Every director meets good and bad luck. David K. Irving shows where things tend to go wrong on a shoot and how to prepare so luck works in your favor.
Every director will tell you that both good and bad luck play a decisive role in filmmaking. It plays such an integral part in the process that directors need to know what to do with it when it hits them.
There are varying degrees of luck. Murphy’s Law, obviously thought up by cynical engineers, states, “If something can go wrong, it will.” But we don’t often hear the optimist’s version that luck can run in our favor too. How else can we explain why when an actor bails on the shoot, another is cast who turns out to be much better than the original? Or why certain people get into political office? Cocteau said, “I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?”
There are those, of course, who do not believe in luck, but see the turn of any event as fate. No matter how you interpret it, the event has still turned. Was it bad luck that director Terry Gilliam had difficulty raising adequate funds to make Monty Python and the Holy Grail? If he had raised the money the Python Troupe originally planned, you would have seen quite a different movie.
“The success of Holy Grail,” states Gilliam, “is due to the fact we didn’t have the money to make a mediocre epic. Given the time and the money we would have been mediocre. But because we didn’t, we had to come up with silly ideas, which in the end, proved to be much more interesting.”
Being able to see that nugget of luck favors those with “a prepared mind,” as Louis Pasteur once said. It happens when you least expect it too. When Cocteau saw how poorly a set had been designed, he said to the art director, “I thought it was almost a godsend that the camera had broken down, for your set looked as though it had been made out of handkerchiefs and walking sticks.”
It’s one thing to happen upon luck, but it’s quite another to head it off at the pass. This is why pre-production is so critical to the success of a production. A stitch in time solving a problem in pre-production saves nine on set. Then the time it would have taken to address that problem can be used to solve to any unforeseen dilemmas.
Such as weather. Nowhere else is luck more a factor in filmmaking than with the weather.
Cocteau wondered, “It’s strange that an enterprise as expensive as making films can be entirely at the mercy of the barometer.”
tied themselves into knots. Tuesday: A good day, a run of luck. ~Jean Cocteau
Weather is the mother of all compromises in exterior location photography. Beyond the control of any director, weather will play a role unless the film is scripted to be shot entirely interior. The sun is bright, and then it goes behind clouds. But for how long? It starts to drizzle. Will it last? For how long? What if it starts to pour? Can the scene be re-written to be played in the rain? Can the company run to a cover set?
Jean Cocteau wrote in his diary during the making of Beauty and the Beast: “By ill luck, it clouded over and the stormy sky made me stop work on the long shots with several actors and use lamps for close ups.”
There are a number of solutions for weather-related problems one can deal with in pre-production. In settling on a schedule, weather should be a primary concern. A wise production manager consults a Farmers Almanac and gains a general sense of the weather in the area in which the company will shoot. Most locales have a rainy, dry, hot and cold season. If you want snow, avoid Louisiana. For dry conditions, stay away from Vancouver. New York City is ideal for shooting in the spring and fall, but summers and winters can be brutal because of the extreme temperatures. Of course, Los Angeles has sunshine 360 days a year, in case you ever wondered why Hollywood resides on the left coast.
To control your luck and stave off Murphy’s Law, a good rule of thumb when organizing the schedule is to shoot-out exteriors. Once you are inside, whether it is a location or a sound stage, you are no longer at the mercy of the weather.
If possible, a director can place a cover set towards the end of the schedule. This is a set, always dressed, usually for a scene with the principal actors, that can be used if the weather forces the company inside. Cover sets can be a luxury for a production, but they have kept many a film shooting when the weather turns sour.
“I wanted to put a hundred-piece orchestra on the scaffolding, playing sound-lessly. I was talked out of it,” said Luis Buñuel.
Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee have been known to go over schedule or tinker obsessively in the editing room to get their picture just right. The striving for the perfect vision is a struggle; one a director fights for at every step in the process. But even the master compromises.
Sidney Lumet recalls, “I once asked Akira Kurosawa why he had chosen to frame a shot in Ran in a particular way. His answer was that if he’d panned the camera one inch to the left, the Sony factory would be sitting there exposed, and if he’d panned an inch to the right, we would see the airport – neither of which belonged in a period movie.”
Lumet adds that striving for perfection can only lead to heartburn because there are uncontrollable elements everywhere: “I’m dependent on weather, budget, what the leading lady had for breakfast, who the leading man is in love with.”
If directors realize 80 percent of their original plan or vision, they’re doing well. With time and clout, they can nudge that number over 80 percent, but 100 percent is unrealistic.
Making compromises doesn’t have to mean you make a second-rate film. On the contrary, it can often improve the product. Jean Cocteau’s beautiful film Beauty and the Beast was shot in France during World War II. Restrictions compelled Cocteau to abandon his fight to shoot in color, and so shot the film in black and white instead. Is the film less exciting? More exciting? It is what it is. And the passage of time has certainly anointed the film as a classic.
Monday: a day when the threads of fate entangled and
Almost every aspect of filmmaking requires compromise. The script may have to be altered… The number one choice for the lead actress is unavailable… The director of photography is talented but slow… The budget doesn’t stretch as far as originally intended… The schedule is blown out of the water by a severe storm… The director may have to direct despite a high fever… The pace of a scene doesn’t match in dailies… The director loses patience… Blinded by a confused actor, a director can lose his or her objectivity… All the luck is bad… The communication poor; the command not respected… The chemistry between key collaborators is lackluster.
The areas in which a director needs to be particularly aware of potential compromise include schedule, location and personnel. It is rare to shoot an entire film in scene order, so the assistant director and director do their best to create a reasonable, responsible and efficient schedule. Whether working with a computer program, or a cardboard strip board, the key to scheduling is to balance fixed with flexible dates, and fixed with flexible locations. The schedule is still rough in early preproduction. Once the actors have been hired, the schedule begins to solidify. (Actors have start and stop dates that form brackets around the schedule. Turnaround is addressed and factored into each day’s photography. If an actor has a conflict, say a wedding or a press junket for another film, those adjustments are made to the schedule.)
Locations are the next major factor to be added to the production board. Locations, particularly ones slated for big and/or lengthy production scenes, may be available only at certain times or dates. Businesses, for example, are apt to be available during off hours or after closing. Tinkering with the production schedule to meld the schedule of the actors and the locations is a juggling act, one that can change in an instant. An actor becomes ill, a location falls out, and a scene goes over and must be stretched into the next day’s principal photography.
To address and solve problems, or to compromise as little as possible, the director has three remedies; money, script and invention. One reason why movies cost so much is that money can solve many problems. Many a production manager has sped over to the nearby airport and made a handsome offer to the flight controllers to reroute noisy planes. An angry shopkeeper claims the key grip broke the window on their shop. Money for a new window is produced immediately to placate the owner and avoid any potential conflicts.
Although many line budget items include healthy contingencies for unanticipated problems during principal photography, there is a limit. The next best thing to cash for a director is the script. Rather than go over budget or over schedule, the director has the power to adjust the screenplay to fit the circumstance. It is important to note, before the script is badly mangled, that directors sign a contract that obliges them to shoot the story as written. This affords directors some leeway in altering the script, but in the end, they must deliver the story reflected in the screenplay. To change a comedy into a horror film, or an action film into a drama violates the trust instilled by the producers. In addition, the finished film must be a certain length. To cut pages and/or scenes to stay on schedule, which ultimately results in an unacceptable length, is a breach of contract.
But changes are always made. A complex scene can be simplified; a lengthy scene can be shortened. An expensive prop can be downgraded; a dialogue scene can be visualized rather than spoken. The fourteen-car train wreck can be heard off screen rather than shown. Think of the savings in both time and money!
Necessity is the mother of invention. A director who needs to solve a problem becomes imaginative. Money shouldn’t be the first solution; it should be the last. Allow the creative juices some time to percolate and listen to the screenplay. Often that creative solution is organic to the story and more effective than throwing money at it. An entourage of horses can be replaced by a lone squire with a pair of coconuts, as was done in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. When Gilliam couldn’t afford horses, he opted for coconuts on screen to imply the clip-clop of horses. Very funny, very cheap, and very Monty Pythonesque.
The moment just prior to shooting a scene is when the lines, business, props, set dressing, camera movement, lighting and interaction between actors and their environment are primed to congeal into a shot. Though there has been a great plan that organizes these elements to be prepared for this moment, a director should take a deep breath and allow the moment to materialize organically. This is where luck becomes a player. The history of filmmaking is rife with examples of what was perceived as bad luck turned into cinematic gold. When asked whether he really believed a horseshoe hanging over his door would bring his luck, Niels Bohr said, “Of course not, but I am told it works even if you don’t believe in it.”
David K. Irving is a film director, writer, producer, and an Associate Professor in film production at New York University. He has written and directed dozens of documentaries, and his feature directing credits include Night of the Cyclone, C.H.U.D. II, The Emperor’s New Clothes, Sleeping Beauty and Rumpelstiltskin.
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