When you ask people what a film director does you will probably get several different answers, some of them as simple as "The director is the one who decides what happens in the film, the one who tells the actors and the rest of the crew what to do" and others will try to be more deep and say something like " The director is the person who controls the artistic vision of the film and tries to make the rest of the crew work towards that vision". In my opinion they are both wrong.
All film is a form of communication. It is a way to communicate a message, it may be something deep and philosophical or may be something as simple as "Laugh!", but a film always has something to communicate. A successful film is a film that communicates its message in the best way, a film that can change the thoughts and opinions of its audience.
The first ides of how to get a message across to someone else is usually to convince them with "intellectual arguments", something that tends to be unsuccessful, unless we are pretty much on the same line of thought as our recipients already. But why shouldn't this work? We have all lived different lives and have had different experiences so what we intelligent and intellectual will differ depending on what we consider important in life. If someone says that something we believe in is wrong we will immediately stop listening, because what their saying is that we're stupid.
I think it was the philosopher Kirkegaard who wrote something similar to "It is better to seduce someone with ones opinion than to push it on them." I believe this to be true. If we try to push our opinions, or our message, on someone it has a smaller chance reaching the recipient. We put ourselves hierarchically above the recipient and look down at them like lesser knowing minions and this will color our argumentation in a way that will stop them from listening.
What we need to do as filmmakers is to make our audience want to listen (students come to a classroom because they want to learn, that is why they listen to the teacher who is hierarchically above them). To do this we need to respect our audience and treat them as our equals. They are not wrong for seeing the world different from us. Even if the goal is to change someone opinion, the problem, and hence the solution, always lies in ourselves. If we want them to change, they are not responsible to change, we are the ones responsible to the achieve the change in them. An extreme example would be asking who was responsible of killing millions of people during world war 2, Hitler or the people who allowed him to do it?
If we approach the communicating the message through the view that the problem and solution to it lies in ourselves, we will respect our audience more and communicate the message better. To be more humble and less preachy it is better to communicate the message of the film in the subtext.
We want our audience to feel and take part of the change happening in the film. The audience are the ones that should take the path of the 5-point story structure I wrote about in an earlier post, the path from context to conflict to complication to climax to new context. Generally this is done by making the audience empathize with the main character in the film and relive the path och change through her. This is the easiest way, but at times the main character doesn't change and by not changing she changes the world around her, and other times there are several main characters or the film is a multi-plot consisting of several, often interchanged stories. If this is the case the story should still be structured in a way that the audience is taken through the same path of change as they would in a film where the main character changes. The audience could still see and feel the change the story achieves in the world of the movie.
What is important to remember is that it is easier to make the audience empathize with one character than several, and that it is easier to make the audience re-live the change if the main character also changes. A story with a character that doesn't change or a multi-plot should only be chosen when it is the best way to communicate your message to your audience, not because you as the storyteller thinks its cool.
Here in lies the responsibility of the film director. A film director doesn't direct film - a film director directs the audience. The film, and all parts making up the film, are the tools used to direct the audiences thoughts and emotions, tools used to achieve the wanted result or change in the audience. All the choices of how to make the film, from story to the visuals to the sound and the editing, should be done with the audience in mind and how the choices communicate to the audience and directs the audiences emotions and thoughts.
Making artistic choices for egoistic reasons is som om jag skulle byta språk mitt i en mening för att jag kände för det (translation: "... like I would change language mid sentence just because I felt like it), not that smart if I cared about the message of I'm trying to convey.
I hope you have enjoyed this post,
Peter Hertzberg
All film is a form of communication. It is a way to communicate a message, it may be something deep and philosophical or may be something as simple as "Laugh!", but a film always has something to communicate. A successful film is a film that communicates its message in the best way, a film that can change the thoughts and opinions of its audience.
The first ides of how to get a message across to someone else is usually to convince them with "intellectual arguments", something that tends to be unsuccessful, unless we are pretty much on the same line of thought as our recipients already. But why shouldn't this work? We have all lived different lives and have had different experiences so what we intelligent and intellectual will differ depending on what we consider important in life. If someone says that something we believe in is wrong we will immediately stop listening, because what their saying is that we're stupid.
I think it was the philosopher Kirkegaard who wrote something similar to "It is better to seduce someone with ones opinion than to push it on them." I believe this to be true. If we try to push our opinions, or our message, on someone it has a smaller chance reaching the recipient. We put ourselves hierarchically above the recipient and look down at them like lesser knowing minions and this will color our argumentation in a way that will stop them from listening.
What we need to do as filmmakers is to make our audience want to listen (students come to a classroom because they want to learn, that is why they listen to the teacher who is hierarchically above them). To do this we need to respect our audience and treat them as our equals. They are not wrong for seeing the world different from us. Even if the goal is to change someone opinion, the problem, and hence the solution, always lies in ourselves. If we want them to change, they are not responsible to change, we are the ones responsible to the achieve the change in them. An extreme example would be asking who was responsible of killing millions of people during world war 2, Hitler or the people who allowed him to do it?
If we approach the communicating the message through the view that the problem and solution to it lies in ourselves, we will respect our audience more and communicate the message better. To be more humble and less preachy it is better to communicate the message of the film in the subtext.
We want our audience to feel and take part of the change happening in the film. The audience are the ones that should take the path of the 5-point story structure I wrote about in an earlier post, the path from context to conflict to complication to climax to new context. Generally this is done by making the audience empathize with the main character in the film and relive the path och change through her. This is the easiest way, but at times the main character doesn't change and by not changing she changes the world around her, and other times there are several main characters or the film is a multi-plot consisting of several, often interchanged stories. If this is the case the story should still be structured in a way that the audience is taken through the same path of change as they would in a film where the main character changes. The audience could still see and feel the change the story achieves in the world of the movie.
What is important to remember is that it is easier to make the audience empathize with one character than several, and that it is easier to make the audience re-live the change if the main character also changes. A story with a character that doesn't change or a multi-plot should only be chosen when it is the best way to communicate your message to your audience, not because you as the storyteller thinks its cool.
Here in lies the responsibility of the film director. A film director doesn't direct film - a film director directs the audience. The film, and all parts making up the film, are the tools used to direct the audiences thoughts and emotions, tools used to achieve the wanted result or change in the audience. All the choices of how to make the film, from story to the visuals to the sound and the editing, should be done with the audience in mind and how the choices communicate to the audience and directs the audiences emotions and thoughts.
Making artistic choices for egoistic reasons is som om jag skulle byta språk mitt i en mening för att jag kände för det (translation: "... like I would change language mid sentence just because I felt like it), not that smart if I cared about the message of I'm trying to convey.
I hope you have enjoyed this post,
Peter Hertzberg
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