A female conductor faces challenges as she takes on a major production in Director Todd Field’s psychological drama, Tár.

Set in the international world of classical music, Field’s film centers on groundbreaking composer/conductor Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett), as her life begins to unravel while preparing both a book launch and much-anticipated live performance of Mahler's Fifth Symphony.

On October 2, after the DGA membership screening in New York, Field discussed the making of Tár during a Q&A moderated by Director Greta Gerwig (Little Women).

During the conversation, Field spoke about his choice of takes and lengths they went through to capture a particularly challenging scene.

“The sort of rules for this is to have as few camera angles as possible. Obviously, this character is driving almost everything so it's really about her locomotion and when it made sense to move with her or made sense to watch her. For instance, let's take the Juilliard scene. What was required is that we are able to take her through a 10-minute performance where the coverage was happening within the camera blocking ... as if we had cuts without cutting. We had it on the first take and at the very last moment the camera operator panned the wrong way. Cate and I had blocked that scene alone for two days then we brought the crew in and adjusted that blocking to camera. We had two days because we knew there was a very good chance we wouldn't get it in one take. We ended up chasing that first take for two more days and on the second day we finally got it.”

Field’s other directorial credits include the feature films Little Children and In the Bedroom and episodes of Carnivàle and Once and Again.

Field has been a DGA member since 1999.

You can listen to Field's Q&A by clicking the podcast episode embedded below. You can find more DGA podcast episodes here.