Arts & Entertainment
On-Set Directing
Lesson time 20:39 min
Bravery and humility are crucial to Mira’s process as a director. Learn Mira’s advice for preparing for life on set, including how to create harmony with the crew and actors and conserve your creative energy.
Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars
Topics include: Prepare Rigorously to Create Life on Set • Create a Sense of Harmony • Preserve Silence and Sanctity • Rely on Your AD • Know What Each Department Does • Be Humble About What You Don’t Know • Have the Bravery to Change
Preview
Cinematographers are the gorgeous right hand, and left hand, and eyes of a director. First, I am inspired a lot by what cinematographers do. So it's their work normally that propels me to find them. And I was lucky enough, again, in my earliest years of making films to, you know, find Declan Quinn, a cinematographer with whom I have collaborated for, I don't know, six, seven movies, Fred Elms, who's an extraordinary cinematographer who shot, you know, even as early as the Cassavetes movies, and David Lynch movies, and then shot "The Namesake" with me. And so on. So cinematographers, firstly, just must take my own visual ideas much further. In my world, I like to work with cinematographers who are worldly, who are aware of the world beyond just what they live in and know. I often take cinematographers into worlds that are foreign to them, Calcutta, India, Delhi, wherever. In "Reluctant Fundamentalist" we shot all over the world. So they must be at home in other places, and they must have a great humility, and actually love for other worlds. But mostly what I look for in a cinematographer is an aesthetic and a visual sort of-- to be a poet of light is how I like to put it. I also want to work with people who value really the sacredness of the frame, who really take it as seriously as I do. And normally cinematographers, of course, do, you know. I am also someone who is hands on. I am with him or her, the cinematographer, shoulder to shoulder. Once-- you know, the frame is vital, which is why I don't use, somehow, the steadicam as much. Or I don't use day players in the camera zone, you know, because they do not come from the fabric of what we are trying to make, you know. They just come and go. And so it's important for me, even in second unit cinematographers, anyone who is capturing the image for the film I am making must be part of the nucleus and the team who create the vision of the film from the get go. [MUSIC PLAYING] When I'm looking for the right cinematographer for the film I'm about to make, I'm first, of course, drawn by the quality of work that I might have seen of a cinematographer versus another. And I'm hungry for that, and greedy for that. I look at films. I look at things people do. And I'll forget-- I'll never forget, you know, what an image might evoke in me. Or just the same way I do about a performance of an actor. But I remember. And then I try to find them. And I talk with them. The first thing I do is sort of talk about the visual sensibility that I come from, that I bring to it. Of course, my films are there to speak for it. But I usually share visual materials like a lookbook or images of the time perhaps that I might be filming or so on. But then I, of course, share the script. And the conversation that I have with the cinematographer about the script is very telling, is very revealing of how they might want to see it, without necessarily knowing how I see it, you know. But that is the...
About the Instructor
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Mira Nair approaches directing with the “heart of a poet and the skin of an elephant,” spurred by rejection and fighting to bring uncompromising stories to film. In the Golden Lion-winning director’s MasterClass, learn to make a big impact on a small budget in film production, evoke the best from actors and nonactors, and protect your creative vision so you tell the story that can only come from you.
Featured MasterClass Instructor
Mira Nair
The Oscar-nominated director teaches her methods for directing powerful performances, maximizing budgets, and bringing authentic stories to life.
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