“This book provides the aspiring director with a clear and concise approach to shooting his first feature. As a gifted filmmaker and teacher Bartesaghi knows the shortcuts and how to avoid the pitfalls. His book reveals a clear path to making the film you envision in terms that are easily understandable and often profound.”
—Stuart Gordon, director and writer, Re-Animator and Masters of Horror
“Simone Bartesaghi’s sensuous approach to filmmaking is both revolutionary and simple. Why no one has focused on filmmaking like this before is beyond me. Let your senses do the exploring.”
—Matthew Terry, screenwriter, filmmaker, teacher
“Finally a book that pulls it all together and enhances our understanding and enriches our appreciation to the deepest levels. Then Bartesaghi’s book empowers us with all the cinematic elements. Compact, helpful, and completely inspiring. So much in such a little book.”
—Dave Watson, editor, Movies Matter
“Simone Bartesaghi uses simple analogies to teach new filmmakers how to view and initiate the process of making a movie. He suggests ways for you to think, from start to finish, so you don’t get jammed up in the middle of making your picture. He gives outstanding examples using popular films most of us have already seen. If you’re new to directing movies put this book on your must-read list. If you are a veteran director there just may be some little jewels for you in these pages. Become a better director now, grab this book and a comfy chair — you’ll not be disappointed.”
—Forris Day Jr., reviewer for www.scaredstiffreviews.com; host of Coffee Shop Conversations podcast
“Simone Bartesaghi has compiled a wonderfully insightful and practical way to look at the art of directing for film. Just as it is important for a filmmaker to communicate clearly their intentions to their crew, cast, and ultimately an audience, he has given young filmmakers and old filmmakers a way to look at ‘the work.’”
—Charles Kanganis, filmmaker and educator, DGA/WGA/SAG-AFTRA
“Bartesaghi’s book is an excellent study in the director as storyteller, giving plenty of examples of the variety of approaches a director takes toward a film.”
—Tom Farr, writer, WhisperProject.net
“There are many books about how to think like a director. The Director’s Six Senses helps you to see, hear, and feel like a director. Simone Bartesaghi combines scene analysis with creative assignments to help readers develop the specific skills necessary to perceive and communicate effectively as a director.”
—Jon Barr, Assistant Professor, Department of Theatre and Digital Filmmaking, Eastern New Mexico University
“Simone Bartesaghi has produced a book about directing that’s first-rate. The Director’s Six Senses illuminates the director’s process with uncanny clarity. For anyone who wants to direct, this book’s a must.”
—Linda Cowgill, screenwriter, author of the best sellers Writing Short Films, The Art of Plotting, and Secrets of Screenplay Structure
“In his new book, Simone Bartesaghi laces his perspectives on directing with rich insights and a very idiosyncratic approach to the art of visual storytelling. The emerging director will be inspired and motivated to grow his craft as a result of reading this book.”
—Ariel Levy, production manager, The Man with the Iron Mask, The Spy Who Loved Me
“I love that Simone talks about the ‘senses’ of directing. These are the ‘real’ things a director must think about. Most importantly Simone talks about feelings—this is ultimately what an audience does when watching a movie—they feel. Even an intellectual movie is felt first. As a production designer I have worked with many directors and know that those who have a sense of how their movie feels have the best chance of getting their ideas across not only to the audience but to their crew as well. This is an excellent book; a beautiful approach to the art of directing.”
—Barbara Dunphy, production designer, The Man Without a Face (directed by Mel Gibson) and Head of the Production Design department at the Los Angeles Film School
“Written with the wit, energy, and insight of a filmmaker who has clearly been in the trenches, The Director’s Six Senses is both a great teaching tool and a life-affirming reminder of why movies help us achieve a state of flow like no other medium. Bartesaghi offers creative advice and ingenious how-to skills to help the artist blossom in film directors at any stage of their careers.”
—Salvador Carrasco, film director, The Other Conquest and Head of Santa Monica College Film Program
“Easy, fast, and distinctive as the sound of the hummingbird’s rapid wings or the smell of fresh homemade apple pie, The Director’s Six Senses shows us how to transmit our exact message to the viewers.”
—Marcela Toledo, journalist, writer, editor, producer, translator
Published by Michael Wiese Productions
12400 Ventura Blvd. #1111
Studio City, CA 91604
(818) 379-8799, (818) 986-3408 (FAX)
[email protected]
www.mwp.com
Cover design by Johnny Ink. www.johnnyink.com
Interior design by William Morosi
Copyediting by Gary Sunshine
Printed by McNaughton & Gunn
Manufactured in the United States of America
Copyright 2016 by Simone Bartesaghi
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
The author acknowledges the copyright owners of the still pictures and films from which single frames have been used in this book for purposes of commentary, criticism, and scholarship under the fair use doctrine.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bartesaghi, Simone.
The director’s six senses : an innovative approach to developing your filmmaking skills / Simone Bartesaghi.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-61593-234-4
1. Motion pictures--Production and direction. 2. Motion pictures--Aesthetics. I. Title.
PN1995.9.P7B32355 2016
791.4302’33--dc23
2015016985
to Stefano,
as promised, always with me
to Claudia,
my pillar, my balance, my love
my wife
to my parents, Emma and Carlo,
they wanted me to grow up, but never grow older.
Thank you for letting me keep my sense of wonder.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Assignment
1.Sight
Visual Storytelling
Screen Rectangle
One Frame, One Story
Assignment
2.Touch
Production Design
Environmental Reflections
The Outer World as a Reflection of Ourselves
The Outer World as a Deformed Expression of Our Selves
Real Space to Touch
Assignment
3.Hearing
Sound and Music
Sound Awareness
Music
4.Smell
Directing Actors
How to Smell a Lie (Bad Performances)
Directing Actors and Directing Beings
Inspiration for Realistic Blocking
5.Taste
&n
bsp; Style exploration
Exploration and Discovery
Ultimate Taste: The End
6.Vision
Director’s Inspiration
It’s Not Magic, It’s Hard Work
“Why?”: The Question That Leads to All the Answers
7.“Do or Do Not, There Is No Try”
How to Put Everything Together
Technical Stuff: Know Your Brushes
Director’s Preparation
How to Communicate What You “Sense”
Postproduction Notes: Editing, Sound, and Music
Shooting Procedure
8.A Case Study:
Dead Poets Society
9.Conclusion
Appendix A: Movie References
Appendix B: Book References
About the Author
Acknowledgments
This book wouldn’t exist without the special support of Ken Lee, who believed in me and in this new approach to the director’s journey since it was just a concept. Also a special thanks go to Michael Wiese, who has been part of my life for the last eleven years even if we just met, because it’s thanks to the books he’s published that I’ve become a filmmaker.
A special thanks goes to Larry Balmagia, who helped me clean up the language and cut the “fat” to make this book readable and, hopefully, enjoyable. And to Neobe Velis, who helped me shape the concept in the early stages. Also I want to express my gratitude to Gary Sunshine, who guided my rookie hand through the perilous navigation of the editorial process; to William Morosi for the elegant interior design; and to Johnny Ink for the inspiring cover that capture the very essence of this book.
Thanks to my mentors and colleagues at the Santa Monica College and at the Los Angeles Film School for sharing with me their knowledge and their wisdom: Salvador Carrasco, Jim Pasternak, Laurence Rosenthal, Ariel Levy, Barbara Dunphy, Heidi Davis, Linda Cowgill, Joe Byron, Danny Green, Steve Cook, Charlie Kanganis, Rob Malenfant, Dave Philips, and Diana Kessler.
Thanks to filmmakers who inspired me and I actually had the honor to meet and were so kind to share their expertise and, sometimes, their friendship: Glenn Morshower, Jon Cassar, Stuart Gordon, Bill Malone, Phil Kim, Jon Philion, Aimee Schoof, John Penney, Adrian Pasdar, Bill Borden, Hal Lieberman, and Mike Medavoy.
My ultimate gratitude goes to Andrea Galante, founder of the Milan International Film Festival, which, in 2004, awarded my petition for a special prize: the full scholarship for the one-year-immersion filmmaking program at the Los Angeles Film School. Without this precious gift, I wouldn’t be here..
Introduction
There are no shortcuts.
There are no radioactive spiders.
There is lots of work to do.
I bet a question has been circulating through your brain since you picked this book up: Why another book on directing?
Here it is, my honest answer: when I started directing, I read lots of books that offered wonderful suggestions about how to choose a script, how to create a breakdown, how to work with actors, how to communicate with crew, etc. But I couldn’t find a book to guide me through the transition from being a “civilian” to being a “director.”
“Director” is not a description of what you do; it is something you become. You are a director 24/7. You should always have your “director’s senses” alert.
You read it right, director senses like “Spider-Sense.” You never know which image, theme, or sentence will inspire you today and help you on the set tomorrow.
This book’s objective is to provide a hands-on approach to the first steps a serious filmmaker must take, so that you will be ready to tell the story you want to tell.
First of all, something to clarify.
A director is a storyteller. No more, no less. We must start with pure and simple storytelling. No camera yet, not even pen and paper.
However your story starts, with a “Once upon a time” or “In a galaxy far far away,” whether it’s a story you’ve come up with or real events that happen to you, we all do it the same way.
We tell our stories by selecting words that our audience can understand. We try very hard to make sure that the story that begins in our mind will eventually become the same story in our audience’s mind. When two people from different countries meet, if they keep speaking their own languages, they won’t be able to communicate. The communication part — it’s the key. This is why a good director chooses carefully the images and the sounds that are going to tell his story. Shooting a movie is like breaking down an image into pieces for a puzzle. The puzzle is then assembled by the editor and the director with the intent to maintain the integrity of the original story. When the movie is watched by the audience, it’s experienced again piece by piece, shot by shot, sound by sound, and it’s important that the pieces of the puzzle are going to be put together with the same meaning by the audience.
There are people who are gifted at crafting fascinating stories; they are able to engage the audience with precise words and intonation while avoiding dull moments and irrelevant details.
You might be thinking, I’ve never been good at telling stories, so I’ll never be a good director. Here’s the great news. When you stand in front of an audience and tell a story with your voice, you may be shy and self-conscious but that doesn’t apply to moviemaking. You won’t perform your movie in front of every audience, right?
And now a warning. If you want to be a director to become rich, save your time and your money; become a lawyer, a doctor, or a plumber. Directing doesn’t easily lead to fortune and glory. Most of the time, even when everybody applauds, you still feel disappointed because what you’ve achieved is just a pallid reproduction of what was in your mind.
Becoming a director takes hard work, research, and faithful commitment to your dreams and inspirations.
But if somewhere deep inside, you have a fire for storytelling that won’t stop sparkling, then this is the book for you. I’ll show you how to feed that fire and make sure that you won’t have to work for the rest of your life. After all, we don’t call it “work” when we would be willing to pay to do it, right?
And now a disclaimer.
In the preface of his book Making Movies, Sidney Lumet talks about an interesting conversation he had with Akira Kurosawa about a certain shot he used in his movie Ran (1985). The great Japanese director explained his frame choice by saying “one inch to the left, the Sony factory would be sitting there” and “an inch to the right, we would see the airport, neither of which belonged in a period piece.”
You never know the real reason why a frame was chosen. Whether there are budget requirements or geographical constraints, a good and well-prepared director will always be able to turn compromises into opportunities.
That’s why my analysis and observations are based solely on my reactions as an audience member. I analyze how I feel while watching a movie and then I try to understand how the filmmaker was able to elicit those emotions in me.
Assignment
Write down what happened to you today as if you’re talking to a friend. Don’t think, just write. Then read it and take notes about which part of the day you skipped and why, which words you used most often and what seemed most interesting. This is important, because storytelling is the basis for the director’s work. We choose the words to tell our stories the same way we choose images to convey the narratives in our movies.
Images are a powerful tool because they break language barriers. The image is the same no matter where you come from.
After all there is only one language that everybody understands: the language of images.
• • •
This book contains many visual references and in order to make it even richer, you’ll be able to find most of the scenes and new, updated resources on my Web site: www.sibamedia.com. From
the home page select the link to Educational/The Director’s Six Senses.
Are you ready to go where ”we don’t need roads”?.
1.
Sight
Visual Storytelling
Sight:
One of the five basic physical senses by which light stimuli received by the eye are interpreted by the brain and constructed into a representation of the position, shape, brightness, and usually color of objects in space. (Source: Wikipedia)
Screen Rectangle
When I decided to write this book, I wanted to rewatch all the scenes I planned to use as examples. I wanted to have fresh memories and not rely only on my recollection from when I saw those movies for the first time.
What I underestimated was the power of those scenes: as soon as I started the DVDs, I was trapped in the movie and watched them until the end. That obviously slowed down my writing process.
And then it struck me: Sir Alfred Hitchcock was right when he said: “In writing a screenplay, it is essential to separate clearly the dialogue from the visual elements and, whenever possible, to rely more on the visual than on the dialogue. Whichever way you choose to stage the action, your main concern is to hold the audience’s fullest attention. Summing it up, one might say that the screen rectangle must be charged with emotion.”1
“The screen rectangle.” As director you’ll have to evaluate what’s happening in that space. Nothing else matters.
The reasons for your framing, whether they are creative or compromises, or, as Sidney Lumet put it “budget requirements” or “divine inspiration,”2 don’t matter.
When the audience sees your movie they’ll only see what’s in that rectangle. While you’re shooting, you’ll be distracted by many things that are happening around you, from issues of future locations to discussions about character motivation, from technical problems with the camera to creative dissonance with your production designer. All of these will compromise your ability to focus; they’ll be a daily distraction. But when the camera is rolling, you must be able to enter into your own zone and focus only on what the camera is capturing, right there, right in that moment. A new world is becoming alive for you, our world is in suspended animation waiting for the magic word. When you call the “cut,” our world prevails again with our frantic activities, our emotions, and our stories. But because the other world has been captured by the emulsions (the sensors nowadays), what happened is not lost. It’s immortalized.3
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