Directing, 3rd Edition

PART 5

PREPRODUCTION

 

Part 5 (Chapters 17 through 27) covers the vast amount of work that goes into a movie after a script has been accepted and up to the moment when shooting must begin. It covers digging deeply into the script to find all the life below the surface—all the structures and meanings without which the movie would be just a hollow facade. There is the process of casting, which alone can cause a film to succeed or fail definitively, and how to work with actors, whose performances are the key to your audience's accepting the world the film depicts.

The relationship between actors and their director will likewise make or break your film. Actors, being all too human, have human problems, and the director must deal with these constructively. ...