One question popped up in class: what does a director do? I don’t know how to answer that exactly. In my mind I always think that a director sort of does everything, but also sort of nothing. A director has to oversee the whole production, he/she conduct actors, he/she makes decisions on what kinds of shots to use and what the composition looks like. A director decides what lighting he/she wants, low-key or high-key, whether the soundtrack should be symphony or electronic music. Everything he/she sees fit the production, that’s what we are studying in the studio, coverage. However, directors hardly get their hands on anything in particular, some might take control of camera once in a while but very rarely a director will set up lighting equipments or hold a sound pole by themselves. My answer is in too much detail if I expand, yet too empty if I do not.

There is one thing that I’m certain, directors make decisions, and that responsibility should not be taken away from them. I recall the modeled shooting environment we had in class, if that was a blocking, it would be a flawed example. We had someone to fill the role of the director, but she did not do much, or, anything. The director of photography was corresponding with the actor about where to go and where to stand. Our ‘director’ was not fulfilling her responsibility, and that situation is ‘blocking undervalued’.

A good director may always receive advices from the crew or actors, but they need to know what they want, after all it’s their production. Relating to blocking, we take an example from Tom Reily’s book ‘The Big Picture’ Chapter 23, in which he illustrates that some directors take actors to blocking and just let them play it out, instead of he/she walking things through with the actors. As Tom Reily states, ‘blocking of a scene impacts on the key creative issues of timing and drama and suspense, also it is integral to how a scene will be photographed. In my opinion, it is irresponsible to simply hand the creative process out to others. You are a director, and that’s your job, unless you have really brilliant actors with really brilliant minds. And that’s not possible because if you are such a terrible director who can’t even decide how your actors are going to perform, how is it possible for you to have brilliant actors to work for you. It’s logic, figure it out.