Is hiring a second unit director a bad idea?

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Ryan, asking us if you should hire a second director when you clearly don't have the money is silly. Commercially viable productions hire a second director not because the 1st can't handle it but because time is more important it frees up the 1st to concentrate on the important scenes while the second can do less involved secondary scenes with supporting cast.

In my opinion your chances for a commercially successful movie or career in this business is zero. If you have a mundane job and enjoy these projects as a creative outlet that's fine. If you were able to, I'd suggest dropping all these pretenses, rules, over planning , grandiose ideas and just film the dam movie.

[Ryan Elder]

I can shoot the movie, I just want to make it the best it can be of course and need to plan what I am doing exactly, vs. who I hire to do other things though. I feel I also need opinions on what I am doing is right as the director. If I have an idea for an actor to do certain thing, or an idea for a certain type a shot, I am allowed to ask members of the crew and cast if they feel that is a good way to go, or do I have to be the one with all the right answers, and the only right one is mine?

[Pete Cofrancesco]

People on set want to be lead, they don't need a perfect plan or the director to make the all the "right" decisions. If you have confidence you should be able accept feedback and opinions from your cast and crew, and come to your own decision. You seem to be indecisive, inflexible and overly reliant on other people's opinions. For over a year we have feed you a steady diet of answers, and to what effect? I think very little.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh sorry, I took a good amount of the advice on here, and thought it was good. Sorry if I gave the impression that I did not.

I guess it's hard for me to know the right decision to make when having to choose between which card in a bad hand, if that makes sense. I am not sure which problem to pick that will be the least problem.

[Brian Drysdale]

I'm not sure it's about picking cards, it's more about knowing how to play the game in the first place.

These days you can make films on very little money, but you do need to have the skills to put the thing together, it's to be expected that you'll make mistakes along the way, but this film sounds more like you're bitting off more than you can chew at the moment.

If you don't have the budget, the mantra of hiring people comes over as rather poor reasoning.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, well I think I have the budget, I just wanted someone to work with the actors and the dramatic performances while I work with the crew on the more technical things. Or at least I feel I would do a lot better that way. But I didn't think the budget was the problem necessarily, just wanting to hire more help.

[Brian Drysdale]

I know a number of feature films that have had similar budgets to yours (or higher) and none of them paid people. Although on one feature a couple of actors were working on a fully funded feature film, which the producer shooting at the same time, on which they had a lot of down time (for which they got pard) and they were happy to get starring roles in this very low budget feature.

The above situation is very much the exception and whole thing was put together very quickly, The people involved were also very different to you.

In the case of co director, it usually works the other way to the one you're proposing, the more "technical" person is brought in to co direct with the writer. Examples being "In Which We Serve" when David Lean (then a film editor) was selected by Noel Coward to help direct that film. In "Performance" Nicolas Roeg handling the visual aspects with co director and writer Donald Cammell dealt with the other aspects.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, thanks for the information, that's good to know. Well I was told before the the acting was bad in my projects, so I thought if someone else could direct the performances, who is more of an acting expert, than I can concentrate on directing the picture as a whole, if I just had a specialist who could work in that area, and I would work with that specialist, if something like that could be arranged.

[Brian Drysdale]

You seem to have missed the important part, it's the writer who deals with performances from the actors.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh why is it the writer though?

[Paul R Johnson]

Er, well - the writer imagines the story the actors are trying to get across, so he is the ideal person to really see if the characters in his head are realised by the actors. Are they angry enough, believable enough, real enough - and he can guide them through their performance. A theatre Director often does this as part of their role, because in theatre, the Director usually knows the play inside out, but in movies, the Director role is kind of the captain of the ship, with specialists in the key officers roles, so the writers monitor everything and change their script as the production develops - often re-writing as the cameras roll. The Director gets the job of being the 'glue' making sure it all fits!

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, but do writers have experience in working with pulling performances from actors though normally? I just never seen the writer do this on the shoots I worked on so I didn't know that...

[Paul R Johnson]

In honesty? Good ones usually do, less experienced ones don't. So you make sure you have an experienced Director who can direct people when you have a non-physical writer. In a way Ryan, it's you who has to look at these things because you know the people involved. In my theatre work, I am NOT a director - in fact, I hate it and I'm not comfy doing it, but I have had to do it when things go wrong. One of my favourite theatre Directors is a movie Actor - A guy called Simon Delaney - his Directing theatre style relies on his ability as an actor - he knows when they give the right performance - and he can function really well on a movie set, taking direction, and instinctively knows what the character's would do - the Director just sort of points him at the set and it works. A Director used to actors like this would get very frustrated if they all had no clue - so much time would be wasted on nuts and bolts. I think you know all this - as we've done it before.

[Brian Drysdale]

The writer will know the characters and story better than anyone else, so the actors will know this is something they can tap into it.

Writer/directors are not unusual, writers just wanting to direct the camera shots are very rare.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh well I thought that someone who has more experience in getting good performances out of actors would be better than a writer who does not, unless I am wrong...