I’ve been in the television business for many years, and that means that I’ve stood on many sets and watched many takes. It would be logical to assume that with my years of experience I’d be familiar with the basic operation of a television soundstage.
Logical, perhaps. But I wasn’t.
A week or so ago, I had my maiden experience directing an episode of a television comedy. My entire career, up until that moment, had been spent writing and producing. It never occurred to me to direct. In the television business, the writer wields the power. In the feature film business, it’s the director who (literally) calls the shots. Naturally, as a writer, I gravitated to television. If you’re going to work for a living, you may as well be the boss.
It shouldn’t have been complicated. I’ve written and produced hundreds of hours of television, often a metre or so away from the director, close enough to comment on every take, rewrite lines on the spot and in general buzz around him like an annoying nagging insect.
It was awkward for everyone – cast, crew, my fellow producers – when every now and then I’d stare at the monitors on the set during shooting and notice that everything had gone quiet, the actors were standing around awkwardly, and I’d wonder what was going on until the first assistant director would whisper: “Um, Rob, it’s for you to say ‘Action.’”
“Oh, right,” I’d say.
And then I’d lower my voice an octave to reclaim some titbit of authority and say what directors have been saying for over a century (and that I had somehow spaced out on): “Standby”. And then: “Action!”
It gets more humiliating: other times, I’d be enjoying the end of a scene – thinking, naturally as a writer, about how I’d like to see it in the second take, or how the line might be improved, or that maybe the section right before the last one could be lifted in the edit – and I’d suddenly notice everyone on the set was standing there, kind of limp and baffled and clearly confused and…. Oh, right. Forgot: “Cut!”
Honestly compels me to admit that two separate times I said “Cut” a few seconds before the actor with the last line of the scene had opened his mouth.
“Wait! Don’t cut!” I shouted, which is about the least professional thing any director has ever said on any soundstage.
In other words, a week or so ago when I directed my first episode of television, I have to say, I learnt some things.
The first thing I learnt is that directing television is a lot harder than I thought. I’m a writer, and like all writers I have a hard time imagining that anyone’s work is more complicated than mine.
“Yeah, sure,” a writer will say watching someone dig a trench in the hard earth in the middle of a record hot summer, “that’s hard but it’s not writing.”
“Um, yeah, I guess that’s complicated,” a writer will say watching a neurosurgeon sew two severed nerves – each the diameter of a spider’s web – firmly together. “But try coming up with a really good second act twist. That’s real work.”
Directing is a lot harder, I learnt, than just saying “action” and “cut”. Directing is taking an abstract collection of words on paper and making them march around a soundstage in some kind of rational pattern. It sounds easy, but then, so does “I write jokes for a living.” Or, for that matter, “I paint film sets.” Every job sounds easy if you don’t have to do it.
On the other hand, there was something joyous about the workday requirements of the television director. Essentially, it’s a half-day affair. I’d get to the studio in the morning, direct the actors and mount the new version of the script, and conduct a run-through of that week’s show for the writers around three o’clock.
After that, I was pretty much free. They, of course, had to stick around, way past dinner time, to work on the revisions.
I’d sit with them a bit, of course, to talk about the script and the changes they might make, but soon after that I’d saunter out of the office and head home. Because even though I’m a director now, I still think like a writer, and there’s nothing a writer likes more than walking away from the writers’ room just when the work gets started.
Because no matter what anyone tells you, or who else’s job you try out for the day, one thing is certain: there’s nothing harder than writing. If you possibly can, avoid it.
Rob Long is a writer and producer based in Hollywood
On Twitter: @rcbl
