{"id":700,"date":"2019-02-11T16:30:53","date_gmt":"2019-02-11T23:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/juror\/blog\/?p=700"},"modified":"2019-03-02T17:07:59","modified_gmt":"2019-03-03T00:07:59","slug":"directors-close-up-2-the-storytellers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/juror\/blog\/2019\/directors-close-up-2-the-storytellers\/","title":{"rendered":"Director’s Close Up: The Storytellers: Writers and Directors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Gerry Orz, KIDS FIRST! Film Critic, age 16<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the first week of Director\u2019s Close Up featured the beautiful web of\nrelationships between actor and director, the second week takes a look at much earlier process\nin a film\u2019s production: the writer and director. The event included Jane Anderson (writer, The\nWife, Olive Kitteridge<\/em>) and Billy Ray (writer, Captain Philips, <\/em>co-writer,\nThe Hunger Games<\/em>) as well as moderation by Robin Swicord (writer\/director, Wakefield<\/em>, writer,\nThe Curious Case of Benjamin Button<\/em>).  All three have both\ndirecting and writing experience and shared with the audience on how to best\nform a strong partnership between two of the most conflicted roles in the film\nindustry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Most known is the tension that exists between\nthe writer and the director.\nBilly compared it to a track race. He related the writer to be the first on the\ntrack. You write your script and you finish the lap around the track and then\nhand it off to the next runner. The next runner starts running their lap and\nthe success of the game falls in their hands instead of yours. A film shares\nmany similarities – the writer runs first, the director runs second. This act of\ntrusting another with a developed piece of art such as a script can lead to\ngreat conflict and tension or a great success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Billy and Jane also shared strategies they use\nsuch as encouraging the director they\u2019re\nworking with to help them with parts of the script in order to build a solid\nfoundation of trust. They also explained that, at the end of it though, the\nwriter must give the reins of control over to the director and let them fly with the\nfilm themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both Billy and Jane shared their experiences\nwith this. On Captain Philip<\/em>s, director Paul Greengrass and Billy\nhad many different arguments and fights. Billy explained that he originally\nwished for the Captain\u2019s wife to be part of the story. Paul disagreed and also\nwished for the Pentagon to have a side story, as they attempt to organize a\nrescue, much to Billy’s protest. Billy explained that it was Tom Hanks (Captain\nPhilips) who told them both that the story should never leave the ship that\nPhilips was on. This led to the Captain Philips we know today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jane had her own experiences with writing and directing.\nHer script for The<\/em> Wife <\/em>took fourteen years for\nher to make and involved many rewrites and defeats. The film failed again and\nagain in being produced, due to the simple fact that it has a female protagonist\nand the male characters of the story are secondary to her. Finally in 2018, we are\nable to see this incredible story. She said there were many troubles along the\nway, with many directors wanting\nher to change it to be more masculine with a male lead, but she was able to\npersevere. Robin shared her own stories and tips. She recommended to the\naudience to go outside their comfort zones and attempt to write something they\nwould be fearful to direct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jane Anderson, Billy Ray, Robin Swicord   <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The art of writing holds many challenges and\nall three shared tips in the craft. Billy related writing to marble. His\nanalogy was that writing is like a block of granite. You start with the entire\nworld in your screenplay, that is the granite, and chip away everything that is\nnot the story. You are left with a beautiful statue that is your film. They\nalso explained the challenges of an ending. Jane, Billy and Robin all discussed\nhow, at times, the ending must be so perfect that it is sometimes necessary to\ngo back and change earlier parts of the film to make the ending flow just\nright. Jane explained how the climax scene for The Wife<\/em> took\nmany rewrites and redesigns to get right, while Billy explained how the climax\nscenes in Captain Philips<\/em> were one of the rare cases where\nboth him and the director had\nno arguments, fights or disagreements. Jane also shared an important note to\nthose who write and direct their own films. She said that many director\/writers will\nwrite their scripts as directors, where\nthey get immersed into the shot design, set design, actors and the many details\na director has\nto deal with. She recommended that you write a script as a writer only, and you\ndirect a script as a director only.\nThen, the story is completed preserved in the writing process and is held to\nthe highest importance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The art of writing has many challenges and is one of the most under-looked places in the film industry. For every incredible motion picture ever made, there is a 120 page script that took weeks to years to write and polish. All three shared how the creator of this blueprint and the director who develops the blueprint are at times in conflict, but their goal never differs –  to tell an incredible story. Billy, at the beginning of the panel, said it best, \u201cIt\u2019s okay to disagree about the how, as long as you\u2019re not disagreeing about the what.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Images courtesy of Getty Images and Film Independent <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Gerry Orz, KIDS FIRST! Film Critic, age 16 While the first week of Director\u2019s Close Up featured the beautiful web of relationships between actor and director, the second week takes a look at much earlier process in a film\u2019s production: the writer and director. The event included Jane Anderson (writer, The Wife, Olive Kitteridge) and Billy Ray (writer, Captain Philips, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[14,15,12,17,18,16,13],"class_list":["post-700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jury-updates","tag-billy-ray","tag-captain-philips","tag-jane-anderson","tag-robin-swicord","tag-the-curious-case-of-benjamin-button","tag-the-hunger-games","tag-the-wife"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/juror\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/juror\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/juror\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/juror\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/juror\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/juror\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":740,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/juror\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700\/revisions\/740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/juror\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/juror\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidsfirst.org\/juror\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}