The Two Conversations of the Filmmaker

…with the most demanding interlocutors…

Photo by Geoffrey Moffet on Unsplash

As you make your film, who is it that you talk to? Okay, so there are the conversations with the writer (if they’re not you), plus those in prep, during production, in post—in other words the constant, ongoing, to-and-fro conversations with your team and their departments, with the actors, VFX, SFX, stunt arrangers, fight arrangers, producers, colorists, sound designers, and so on and so forth—and I mean no respect to those I haven’t specified and those I am, unforgivably, forgetting. Then there are the conversations with those to whom you approach for counsel—your friends, your fellow practitioners, your significant other. Yet, although the first category of exchanges are essential, while the second frequently prove invaluable and you would be nowhere without them, they are not the focus of this article...

I'm talking here about the conversations with your two most challenging interlocutors. Or That is what they should be. One is on the inside, the other, the outside. You need to be engaged with both, need to allow them to challenge you, question you, bother you, counter you, excite you, inspire you, embolden you, and even then, when you think you know all you need to know and there's nothing more to be considered, you need to allow them to stop you from shutting yourself down. Because it’s this pair of implacably awkward customers who will serve to wake you up and render your process fit for purpose.

Let's take the first one. The interlocutor you fear the most. The one you constantly beg to shut up. The one who torments you with your doubts, your fears, your uncertainties, insecurities, bewilderments, and indecisiveness. That troublesome inner voice and the recalcitrant self behind it...

 You.

 Talk about a shape shifter! One moment this You of yours is wrong, the next, right. How do you tell which is which? A location works, or it doesn't. You’ve found the actor for the part, or you haven't. A scene is necessary, or it isn't. You have the time in the schedule to shoot a sequence, or you don't. It never stops... Should this be an over the shoulder or a single? How close to, or far from the actor’s eye-line to place the camera? You take a decision and that maddening Youdemands the counter option. Is it instinct you’re hearing, or is it sabotage? There's your knowledge of craft and there’s your intuition. There’s your intelligence, and your gut. What you've learned and what you feel. Your frontal lobes, your amygdala. Your analysis, your hunch. Which to go with? 

Perhaps, on occasions, you get lucky. You and your You agree. Even so, you may feel you need to double check but your You assures you that the decision you’re about to take is the correct one. But perhaps the element of doubt continues to hiss its subliminal whisper—as if within your You, there is yet another voice, an interlocutor lurking within your interlocutor, more Yous within Yous, Russian doll style. No. That way madness lies, not to mention the inner cacophony that leads to it...

Ignore you're inner Yous at your peril, but surrender to them and, equally, it could land you in trouble. You yourself are taking into account circumstances, context, practicalities, considerations of which your militant inner chatterbox seems blithely ignorant or doesn't give a monkey’s about. Perhaps what you’re hearing are old dogmas, obsolete assumptions you haven't quite managed to shake off. You tell yourself it's time to move on. The decisions you take now, and the reasons for taking them, you insist, once they are proved right, will then become the mindset of your future inner voice—until they, in turn, are replaced by fresh insights. On the other hand, your You, unencumbered by daily pressures, is maybe offering sound guidance after all, seeing more clearly what is truthful and what is not than you can—knowing in its gut, the gut within your gut, what is going to work despite your reservations to the contrary.

 Not easy, any of it, but without this first conversation, where would you be? 

Second conversation. The one you have with your audience. Not the actual folk you hope are going to watch your movie but the faceless individuals you imagine, the phantasms responding to every cut, every element of direction—even those of which any regular audience will be only subliminally aware (if aware at all). In a classroom in Beijing I once saw a poster pinned to the wall: Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. underneath him, the words: When I make a film I'm the audience. Martin Scorsese.

In other words—imagine yourself as your audience watching the scene you are shooting or cutting. Not only do you formulate the components of the screen as an address to the viewer but as you do this—and if you're not doing it you're not doing your job—you are putting yourself in their imaginary place as they respond to that address. Are they/I engaged or bored? Do they/I understand what is going on? If they/I—let’s say we—don't understand, are we confused or have we registered the question the scene poses? Are we bewildered or do we get the ambiguity? What do we feel? What do we know? What do we think is going to happen next? What do we want to happen? What do we fear will happen? What do we want a character to do? Or not want them to do? What do we dread them doing but need to see them do? What will happen to them or perhaps to others if they do it? Or they don’t? What was it that happened in the past that we don't know but the characters do? Does this moment seem too good to be true? Could it be the calm before the storm? Why aren't the characters as concerned or worried as we are? Why are they more concerned? What do they know that we don't? Do they know what we thought they didn't? Do they know more than we thought? Who knows best, us or them, this character or that?

Most important of all: do we care, or have we switched off? Or have we forgotten about the rest of the world and is this all we want in life from this moment—to be watching this film, following this story, these characters, alive to their emotions and to ours? Whether we like it or not! Whether it's comfortable or not! Do we just have to keep watching? For the next moment, the next, the one after that, and all that follow... 

This is your second, simultaneous conversation. Sometimes, of course, you won't know what your audience is going to feel. There are times when you don't know yourself. All you know is that there is something intriguing about what’s going on in your film, a sense of significance, of promise or foreboding. You just want to tell the story. You don't know what emotions, what reactions it will prompt. You just have to tell it. And let it speak for itself, which you know it will... 

But if you don't imagine yourself as your audience, your actual audience may experience your film in a very different way from the one you intended. It may misunderstand your story, telling itself another, one very different from yours. It may laugh when it's supposed to cry, or cry when it's supposed to laugh. It may miss what makes you want to make your film, whether you can explain it or not. You may even find that your audience is watching another film, conjured by itself. Better by far that you make sure it’s watching your movie. 

Your two indispensable conversations. Into your film and out from it... 

Peter Markham February 2022