Fast Talk: Screen Gems

Directing the Workday

Paul Weitz

Writer and director, About a Boy (with brother Chris) and In Good Company
Los Angeles, California

Working with my brother as a screenwriting team sort of happened by accident. He had intended to join the State Department, and I was an unsuccessful playwright. But we started writing together for a laugh and then got hired and kept on doing it. Over the years, we've learned that in order for a creative team to really work, you have to genuinely respect the other person and feel like they're offering a different perspective. If two people are coming up with the same ideas again and again, what's the point?

After writing for 10 years, I was used to being alone in my head. And so I didn't realize how much I would enjoy managing people until I became a director and started dealing with a couple hundred people on a daily basis. Leading a team is one of the rare cases where you can affect what kind of workday people will have. If you're organized, then generally the shoot's going to be organized. If you're polite to people, everyone's polite to each other. I love that aspect of setting the tone for how people will work.

One thing I do before the first day of shooting is get the crew list -- often 75 names -- and try to memorize it. Even if I don't get it right, it gives people a sense that I care, that I'm treating them with respect. They're usually pretty stunned that I'm even trying, and I get an inordinate amount of credit.

Directing forces me to make so many decisions in any given hour. Someone will ask, "Should this bottle of beer be brown or green?" and then, "Should his collar be buttoned or not?" At some point you realize it's more important to make a decision than to worry about making the right decision.

The Importance Of Being Local

Christian McWilliams

Location scout, Elizabeth, Alexander, and the upcoming film Syriana
Marrakech, Morocco

What I'm really doing as a location scout is interpreting someone else's taste. On most films, the production designer will give me an illustration of what the director is thinking. That's always frustrating, because it's never 100% accurate. There's no point in hearing the creative vision for the film from anybody but the person who owns it. The production designer is only hired to do the movie and then walks away; he isn't invested. But with the director, it's his movie. You have to go to the source.

But a director still has to be specific, clear, and logical. Oliver Stone had spent 14 years planning Alexander, so he knew what he wanted and communicated it well. He wanted it to be up in the mountains. He wanted nothing modern. But at the same time, he was reasonable; he knew the location had to be near his hotel if he was going to travel every day with the crew.

Having connections in the local community is absolutely crucial. For Alexander, I was asked to find landscapes that would work for nine different countries -- backdrops for Alexander's march from ancient Greece all the way to India. All nine of them had to be within spitting distance of cities where a crew of hundreds could live.

I began searching along the north coast of Morocco, but it was hopeless because there were modern white villas everywhere. Fortunately, I've lived here for four years, and I've been building relationships since I arrived. I had some fantastic local scouts, and one suggested looking near Essaouira on the Atlantic coast. We made the trip, and suddenly we were in ancient Greece, without a villa, house, or satellite dish in sight. It was exactly what Stone wanted: olive trees and unspoiled landscape and wonderful views of the sea.