John Woo believes that if you want to work with actors, you have to fall in love with them. He treats his like family, spending time shmoozing, hanging out, observing them — before shooting a frame of film.

Woody Allen tries to get every scene in a single shot, doesn't cut unless he has to, and won't cover the same scene from different angles. "I don't like the actors to do the same thing over and over." Sydney Pollack never gives an actor direction in front of other actors; Jean-Piere Jeunet thinks that American actors are the ones who need the least direction.

Bernardo Bertolucci is obsessed by the eye of the camera and can't resist the temptation to keep it moving. Pedro Almodovar is bullish on copying scenes from master filmmakers — but not out of admiration. "The only valid reason to do it is if you find the solution to one of your own problems in someone else's film..." He thinks filmmakers should abandon the illusion that they can — "or even worse, must" — control everything. David Lynch advises young filmmakers to remain in control of their films "from beginning to end."

The above reflections and those from other directors such as Martin Scorsese, Tim Burton, Wim Wenders, Oliver Stone, the Coen brothers and Jean-Luc Goddard abound in Moviemaker Master Class. The book grew out of a series of interviews conducted by Laurent Tirard in the 1990s for the French film magazine Studio. Laurent's decision not to tailor his questions to each director gives us the fascinating evidence that "a hundred directors have a hundred different ways of making a film — and that all of them are right."

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DIRECTING
FEATURE FILMS
By Mark Travis
Michael Wiese Productions $26.95

In his latest book on directing, author and director Mark Travis quotes James L. Brooks as saying, "My job as a film director is to make sure that a really bad movie isn't made." That's a very interesting way of looking at it. When one considers how many elements go together to produce a final piece of work, a film that audiences will either dismiss or embrace, one wonders how a truly good film ever emerges. Yet, they do. And that is the mystery of directing.

Travis likens directing to making a jigsaw puzzle. The correct way would be to take a photo of the finished work and cut it up into pieces. However, in film, Travis says that directors must work in the opposite manner — taking individual jagged pieces, painting each one, then fitting them together so that hopefully the finished product will resemble a picture that people will recognize and want to look at again and again.

There's a lot of truth in his analogy and it points out just how strongly the director must maintain his or her vision of what the final product will be.

Building upon his previous work, The Director's Journey, Travis' Directing Feature Films is filled with very simply put, steps to maximize the creative and collaborative process to ensure that the final picture is, indeed, something an audience will want to look at. His thoughts are so simply put that, at times, you feel like saying, "Well, duh!" but, in reality, few have described the process in so practical a manner. It's a fascinating look, and not just for directors, into a multitude of situations a director faces from script development to post-production.

Unlike other books on the process, Directing Feature Films is more about the psychological nature of the director's role in working with a variety of talented craftspeople with a variety of egos and moving them toward a common goal, achieving the director's vision.

Travis spends a great deal of time on how directors work with scripts, realizing that the script is just the beginning of the process and how the director must connect with not only his feelings about the material but also with the impulses behind the writer's work. He shows a great respect for the screenwriter, but does point out the reality that a script is the starting point for a film.

He offers many valuable tips on making the filmmaking process more manageable. For instance, before addressing changes to the script (scene-by-scene or line-by-line editing), Travis advises directors to actually tell the story to people unfamiliar with the material, noting when they themselves embellish scenes and when listeners are engrossed or begin to drift off. After all, the director is a storyteller and the more chances to tell the story, the more refined it becomes.

In the end, Travis advises the director to "make the movie that will please you. You're not making this film for the studio executive, producer, writer or any other person associated with the project. If they want it a certain way, let them make their own movie. You have to make yours."

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