Directing Six Feet Under
By Elif Cercel
Photos by Larry Watson/HBO
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| Kathy Bates directs Freddy Rodriguez in a morturary scene |
When writer-director-producer Alan Ball came off a canceled ABC sitcom called Oh Grow Up a year ago, he was exhausted and his ego was hurt. "I felt like somebody I knew had died," the Academy Award-winning writer said. That Christmas he went home to Marietta, Georgia, to visit his mother and began writing a spec script for a project he had passed on a few months earlier because of his commitment to the sitcom.
"I didn't really think about it. It was sort of therapy for me," Ball said of his decision to write Six Feet Under, the hour-long series on HBO.
Like HBO's The Sopranos, Six Feet Under has complex characters, dark humor and plenty of taboo subjects. The series follows the lives of the Fisher family who run a small funeral business in Los Angeles. Each family member has a quirky personality and a complex set of problems to go with it. They are all in a common struggle to keep the business alive following the death of the family patriarch, who dies in the first scene of the pilot and appears throughout the series in dream and fantasy sequences.
All seven directors who worked on the first season want to come back for more and have pegged Ball as the kind of executive producer every director loves to work with.
"The show is not afraid. It's shameless in a way," said director John Patterson. "They are not afraid to look at areas that would make people anxious."
Six Feet Under treats the subject of death with a combination of dark humor and situational comedy, a tone that Ball says is what he works best in. Each episode begins with a death — a worker at a bakery in one episode, a porn queen in another, etc. Against this tragic backdrop, the lead characters grapple with relationships, sexuality, age, mental illness and other issues.
"Basically it flip-flops all over the map," Ball says about his approach to the macabre theme. "There's a lot of humor in the strangest places, there's a lot of anger and there's hopefully some real emotional material."
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| Director Rodrigo Garcia on the Six Feet Under set |
Ball and co-executive producer Alan Poul looked at dozens of directors and selected those whose past work showed an affinity with the show's sensibilities. Ball's priority was to avoid what he describes as "a flashy and show-offy visual style that lacked real emotional truth."
On one end of the spectrum they selected experienced TV directors like Allen Coulter and Patterson, who have also directed episodes of HBO's The Sopranos and Sex and the City. Also in this group is Michael Engler, a veteran of shows like Chicago Hope and The West Wing.
The producers also signed on directors with an independent feature background, some of whom have little or no prior TV experience. They include Miguel Arteta (Chuck and Buck), Lisa Cholodenko (High Art) and Rodrigo Garcia (Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her). Add to this mix, feature film directors Jim McBride (The Big Easy, Breathless) and Jeremy Podeswa (The Five Senses).
One of the two women directors on the series is Academy Award-winning actress Kathy Bates, who crossed over to television directing in 1993 with Homicide. She has since directed episodes of NYPD Blue and HBO's Oz, going on to earn an Emmy nomination for her directing the movie for television Dash and Lilly. Bates directed two episodes of Six Feet Under for the first season.
About the willingness to bring on directors with little episodic experience, Ball said: "A lot of the network hour-long shows I feel are very melodramatic, heavy-handed and spoon-feed the audience. They really spell out the subtext and that's not what we want to do here."
Ball himself made his directing debut with the show's pilot and also directed the season finale. The first-time director says he was surprised when HBO actually agreed.
"I wanted to direct and I figured I'm much more comfortable taking on an hour-long pilot than a feature," Ball said. Although he had no formal directing training, Ball said he learned the craft on the set of American Beauty by observing director Sam Mendes, whom Ball describes as one of the smartest men he has known. Mendes won the DGA Feature Director Award and a Best Directing Oscar for the film.
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Alan Ball (center) directs Frances Conroy and Ed Begley, Jr.
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"I watched how Sam focused on the performances and on getting every single moment and nuance right," Ball said. "He created this very intimate, almost erotic relationship with each one of the actors in which they would feel comfortable enough to go to places that were scary."
According to Patterson, Ball's own experience serving as a director on the series was significant in the working environment he created on set.
"Alan Ball became very familiar with production problems because he directed the pilot and he did a brilliant job of it," Patterson said.
Patterson especially credits Ball for his hands-off approach during the production. "I was left to my own devices," Patterson said. "Directors love to be left to their own devices. We are greedy. We have a vision. We're picked because we have ideas and we want to contribute and execute those ideas."
When comparing past TV shows she's worked on, Bates said, "The directors, I've often felt, were brought in just to see if they could talk to the actors because nobody in the business seems willing to do that. I found this show to be very different. They wanted my ideas, they wanted to hear what I had to say about the script and it was a very genuinely inclusive atmosphere."
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| Kathy Bates (center) directs a scene with Peter Krause and Frances Conroy |
Coulter, who has received DGA and Emmy Award nominations for his work on The Sopranos, also felt the boundaries between writers and directors on the new series were freer.
"In the case of The Sopranos, they have a very clear idea of how they want to do things as far as the writing is concerned," Coulter said. "As a director, one doesn't get too involved in the writing. If I have a very strong idea about something, as I have on a very rare occasion and I mention it, it would be considered."
Coulter stressed that this was not necessarily a negative about The Sopranos. "It's a different way of working," he said.
On Six Feet Under each director had two or three tone meetings with Ball, Poul and the episode writer, in addition to the casting sessions. Ball would then visit the set two or three times during each shoot and with Poul, would look at dailies, giving occasional feedback. They also encouraged directors to make stylistic suggestions for the music or the satirical interludes in the episodes.
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| Director John Patterson |
"I never felt like every single episode had to be exactly the same style," Ball said. "I know it's a TV series but because of the absence of commercials and because of the compactness of the 13 episodes, it feels more to me like a novel. It's a movie in 13 chapters." Ball stressed that he did not dictate how a scene or certain elements should be shot.
"I don't mind that each episode may have a slightly different flavor to it," he added. "I think that's interesting. I certainly want directors who are very distinctive who want to do our show."
In the early stages of the production the interaction between directors and writers was generally more intensive. Patterson, who directed episode two, said he gave a lot of emphasis to tone meetings where characters and plot were discussed in detail.
"Only one episode separated me from the pilot," Patterson said. "That's very near the beginning and for that reason it was important to spend time with Alan Ball and with his writers to make sure we understood what the attack and the humor were."
Patterson began his career in 1974 with The Rockford Files and has worked on almost 50 different shows including Cagney and Lacey and Law & Order. He explained that Six Feet is a different experience in his approach from a more systematic, procedural drama like a detective story. Six Feet is more about nuance and behavior.
Arteta, another director who was involved early on, said, "In the midst of all the chaos of putting the whole production team together, I was really amazed at how the writers, the producers and Alan Poul were all extremely open to me and my ideas."
Arteta believes he owes the opportunity of working on the series to Chuck and Buck, his feature about a childhood friendship gone awry. Arteta had also directed episodes of Homicide and Freaks and Geeks and is familiar with fast-paced TV schedules.
On Six Feet Under, Arteta went through three sets of notes with Ball and episode writer, Christian Williams. As with all the other directors, if they liked the suggestions, they were incorporated into the script.
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| Miguel Arteta with Frances Conroy |
For episode eight Coulter explained that Ball and episode writer Lawrence Andries were receptive to his ideas for using dramatic techniques, particularly color, to underscore a character's emotions.
In this episode the Fishers rent out a room at the funeral home to a group of senior citizens for dancing lessons. The episode included scenes that explored the emotional life of Ruth, the middle-aged family matriarch, as she searches for love following her husband's death. Ruth is confused by her feelings for her lackluster lover and hiking companion, and her boss, a Russian flower shop owner.
Coulter used color sparingly, introducing reds, oranges and yellows in scenes where the characters "had emotional connections with someone." He dressed the florist as a red Russian Cossack in one sequence where Ruth fantasizes about a passionate encounter with him. In another scene, color is prominent when the eldest son, David watches the dancing class and becomes attracted to the instructor.
Coulter also used another technique for dramatic effect. With the help of DP Alan Caso, he opted for a subjective point of view in a sequence where Nate, the younger son, gets stoned in his girlfriend's apartment and becomes jealous of her friend. For the scene the crew attached a bodycam to actor Peter Krause. The 35mm camera pointed toward Krause's face creating an intense close-up shot.
Coulter said he wanted an "Edward R. Murrow 'you are there' feel" for the scene but the device had its problems. The noise from the camera was so loud that the actor had to shout out his lines, which were rerecorded in post-production.
"We thought it was hilarious on the set," Coulter added. "I was literally on the floor laughing when we were shooting it."
Six Feet Under is shot almost entirely in Los Angeles, using a location in the city's Crenshaw district for the exteriors of the funeral home where the action is primarily based. A set for the house was constructed at the Sunset-Gower Studios in Hollywood.
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| Frances Conroy with director Alan Coulter |
Another example of the script revision process is in episode five where Bates suggested using a more powerful shot than the one in the original script. In the episode, David, the eldest son, is in church being made a deacon. The character is in a dilemma about telling his family that he is gay. In the original script he sees a church full of young men but the writers preferred Bates' suggestion for using a shot of naked men in the sequence.
Making his debut directing for television, Garcia said he found working on the series in some ways easier than directing his own movie because many of the decisions about characters and tone had already been made. Garcia, who was recommended to the producers by Cholodenko, began his career as a camera operator and cinematographer and shot the biopic Gia for HBO.
The challenge for him, Garcia said, was making a mark without taking the series in a different direction.
"You have to serve the material and serve the series," Garcia said. "What makes it harder is, of course, that you don't want to take all these ideas that are given to you and make something that's completely drab, that doesn't have a particular accent."
Garcia was initially concerned about the fantastic elements in the series where characters are depicted talking to the dead. "Generally I feel more at ease directing stuff that's based on reality," he said. But previous episodes had established a pattern of fantasy sequences and Garcia was relieved to discover that he did not have to use special devices.
"I did not have to do very many aerobics to introduce a ghost," Garcia said. "I could do it as matter-of-factly as possible."
On the use of such sequences, Ball said he enjoys getting inside a character's mind to reveal their secret, most private wishes, dreams and fears. In such sequences, Ball said he puts the emphasis on displaying these elements visually, rather than having the characters talk about them.
"One of the great things about writing for a visual medium like a movie or a single-camera TV show is you can go anywhere," he explained. "You can go anywhere in the world, in history or in a character's mind. Of course, we are bound by budget and time constraints but there's nothing you can't do visually."
On the series, the producers' inclusive approach was also evident in other stages of the production.
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| Coulter directs Freddy Rodriguez |
In both of her episodes, Bates described the post process as very collaborative. "Once I send (Poul) my cut, they look at it. He then gets back to me right away within the next day, tells me what he thinks about the show and what changes they want to make. Then they send me their cut for my comments, which I find very rare."
As an actress herself, Bates was also especially sensitive to the needs of the actors. "It's a 'give and take' between actor and director. I thrive on that as an actor," she said. Because of that, she makes the onset experience "a more organic process than a dictatorship."
Specifically, Bates said she was able to compensate for the short rehearsal time in the schedule by clearing the set five or ten minutes before each sequence. She stressed that this gave the actors time to "get their feet wet in the scene with each other and move around in the space."
The show's schedule allowed for eight days of prep, nine days to shoot and four days to edit.
"I'm opposed to overly complex story lines for one-hour drama," Patterson said. "But I'm not opposed to complex characters, complex personalities. In the case of this show, they certainly have that in spades. It proves that good casting is very significant and that's the major explanation for its success in addition to the inspired thinking of Alan Ball."
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| Co-executive producer Alan Poul, actor Peter Krause and director/executive producer Alan Ball |
Ball agrees that the series' signature quality is the complexity of the characters, which he feels the actors themselves enjoy. "A lot of times they get to portray such subtle emotional moments that hopefully they are having fun as much as we are," Ball said. "I feel like our entire first season was one big, long honeymoon and I hope it lasts as long as it can."
For his part, Arteta said that he learned a significant lesson from working on Six Feet Under. "The enthusiasm of the two Alans [Ball and Poul] taught me something," Arteta said. "No matter how intense the pressure is, this is the moment to be savored. I really got that from them."
Arteta said he has already taken that lesson with him to his next feature, Good Girls, which is currently in post-production. "Somehow I was able to enjoy the process better having worked with them," he added.
Elif Cercel is a former editor of an online trade publication for directors.
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