trend which has been growing steadily, ever since the theatre became defined as a big oblong room filled with many velvet covered seats, all pointing to a raised section, well lighted and hidden behind huge velvet or brocade curtains, which when opened, revealed low paid artists performing at the behest of some rich entrepreneur.
The director is absolutely essential to the process of theatre ( film at its heart is theatre) as are the actors and the script. Apart from the palatial architecture, only the Money People are redundant, but their greed has forced them to use their money, and the promise of more money, to bully and seduce enough people into supporting their lust for power and allowing them to question and even butcher the vital elements of an art form they are afraid of, because of their ignorance.
Remember the people who didn’t want Geoffrey Rush in Shine? They were money people at odds with a director.