Directing, 4th Edition

C H A P T E R 3 7

MONITORING PROGRESS

A director’s recurring nightmare is to discover, after crew and cast have departed, that a vital angle or shot has been overlooked. This is most likely to happen in low-budget filmmaking, where too few people cover too many tasks. Working fast and hand to mouth, intentions must often be modified, and crossing intended shots off a list can easily go awry. The checklist may be so rife with changes that the list itself becomes a hazard.

When a film’s story proceeds by a series of images, or when the narrative is carried by nonverbal actions, directing and keeping track of what you have cov-ered are relatively simple. Mistakes and omissions occur more frequently when scenes involve several simultaneous ...