The directors: Stephen Fry

In the first of a series of articles about directors in collaboration with Direct, the journal of the Directors Guild of Great Britain, Stephen Fry argues that, when making a film, all the important work is done off set

An actor will trust a director if he believes he or she is capable of seeing the whole take for what it is. Sometimes you might make a small change in your performance, minuscule — and the director won’t spot it. A good director always notices, whether he’s holding a clamshell LCD monitor in his hands and watching that way, or he’s at the back of the set under a black cloth like a twenties society portrait photographer, or – my preference – standing beside the camera as in the good old days before the introduction of the Video Village. I remember John Schlesinger on a complicated shot: ‘Good, but we’ll try one more. Frame the edge of the car out as we track back this time,’ he told the operator; ‘creep more slowly with Ian as he knocks on the door,’ he told the grip; ‘less rain, I think. More wind. Oh and Stephen,’ he added, ‘you did a thing with your jaw muscles that time. Don’t like it. As you were.’ I had been back of shot, barely relevant to the scene. But he saw. That’s the point. The director is greedy about every frame and every beat of their film and so they notice every nuance. When they call ‘check the gate’, they really have got what they want. They’ve done it by letting everyone get on with their job.

At least that’s what I thought before I first sat in a director’s chair myself. Then I learned three things. First, apropos of what I have just written, you call ‘cut, check the gate, print moving on’ because, yes, you are happy with what you’ve got, but also because you have four more scenes to do that morning before moving to another location, so what you’ve got will just have to do.

Second, that of the three periods of filmmaking, pre- and post-production are far more interesting, far more fun and far more influential on the final film than anything you might get up to in principal photography. Which, of course, while correct, makes absolutely no sense. The following statements, both true, demonstrate this paradox, which lies at the heart of filmmaking.

1. When you sit down in your chair on day one of principal photography, your work is over. The film has been made or unmade by the decisions you’ve already taken on script, recruitment, production design, location and casting.

2.Your film is entirely made or unmade in the cutting room.

So there you have it. It doesn’t matter what you do on set. Just sit in a corner and sip your coffee and call cut when you reckon everyone’s done their job.

The existential truth of directing, as in life, is that a) the past (pre-production) has made you, and nothing can alter it and b) the future (post-production) will sort everything out so that c) the present (the shoot itself) doesn’t matter a damn. Such a truth alarms us ordinary mortals, but it sets the great ones free.