Tv blame the writers, Movies blame the director?

[selina]

^ I disagree. I did a practical training for over six month in a production company where low-budget-feature-films were developed (not in the US, though, so maybe things work differently in other countries).

The producers chose the director and they developed the story together with him. He presented several ideas and the producers picked one of them. Then the director/writer (same person here) wrote the script, but there were regular meetings in which the producers went over the script together with him to adjust it.
And once the filming starts the producers will visit the set from time to time. In any case they will have impact on the editing later on and will definitely meet the editor. And they will discuss it together with director what they believe works best. So actually a feature film is really a joint project.


In terms of television a writer still has to pitch a story to the producers and they will have the final last word, so I can't see how writers are all that powerful as some of you have mentioned (unless the writer is the producer and/or the creator of the show).

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

^ I disagree. I did a practical training for over six month in a production company where low-budget-feature-films were developed (not in the US, though, so maybe things work differently in other countries).

The producers chose the director and they developed the story together with him. He presented several ideas and the producers picked one of them. Then the director/writer (same person here) wrote the script, but there were regular meetings in which the producers went over the script together with him to adjust it.
And once the filming starts the producers will visit the set from time to time. In any case they will have impact on the editing later on and will definitely meet the editor. And they will discuss it together with director what they believe works best. So actually a feature film is really a joint project.

There isn't a hard and fast rule in the power relationship between producers and directors. It depends on who they are, how much clout they have in the industry, etc. Major directors who make big budget Hollywood films typically have an auteur level of control over every aspect of production. Less experienced directors are going to have to run things by their producers.

In terms of television a writer still has to pitch a story to the producers and they will have the final last word, so I can't see how writers are all that powerful as some of you have mentioned (unless the writer is the producer and/or the creator of the show).

In the US the producers typically are writers who run the writing staff. Junior writers will pitch story ideas to them, but ultimately breaking stories is done by the writing staff together. Some foreign TV industries don't operate on that showrunner and writing staff principle, but that's how American TV shows operate.

 

[Christopher]

Obviously, this isn't always the case -- if Steven Spielberg is the film producer and a no name the director, the project is goig to eb thought of as more a SS project -- but this is generally the case.

Although that can change over time if the director becomes better-known later. I recall that films Spielberg produced back in the '80s such as Poltergeist, Gremlins, Back to the Future, and Young Sherlock Holmes were perceived as "Spielberg films" at the time, but now we've become much more familiar with the names Tobe Hooper, Joe Dante, Robert Zemeckis, and Barry Levinson as directors in their own right, so people today attach their names to those respective films rather than Spielberg's.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

^^^
That's true of most of those films, but Poltergeist is still thought of more as a Spielberg film than a Tobe Hooper film since Hooper was shoved aside to the extent that Spielberg actually did much of the directing himself, and the film reflects Spielberg's sensibilities far more than Hooper's.

 

[stj]

Stage directors in effect are not only set foremen, guiding the actors performances but the ones who block the actors' movements, a process analogous to editing the movie, i.e., final cut. Music and lighting for a live performance must fall under the purview of the stage director as well, which makes the stage director analogous to the cinematographer and the sound editor. That necessary multiplicity of roles gives the stage director a whole set of creative functions unneeded in movie direction. On the other hand, writers are often told their plays are unstageable, a common phenomenon that has given us the "closet" drama. In all, it is stage that is the directors' medium.

The movie director is not even necessarily the person who picks the camera shots. They may be specified in the script. Increasingly, they are showed to him or her in storyboards. The director may mess around with the scripts and the scores and the editing, but unless he or she actually is a writer or a composer or a film editor, this interference is the opposite of creative influence. Ridley Scott didn't create something when he stuck a ludicrous unicorn dream into Blade Runner, he screwed up a coherent story.

Writers often want to become producers and/or directors because they want to keep those uncreative dicks from messing up their scripts. The director is the number one guy in actually putting together the creative contributions of the writer, the set designer, the cinematographer, the costumer and so on. And the editors and composers have only the footage to work with. So, if the director screws up, the movie's screwed. But, although bad direction can ruin a good script, I don't know of good direction ever making a bad script good. The director is important for execution not creation.

There are very few directors who have distinctive artistic styles or identities. Of those who do, most developed those distinctive styles or identities as writers or cinematographers or film editors.

You give a director a different script, you get a different product, not the director's creation. Robert Zemeckis directs Back to the Future, and Forrest Gump, and Death Becomes Her but there's nothing in common, thematically or stylistically. Ron Howard directs Apollo 13, Backdraft and A Beautiful Mind and they bear no significant resemblance to each other.

On the other hand, various people direct Jacob's Ladder, Ghost and My Life and you don't get three different kinds of creations varying according to the directors' different natures. You get thematically related material showing the artistic development of Bruce Joel Rubin. Sam Mendes directs American Beauty and various people direct episodes of Six Feet Under and True Blood. But you don't remark the dissimilarity between Mendes' American Beauty and Six Feet Under, you see Alan Ball's continues exploration of themes he's interested in.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Stage directors in effect are not only set foremen, guiding the actors performances but the ones who block the actors' movements, a process analogous to editing the movie, i.e., final cut. Music and lighting for a live performance must fall under the purview of the stage director as well, which makes the stage director analogous to the cinematographer and the sound editor. That necessary multiplicity of roles gives the stage director a whole set of creative functions unneeded in movie direction. On the other hand, writers are often told their plays are unstageable, a common phenomenon that has given us the "closet" drama. In all, it is stage that is the directors' medium.

No, stage is the writer's medium as it's the one medium where the writer's scripted words are paramount. There isn't ad-libbing by the actors (or at least very rarely), nor rewrites by script doctors. Everything is in service of the writer's dialogue and stage directions which are usually assiduously followed.

The movie director is not even necessarily the person who picks the camera shots. They may be specified in the script. Increasingly, they are showed to him or her in storyboards.

Putting shot descriptions in a screenplay is a big no-no as it steps on the director's turf. You'll typically only see shots specified in scripts written by the director or written closely under the director's supervision. And directors aren't handed storyboards and animatics produced without their input. They either closely oversee the storyboards, specifying the shots they want, or they sketch the storyboards themselves.

The director may mess around with the scripts and the scores and the editing, but unless he or she actually is a writer or a composer or a film editor, this interference is the opposite of creative influence.

A film director marshals every department and element of filmmaking to form a cohesive and unified vision for the film. That's the goal of supervising every aspect of production. This input will vary depending on the skill of the director. It can be a creative influence that works to the film's benefit or detrimental interference.

 

[Christopher]

^Quite right. Every decision in feature films has to be approved by the director. Storyboards and animatics aren't done by the writer, but by the director, DP, FX director, art department, editor, etc. For instance, on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, since development began during the writers' strike, Michael Bay put together the "plot" of the film in animatics first, and then, when the strike ended, had Kurtzman & Orci string the animatics together with dialogue scenes.

The director of a film doesn't just "mess around" with scripts and scores and editing. The director has approval over every word of the script. The director participates in and supervises the editing process. And the director makes the decisions about "spotting" -- i.e. deciding when there should be music and what it should be. In all those things, the director is the one in charge every step of the way.

 

[Kegg]

Pretty much people heap blame or praise on whoever is identified as the auteur of a product, as that's mostly how the logic goes. It's easier and more straightforward to blame one person for what didn't work. It's not always true that this is the director or writer (and it can sometimes be seen as the writer for certain films, like Network); it could also be a producer.

 

[Trekker4747]

For instance, on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, since development began during the writers' strike, Michael Bay put together the "plot" of the film in animatics first, and then, when the strike ended, had Kurtzman & Orci string the animatics together with dialogue scenes.

But, really, how does this differ than any other way Michael Bay makes his movies, other than him saying "just rip-off some cheap '70s movie everyone has forgot about."?

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Pretty much people heap blame or praise on whoever is identified as the auteur of a product, as that's mostly how the logic goes. It's easier and more straightforward to blame one person for what didn't work. It's not always true that this is the director or writer (and it can sometimes be seen as the writer for certain films, like Network); it could also be a producer.

Which is why you need to have an idea of the circumstances, particularly the power relationships, of any given film or TV show in order to make an assessment.

 

[stj]

The once common phenomenon of off-Broadway tryouts suggests very strongly the sacredness of the playwrights' words is grossly exaggerated. Shakespeare's words get changed or cut. Even when the would be playwright is kindly informed that his or her play is actually stageable, the stage director actually has a creative input into the acted play that the film director does not.

The belief that, for example, Spike Jonze was the creative force behind Being John Malkovich is just kinda nuts. It was Charlie Kaufman. I'm not sure why people keep talking about how some directors now also act as producers is even relevant to the thread. The claim the director was the primary creator was made during the heyday of the studio system! It is an article of faith based on very little, if any, evidence.

This stuff about how the director does this production task and that, as well as being the guy on the set who tells the crew ignores the fact that those decisions are determined first by the budget, which is not the directors' purview unless they are also producers. It is the guy who controls the money who ultimately decides whether a score doesn't fit, junks it and hires another composer. And so on and so forth. If the director is also producer, he has that creative input in his role as producer. It is secondary to the creative input from the screenwriter, but more important that his creative input as director. Directors who don't have such producer authority are dismissed as hired guns. Well, they are. Directors have been fired, lots of times.

There also seems to be some confusion between the power and the creative input. That story about the original Robin Hood script is a good example. I'm not really sure who besides Margaret Thatcher and other wingnuts really want to see deconstruction of the Robin Hood myth. Anyhow, I guarantee you that CSI: Nottingham Forest was a bad idea. Casting Kiefer Sutherland as the sheriff wouldn't save that turkey. Ridley Scott, exercising a producer's power, tried to excise the BS. The thing is, he couldn't make a movie with a bum script. He lacked the power to create a comedy, which is the only way that bird would fly, because the producer and the director together, are not the primary creators of the film.

The question of blame is the same as the question of credit. Giving the director credit is taking it away from the writer. If there's a script with words, he or she, not the director, is the primary creator. (For the record, I'll repeat again, the situation is entirely different for improvisational work. It occurs to me that meant a lot of movies in the early days.)

The fixation on who's more powerful ignores questions of creativity. That really isn't open to question: It starts with the writer.

 

[Kegg]

^
Ah, but the auteur theory typically sees itself as oppositional to the practice of Hollywood films at the height of the studio era. To be trite and cliche; Citizen Kane is the classic auteur film but also an exception, a director getting an unusual degree of control over a movie, while Casablanca is a classic example of the non-auteuristic studio bound film, where the director was just one more piece of the puzzle. Fritz Lang's films in Germany, then Fritz Lang's films in America, and so on (of course, to tie this back to the first point, his American films lacked his scenarist wife Thea von Harbou.)

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

The once common phenomenon of off-Broadway tryouts suggests very strongly the sacredness of the playwrights' words is grossly exaggerated. Shakespeare's words get changed or cut. Even when the would be playwright is kindly informed that his or her play is actually stageable, the stage director actually has a creative input into the acted play that the film director does not.

Great stage directors come and go, but the work of great playwrights lasts through the ages. The great plays are ultimately defined by their writers, not by the various directors who have staged them. And of course film directors have creative input in working with their cast, writers and the various departments involved in filmmaking.

I'm not sure why people keep talking about how some directors now also act as producers is even relevant to the thread.

The fact that so many directors attain producer status reflects how director-oriented the film industry is.

This stuff about how the director does this production task and that, as well as being the guy on the set who tells the crew ignores the fact that those decisions are determined first by the budget, which is not the directors' purview unless they are also producers. It is the guy who controls the money who ultimately decides whether a score doesn't fit, junks it and hires another composer. And so on and so forth. If the director is also producer, he has that creative input in his role as producer. It is secondary to the creative input from the screenwriter, but more important that his creative input as director. Directors who don't have such producer authority are dismissed as hired guns. Well, they are. Directors have been fired, lots of times.

Of course directors have to work within budgets. That's true of stage directors and film directors alike. That doesn't mean that the producer always has primary creative control in either medium, simply that directors have to achieve their creative goals within the economic limits set by the producer. And, as we've already discussed, there isn't a blanket rule that every film is director-driven. Some films are producer-driven and the director is just a hired gun, fulfilling a role more like that of a TV director. But in the case of major directors it's typically the director who oversees every creative aspect of filmmaking with the producer playing more of a logistical role.

The question of blame is the same as the question of credit. Giving the director credit is taking it away from the writer. If there's a script with words, he or she, not the director, is the primary creator.

If screenwriters could turn in their work and see it produced in the form they think works best then that outlook would make sense. But screenplays are generally the result of many rewrites, often by different writers (credited and un-credited), with the director and producer heavily involved in story meetings all the way through. The director is the constant guiding influence through pre-production, production and post-production.

Whether films would be stronger on average if writers were given more power to protect their work rather than working at the instruction of others is a separate question. The influence of directors on scripts will vary widely according to their talent and creative insight. Overall, giving greater respect to writers and allowing a single writer or writing team to craft a script with relatively limited input from others (or at least with input narrowed down to the director and producer) would I'm sure result in better films.

The fixation on who's more powerful ignores questions of creativity. That really isn't open to question: It starts with the writer.

The question of power is important to answering the OP's question in terms of who deserves the blame or credit if a film turns out well or turns out poorly. Blaming the screenwriter for a poor film hardly makes sense when the screenwriter doesn't have the power to write the screenplay he or she sees fit to write, but instead has to bend to the will of directors, producers, and studio executives. Similarly, when a film turns out well a good line or clever plot twist may have come from a director in a story meeting rather than from the writer, so assigning creative credit purely to the writer wouldn't make sense either.

 

[stj]

Credit for a good movie goes primarily to the screenwriter, then the producer, then producer's other employees: the cinematographer, set and costume designers, editor, composer, director. Oh, yes, actors too. There is no pure credit involved, moviemaking is too collective an enterprise.

The blame for a bad movie goes to people in the best position to screw it up. First, the director. Then, the producer. (Specialist hires like costume designer are rarely the curse of a film.) It is notable that the worst films often don't have a single writer. I attribute this to cause and effect. Miscast actors or misbehaving actors mess up movies sometimes, but that's indirectly the producer's and director's fault. Incompetent actors hired via casting couch is never the writer's fault.

Producer/directors are especially responsible. The increasingly common writer/director even more than that.

Producers can get story credit by Writers' Guild rules, if I remember correctly. They seem to like to get writing credits, I think because it has more legitimacy as a creative credit.

 

[CaptainCanada]

The fixation on who's more powerful ignores questions of creativity. That really isn't open to question: It starts with the writer.

No, not necessarily. Quite a few films, particularly with high-powered directors, are the directors' brainchildren; the writers work for them, and work with their ideas, and heavy input from the director (and other producers).

Your example of Kaufman shows the screenwriters too will often have identifiable themes that they work with, that can be traced through their various films (I always think of the debate over whether Play It Again, Sam should be included in the primary Woody Allen canon, since Allen wrote and starred in it, but did not direct it). It's the same with directors and the stories they tell; all the great directors have very identifiable recurring concerns and themes in their works.

But, really, the fact that virtually everyone working in Hollywood would say the director is usually the primary creative force on a given film would perhaps suggest that that is true.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

^^^
Exactly right.

 

[stj]

I'm the only whose actually tried to discuss films. My point was, the notion you can trace recurring concerns and themes in the works of directors isn't true.

Directors with a background in art, like Tim Burton, have a distinctive visual style. Directors with a background in cinematography, like Ridley Scott, also have a distinctive visual style. But it is directors with a background in writing (who frequently still write their scripts) like Oliver Stone or Woody Allen who have recurring concerns and themes.

Only a relative handful of directors can be said to have the supposed recurring concerns and themes. This is the empirical argument agains the conventional wisdom.

The argument that the conventional wisdom is that the director is the major creative force is conventional because it is true fails on two counts, I think. First, it is particularly movies where there are multiple writers, movies which by default have to take their primary creative vision from the director, which are the least creative and worst movies. (Admittedly there is an element of judgment there, but honestly I don't think this is an extreme one. The extreme judgment is the one which sees such movies as equally good, I think.)

Second, it is common for people to flatter the powerful. One thing that is true is that increasingly directors assume more and more powers of the producer, as well as director. In a cut throat business, obsequiousness demands that the producer be not merely obeyed but praised for his or her nonexistent creativity. This is easier when the director is competent of course.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

^^^
You're underestimating the level of creative control that major directors exercise and, indeed, are guaranteed by the terms of their contract. They're given final cut, script approval, cast approval and approval of all key personnel (cinematographer, composer, editor, etc). They closely oversee every aspect of the film, including the writing of the script.

Some directors have themes that they often explore, others have more of a variety in their work, but the ability to make films with different styles and and themes doesn't reflect a lack of creativity or talent. Those directors who consistently make good films in a variety of genres and styles should be applauded.

 

[stj]

Again, I don't see any significant creative consistency in directors as such.
Writer/directors, yes, producer/directors, yes, but directors who hire on, no.
And the producer/directors still have less creative power than the screenwriter!

And, the less script there is, the more important the director is, creatively speaking.

I look at the Harry Potter series and Alfonso Cuaron might have done better, but it's all pretty much the same, with changes due to the deepening of the story (such as it is, it is young adult, but it is there.) That comes from Steve Kloves, if I remember correctly. I see Ridley Scott direct Black Hawk Down and Kingdom of Heaven and I don't see variety but two different screenwriters. The stylistic similarities between the movies due to Scott just aren't that important, I think because directing as such isn't that creatively important.

I think giving primary credit to the director instead of the writer undermines the creative process. But this appears to offend against the natural order, where the director is THE MAN, Kathryn Bigelow notwithstanding (another good example of a director with a very limited repertoire of themes and concerns, whose movies make much more sense as products of the screenwriters. Blue Steel, Point Break, Near Dark, The Hurt Locker? This is not a body of work, it's a series of directing jobs.)

The idea that perhaps it would be a good idea if there was one writer/writing team for a movie makes no sense unless the screeenwriter is the primary creator. If the credit goes to the director, chopping up the writer's work is the creative process.

Nonetheless since it seems to somehow derange the universe if writers get the credit, rest easy that my opinion doesn't change a thing.

PS Of course Play It Again Sam is a Woody Allen film. Thinking otherwise is mad.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

And the producer/directors still have less creative power than the screenwriter!

No, they have much more creative power since the screenwriter has to bow to their judgment and instructions on story issues.

And, the less script there is, the more important the director is, creatively speaking.

True, but a good director is important in bringing any script properly to life.

The idea that perhaps it would be a good idea if there was one writer/writing team for a movie makes no sense unless the screeenwriter is the primary creator. If the credit goes to the director, chopping up the writer's work is the creative process.

It's an acknowledgment of the reality that scripts that are worked over by too many hands tend to turn out badly. A director, producer and screenwriter who are in sync with each other and work through the script process from start to finish are likely to come up with a better script and a better film than a succession of screenwriters rewriting each other from a deluge of script notes from all and sundry (although script doctors sometimes add scenes and lines of dialogue that work really well and even become movie classics, so there are exceptions).

Writers should get more acknowledgment and respect in the film industry, but you're over-correcting in denigrating the contribution of directors.