Turning 30 is not a big deal age-wise, but somehow 30 is a magical number. As a kid you consider someone old with 30 years of age, as a teen you think you’re a millionaire by then, and when you’re in your early twenties, 30 is still way ahead.

It’s funny to recap all the imaginations you had about who you will be when you’re 30, and while some visions might have been a little bit too ambitious – I’m not a millionaire by now – others turned out quite true. And then there are parts of your life you even didn’t imagine to become the way they are.

When I was younger I had quite different ideas of my career, but somehow I think that a creative path always was part of myself. And now I can’t think of doing anything else.
Honestly, I can’t think of any other job, or even hobby, I would rather do than directing – and that’s quite a nice way to feel about your job.

There are many ways to become a director, and each one gives you different tools for doing your job.
I learned them by watching quite some directors do their work and – more importantly – with hands on experience of my own.

Instead of a film school I had a two-year internship for the directors Dirk Meints & Toni Weiss at Moving Target Films – that was the best thing that could have happened.

So I thought I could share my personal thoughts on the business of directing.
This might be considered as a follow up to an earlier post on my blog from over 3 years ago: Job, Hobby, or both? 10 tips for the road….

Directors Direct

Just like “Writers write” and “Actors act” – there’s no way around that. Thinking about directing, reading or watching about it can help, but in the end it’s about getting your hands dirty.
No book can teach you the feeling when you’re on set and many people rely on your preparation and instinct.

And certainly no book can teach you the feeling of being lost on set, all eyes on you waiting for an important decision. I’m pretty certain that every director has been there, something doesn’t work out or something unexpected happens – which is the case on almost every shooting.
So there you are, everyone looking at you and waiting for a decision. So it’s easier when you’ve been in such a situation before, preferably on a short movie with friends or smaller scale projects where not so much money is involved.

Dealing with that kind of situations becomes easier when you gain experience. And the good thing about working in a team is that you’re not alone. Sure, you should be the one with a plan, but with a great team it’s a lot easier to deal with problems of all sort.

So if you want to become a director then don’t only think or read about it, do it. Nothing easier than writing a short story and shooting it with friends. It doesn’t have to be perfect, i almost certainly won’t be, but however the shooting may go, you’ll gather valuable experience.

Preparation is everything

You will curse every minute you spent on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube instead preparing for the shooting. In fact, directing is kind of an office job – you spend 80% of your work within an office – being it your own, in an editing room or in meetings. Only a minimum of the whole project will be spent on the set. Still it’s the shooting that counts, nobody will be interested in how much time you spent preparing, it’s the shooting that determines the success of the project. You can repair some things in editing, but you will start to hate the phrase “We’ll do it in post”…

The most important part for a director on set is to know what you want and be as well prepared as possible. You have to know which shots you need to tell the story and what kind of performance you need to to tell the story in the best possible way.

Improvisation on set is a great thing, but it’s only possible when you really have an idea of what you are doing. If you don’t you may be shooting many great shots, but in the end they are just great shots on their own and not a coherent story.

And when i talk about story i don’t exclusively mean narrative fiction films, every commercial, image film, web video, short film or video of any kind should tell a compelling story and evoke emotions. To boil it down: Directing is evoking emotion by telling a story.

And if you’re not prepared and just try to figure it out on set, it’s too late almost every time. For sure you wouldn’t like it if your D.O.P. just didn’t think about important camera equipment – so do your homework and always be prepared.

Communicate as Clear as Possible

As a director you have your own vision about each project, you know how it should look and feel and you carry it around in your head for quite some time. Without proper communication you might end up with something completely different, or deliver something nobody expected. While those things could also be a good thing, when you get paid to direct something you also have to meet certain expectations.

Always be as clear as possible from the beginning on. No matter if you’re working on a movie, a commercial or a TV show, everyone has different imaginations towards a project, and you’re the one that should specify how this project will be tackled.

When you are working on assignment it’s crucial to define your thoughts about the look, the performance, the edit and almost everything else. If you think that this great one-take-crane-shot will tell the story in the most compelling way, you should tell everyone before the shooting.

But it’s also very important for your crew to know how you imagine certain aspects. I worked in the art department for some time and i once worked with a director who just didn’t care. Whenever we presented something or showed pictures he just left all the decisions to us. That is, until the shooting started.
The night before the first day of shooting we had to rework a whole lot of stuff – and this is just not necessary.

Personally I like to give each department enough freedom to be creative – it’s such a great thing to be surprised by great ideas and input. Nevertheless it is crucial to brief each department about your overall vision.

In the pre-production of each project i try to create briefings for each department with enough details of what is important for me but also enough freedom for creative input and ideas.

Walking the Fine Line

For a director time and money are not the most important priorities, you think about the story, the performance, the camera, etc.
But guess what, without the money and time you would just be a creative person with great ideas but nothing to show.

So while it certainly is the most important part for a director to take care of the creative process and create the very best product possible, this product hast to be created within a certain framework.

Don’t always blame producers for the limitations, because for most producers the goal is also a great product, but they have to take care of the money. And thank god they do! On my short movies i was producer AND director and that’s the worst thing one could do – at least it was for me.

There are many directors that do take after take just to find the perfect one – and basically that’s what a director should do. On the other hand, a director who’s almost never in time and doesn’t know at which point a performance won’t get any better, won’t succeed either.

In the best case scenario you can talk to the producer and stress what is important and what is – to some extend – less important, but don’t think that the money will be thrown at you because you say so.

Be Creative

It sounds obvious, but “Be Creative” also includes not to make excuses for not being creative because of the tight schedule, budget, etc.
Be creative within your limitations!

Like i said, the money won’t be thrown at you and producing a film, video or show is very expensive. And no matter what your budget is, you will have to work within a certain framework.

Everyone is working on a tight budget and schedule, even James Cameron, Christopher Nolan or Peter Jackson.

So the best thing to do for a director is to find the most creative way to tell the story, aim for the best with the time and money you’ve got.

Treat Every Project with Importance

Even the smallest, seemingly ridiculous, project should be treated with importance. If you don’t, you should pass on it – because nothing is worse than not taking a project serious.

I think everyone made this mistake once, and to be honest it’s a really bad feeling when you know you didn’t do the best you could. That basically is lost time, and even when you made money with it, when you don’t stand behind what you do, just let it be.

And doing something JUST for the money is a bad decision anyway, if you don’t have at least the ambition to make the best you possibly can, you are the wrong person for the project. If you really need the money, then do it, but take it serious.

You are Nothing Special

Well, basically you are, but so are the production assistants, drivers, and everyone else on set working hard for your visions. Without them you would be a person with an idea, nothing more.

Treat everyone you would like to be treated yourself. And that’s why i think it is a great thing if every director has worked in different positions before.

After I directed a couple of short movies I quit my day job and wanted to make a living in the movie / commercial business – so I started to work as a production assistant. Those where great times too, but some people just treat you like shit.

I once drove someone important (at least he thought so) to a location. He told me that the thing he hated most about PAs is that they always tell him what they are working on besides being PA – he simply doesn’t care. A PA is a PA for him, and nothing else. Wow, and that coming from a person who used to be a set driver himself.

So while you have great responsibilities on set you certainly are not the most important one. So whenever there is time after a shooting, make sure to thank everyone on the team for their work, because everyone is doing an important job.

You’re Only as Good as Your Team

That’s what directing is about – assembling a great team. Because as a director you heavily rely on each of the crew members, so always gather yourself with people better or more experienced than yourself.

For a director it is very important to have very solid basic knowledge of all the different departments, but it is just impossible to know every detail of every department.

Another important factor – at least for me – is the chemistry within the team. I just love to work with people I like and have fun on set. Everything is just so much easier when everyone enjoys to work with each other.

And Cut

Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you’re a director.
Everything after that you’re just negotiating your budget and your fee.
James Cameron

One of the great things about being a director as a life choice is that it can never be mastered.

This fact is also the reason that the “blog” section of my website presents my lifestream more popular than my blog posts (on the right of the page). And when i finally figured out how to get pagination to work and how to open all the links in a new browser page with lifestream, I’ll also be happy with my website (any help on that would be very appreciated!).

So, here it comes, my personal wrap up of 2010.

On Directing

Early in 2010 i mostly directed smaller commercials and finally got my first commercial to be aired in television. The “Baumax -10%” commercial played all the year in Austrian television and that was quite a nice experience.

During the year i got into directing for Austrian television – and now i´m responsible for four different children TV formats.

There´s a big difference directing commercials and shows for television, each one with it´s own unique challenges, approaches and appeals.

So to be honest 2010 was the most interesting and productive year of my directing career and it was really nice that all the hard work in the previous years paid off that well.

On Screenwriting

I´m currently in the middle of the seemingly 100th revision of the story i’ve been working on for quite some time now. While almost everything has changed since the beginning, the main character stayed the same. He is unique and special and i can´t wait to confront him with all the extreme situations that wait in front of him – for the seemingly 100th time.

While that may sound a little poor, i didn’t have any problem to throw away plots that didn’t work (even when they’ve been fleshed out pretty well) – at the end nobody cares through how many revisions the movie went, all it counts is the final result.

Best Movie

It’s really hard to pick my favorite movie because of two simple facts:
1. It’s always hard to pick one single favorite movie and
2. I’m not really the cinema type of guy. I prefer buying the DVD or Blu-Ray almost every time over going to the theaters. Certainly there are movies that have to be seen in theaters, but due to quite intense working hours and plain simple laziness i didn’t make it to the cinema that often.
Also I’m not the biggest fan of 3D, so with all the extras and making-ofs i don’t think my habit will change any time soon.
Well, and since I live in Europe it’s seemingly impossible to be up to date with all the movies in 2010.

Nevertheless I’m still going to pick the favorite movie I’ve seen in 2010. And since it’s my list i can cheat here, so I’ll list my three favorite movies in 2010 (without any particular ranking):

• Kick-Ass
• Inception
• Toy Story 3

And because of the reasons above that list is likely to change when all the other great movies of 2010 are available on DVD.

Best Book

This one is very easy to answer for me. Since I’m not a big fiction reader i almost exclusively read books on the craft and business of the movie industry.

And the book i really enjoyed the most in 2010 was The Coffee Break Screenwriter.

Not because i think it’s a great thing to write in 10-minute periods at a time, but because Pilar brings it quite to the point when it comes to break a story and her great breakdown of the overall structure of a movie.
I don’t think a solely formulaic approach is useful for writing a screenplay, but since I’m quite of a structure freak i really think this book is one of the best on screenwriting in general.

Best Podcast Episode

I really listen to quite many podcasts since i hate wasting time and whenever I’m on the road i really enjoy to listen to interesting interviews with screenwriters, directors or other people heavily involved in the movie business.

My favorite episode in 2010 was Jeff Goldsmith’s interview with Michael Arndt in the Creative Screenwriting podcast. To be honest you should listen to everything Michael Arndt has to say, his interview on Little Miss Sunshine is of great value as well.

So here it is, the Toy Story 3 podcast: Michael Arndt – Toy Story 3

It’s a Wrap

So, that’s it, my 5th and last post this year. And while I’ll certainly will try to write just a little more next year, when I have nothing important to say I’ll rather work on my screenplay than to post here.
Ok, it’s probably not a good thing to end the year on such a bad note.

2010 was a great year for me and I’ll do my best so that 2011 will be even better. And I’ll write. Being it a screenplay or a blog post…

You really should follow both of them on Twitter: Philip Bloom, Greg Yaitanes.

You can find the interview here: In depth interview with Greg Yaitanes, Executive Producer and Director of “House” Season Finale shot on Canon 5DmkII.

Since it’s an hour long i thought i’d sum up the – in my opinion – most interesting parts of the interview. I don’t claim that this summary contains every detail of the interview, but i think i captured the essence.

Update: Philip posted a complete transcript of the interview here: Greg Yaitanes “House” Interview transcription

I especially like to hear the hands on experience from a director’s point of view, so here we go:

Why did they use the 5D on House?

House originally is shot on an ARRI system. Greg and his team constantly discuss on what would the best way to shoot the show on a weekly basis is.

The decision to shoot on the 5D was that it was the exact tool they needed to accomplish the story. It wasn’t like “let’s gain momentum in a technical area by shooting the finale on a buzzed format”.

There are some technical challenges, but they where outweighed by the way it helped them to tell this particular story. The show deserves the best at all times, you don’t use a format just to struggle with it.

Every system has it’s own strengths and weaknesses, so every filmmaker and storyteller should use the proper tool to tell the particular story – for this episode it was the 5D.

The Benefits of the 5D

The 5D provides a great look and because of it’s large sensor and incredible depth of field.

The Size

It is immensely useful for confined spaces. On the episode they shot with three cameras very often in dense sets, and the camera provided a flexibility like when shooting in film school, almost an “El Mariachi” style shooting.

Greg wasn’t going for a shaky hand-camera style, so most of the time the 5Ds where on monopods to organically exist in the space. A couple of times it was on the dolly, but mostly on the monopod.

About 60% of the sets where tight settings, the size of the camera was a big benefit.

The Work with Actors

On the first day on set it looked like a bunch of paparazzi’s looking at the actors.

A shooting environment with 5Ds was great for the actors because of the flexibility and freedom the camera provides. It’s not anymore like “either you or the camera”, but both.

It is great to keep the actors “in the moment” and not to have huge breaks to change the camera position.

The Work on Set

For the finale the team used three different 5Ds:

The A camera with an external monitor, off of that monitor the focus puller spread the image to different other monitors. The B camera had the same setup but the monitor was next to the operator. The C camera was operated by a single D.O.P. (Ninja Chris) and he shot different pick ups within the scene.

It was very important to Greg to have an artist behind the lens, not a technician.

Usually the D.O.P. looks through the viewfinder of the camera, shutting the whole environment out. After a day Toni (the D.O.P.) got used to looking at the LCD panel and actually embraced it – he was around the whole environment and was part of the story and whats happening.

The Post Production

A big benefit is that even when you use three cameras with slightly different settings it’s no problem to correct and match them in post production and color grading. It’s also great to just save the cards on a hard drive and immediately start editing.

All the stages of the finale where within 100 yards of the production, so they didn’t have to send anything away.

The Transition from Film to the 5D

The hardest transition was for the focus pullers, they went through a complete season and everything changed in the finale. But nobody was rolling their eyes. They all participated in the change, got involved and loved the ease of work.

During episode 19 (which was also directed by Greg) they let the 5D shoot besides the film camera to see how it would behalf. They’ve been very happy with the tests and the set looked really great on the 5D. They intercut the film footage to see how the both integrate with each other – and it did well.

In the beginning it wasn’t clear that they would shoot the entire episode on the 5D, but during pre-production they wanted to shoot this scene with the 5D, and that one, and this one too. And since they knew that the hospital looks great with the camera the idea evolved to shoot the entire episode with the 5D.

The Network

So have there been any problems or doubts by the network that you could’t broadcast 5D material?

The network approved the workflow since they already knew the outcome from the 5D tests on the former episodes – so no complain from their side. It passed every standard of the show and the previous camera tests showed that it would definitely work out.

Drawbacks of the 5D

There are like 30 things in mind that are great, and a few things that can drive you crazy:

HD Monitoring

It’s not possible to pull a HD feed off the camera while you’re rolling. It would be great to look at the image in HD, also the focus puller would have loved to pull the focus off of HD monitors. Greg and the D.O.P. chose the 5D over the 1D (which would support HD output) because of the larger sensor and therefore the shallower depth of field.

Pulling the Focus

The space between 0 and infinity is just a couple of inches. It’s hard to coordinate when actors AND the camera are moving, it’s very tricky to pull the focus there, it’s almost easier if the D.O.P. pulls the focus by himself.

An actor NEVER wants the feeling that he just gave a great performance but the camera missed it because of focus problems.

The episode was shot with wide open apertures – how did the focus pullers not get a nervous break down?
They are incredible good focus pullers and they understood and where anticipating the camera and actor movement.

Also there have not been any big sweepings and crane movements.

Bottom Line

You don’t want to create a film aesthetic but you want to create your own style.

It doesn’t come down to camera specs, when you tell a story that the audience has an emotional reaction to – that trumps everything.

Facebook, Twitter and Co have become a basic instrument, but what about movie websites?

Really well designed movie websites are nothing new either, but there are some examples that underline the theme so well and are by far more than just a website about a movie – they carry the world and theme of a movie a lot further and serve as an extension and not just merely present some information.

Smashing Magazine compiled a great list of movie websites. Not a list exactly, they tried to answer the question “What if Oscars were given to movie websites”.

It´s a great showcase of incredibly well designed websites, read the full article here.

All my infos where either duplicated or spread between the two, that is no more.

From now on this will be my sole website, merging www.sokolar.com and www.misofilm.com.

The old domains will still be active and point to this new one. Also my email addresses will still work, but my main address will be miso@michaelsokolar.com.

The Pre-Production

My ultimate goal before a shooting is to be as good prepared as possible, especially if you´re shooting on a very tight budget. We´ve been pretty good prepared, it got stressy anyway, but that´s part of the job.

A month before the scheduled shooting one important funding was canceled, but thanks to the already granted fundings from MA7 we managed to pull off the almost impossible and shot a great movie with an incredible cast & crew who all agreed to work for free.

Without the great efforts of the whole team this wouldn´t have been possible, and i want to thank all of them: Cast&Crew.

The Shooting

Dealing with such a heavy topic as human trafficking it is very important to precisely know how you want to show the cruelties your protagonist has to endure. It´s one thing to write a screenplay about that, a whole other thing is to actually direct this kind of scenes.

I´ve been very lucky with the extraordinary cast, way before the rehearsals we sat together and discussed how we wanted to tackle those scenes – and we´ve come to very good solutions.

Shooting with “stars” like Rainer Spechtl and Christoph Grissemann was anything but difficult. It makes your life as director so much easier when everyone brings their own creative impulses and works together as a team instead of just trying to push your own thing. In the end working together counts, not just one great performance – and it just was a pleasure to work with all of the actors involved.

I think you know it was a great team and a great shooting if you´re sad that it´s over, and that definitely was true.

Post-Production

We shot the movie on the RED ONE and it was just great. I found this excellent Final Cut Pro / RED workflow document that made our life much more easy.

Basically our post-production workflow looks like this:

• Backup the RED footage on set on two different hard disks
• Import the RED footage into Final Cut Pro (with Apple Pro Res HQ codec)
• Edit the material (offline)
• Transfer the offline edit onto the 4K RED footage
• Color correction
• After the editing is done: sound design & music
• Put it all together with inserts & credits

Currently we´re doing the offline edit, this should be finished within the next few weeks.

I´ll keep you updated on the progress, you could also join the Facebook page of the movie for the most recent news and photos.

I’ve been involved in a Canon 7D shooting right before, but i wanted to give it a try for myself – and i’m pretty impressed by that little thing.

You can watch the video here (the music is once again from Andreas Grass & Nikola Paryla):

I limited the ISO to 3200 and used the following lenses:
Canon EF 24-105mm 1:4
Sigma 10-22mm 1:4-5,6

Although the lenses could have had a better aperture i’m pretty happy with the results, even in low light situations the noise is not too bad (i have not done any noise reduction).

The camera is really easy to use and with good lenses the result is a really impressive, full HD video.

Besides the ISO and shutter i only adjusted the white balance for the look i wanted – everything else are pretty default settings.

The only issue is that you need to have either a tripod or really really steady hands to avoid a jittery video. There are already some rigs, but i didn’t have a chance to try one out. So for documentary where you move a lot you might run into trouble (also because there is no auto-focus for video).

All in all it’s a nice little thing, and quite affordable too.

Due to some scheduling conflicts we had to postpone the shooting until January, we’ll be shooting from Jan. 12th. – Jan. 15th 2010 now.

But there are very good news as well: we managed to cast the first roles!

Christoph Grissemann will play JOHANN and Rainer Spechtl will be OSCAR.

We are really happy to have these terrific actors for our movie and we’re looking forward to cast the other characters in December.

All things come together pretty nicely, i can´t wait to shoot the movie…

I got enough time until the shooting to prepare everything, meet with the heads of department to discuss all the tiny bits and i even manage to arrange the pre-production between my other projects. But i know two things for certain:
- just one little detail could change everything
- no matter how much time you have to prepare yourself, a lot will change and it will get stressful.

But no matter what, spending as much time as possible to prepare yourself is more important than everything. Prepare for everything that can go wrong (which in fact could be everything) – so you can deal with it in time.

So far so good, this is the status on A Place Of Peace:

Soundtrack

Attending the Film Music Symposium really changed my mind about certain aspects of film music.

The earlier the musician / composer is able to get his hands on the screenplay and think about the theme of the movie, the more the production will benefit from it. Music definitely is a powerful tool to evoke and emphasize emotions, so if the music is available before the shooting you could easily use it for rehearsals or the shooting itself. But most important – you don´t have to use temporary music for editing. It´s really hard for a composer if you´ve watched your raw cut a hundred times with the music of Hans Zimmer.

So my plan is to meet my composer soon and talk about the ideas i have about the soundtrack.

Storyboard

I´m not a great illustrator. Really not. But then again a storyboard doesn´t have to look like a perfect pencil sketch – it has to convey the shots i imagine for the movie and give everyone involved a sense of what i´m trying to achieve. So with the help of Stan Lee (How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way) i´m learning how to bring my thoughts to paper.

I personally very much like the way the movies of Susanne Bier are shot, very close close-ups.
What i´m trying to achieve in A Place Of Peace is to have one moving master that´s almost a one-shot in each scene and cut it with close-ups of the actors emotions. While this looks pretty nice in the storyboard we´ll see if the locations support my vision, but i´m pretty confident that i´ll be able to adapt my ideas to the specific set.

We won´t have the time for a lot of shots within each scene, so i´m working on few shots that provide some eye-candy and convey everything they should.

What Else?

Carola, the stylist, is collecting some moods for the clothings and Joana is searching for locations. Angela is casting and i am drawing, so far everything looks quite good – we´ll see how everything develops.

I got involved into this matter since my last short movie Greener Pastures in 2006, during ongoing screenings for school classes or discussions and the book Joana researched for with the authors.

I had some discussions with Joana about real stories of human trafficking – the different personalities of victims and how they deal with what happens to them, their environment, the madames, the whole system behind Human Trafficking, hard facts, numbers and statistics, etc.

So while writing the screenplay i already gathered quite a solid background on Human Trafficking – but knowing the hard facts and real stories, or convey the emotions without boring exposition, insterts or dull dialogue with a movie is a whole different thing.

As screenplay author and director of this movie i had to do another kind of research – how would others deal with this matter? I had to watch movies about Human Trafficking.

Since I’m a movie nerd anyway it was not a big deal for me “having” to watch movies, films with stronger stuff are nothing new for me either – still these movies i watched have been really heavy – strengthening my urge to do this short movie on that topic.

Besides the three movies I write about here, you can find a list of movies about Human Trafficking here or here.

Human Trafficking

Human Trafficking is a mini series of two 90-minute episodes and was produced for TV. In my opinion it takes some time to get into the first episode, although the first scenes are quite emotional, the movie is somehow torn apart between the different storylines.
After you got into the story and got familiar with the different characters it’s quite emotional to watch what happens to all of them.

Nevertheless i think if the makers would have taken a little more time to introduce us to the characters and their environment this movie(s) would have a stronger impact. In my opinion this should not just be a mini series of two episodes, but a full series of 12 or even 24 episodes.   IMDb Link

Trade

Trade was directed by the german director Marco Kreuzpaintner, and while it is a good movie it is a little bit too “straight”.
The little girl gets abducted and her 17 years old brother and a Texan cop are searching for her.

Don’t get me wrong, it is a good movie and I was emotionally involved, but in my opinion it is for that matter a little bit too “Hollywoodish”.   IMDb Link

Lilja 4-Ever

Lilja 4-Ever was directed by the swedish director Lukas Moodysson and is in my opinion the most realistic movie of the three.
Although Trade and Human Trafficking are really good movies and emotionally intense – watching Lilja 4-Ever was one of the most intense movies I have ever seen.

It´s not because it is extremely brutal – the movie doesn´t feature heavy nudity or brutality, but it simply feels so real. You believe everything you see, the desperate lives of the russian teenagers in their surroundings, the dreams and desires of these young people, and their struggle for a normal life.

Probably the hardest part of this movie is that we are solely following the protagonist – Lilja. Unlike the other two movies it`s not about the people searching for her and trying to rescue her, it`s just Lilja against her miserable life.

After watching this movie I felt like I´ve got a huge weight on my chest, this is most certainly amongst the best and most realistic movies I have seen.   IMDb Link

I would highly recommend watching those three movies, those things happen right next to you in your neighborhood without you even noticing.