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Hi, I'm Associate Professor Alex Munt.
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Filmmaker, screenwriter, and media researcher at UTS.
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Have you ever wondered what it takes to be a screen director?
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Today I'll be answering some of your questions around this.
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Let's get started.
What is the role of a director in the film making process?
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What is the role of a screen director in the film making process?
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The director
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is the guardian of the screen story and what that means is that they're there
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from the very start until the end, where it reaches kind of an audience.
What do I need to study to become a director?
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What do I need to study to become a director?
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There's lots of ways in.
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It's not a single answer.
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I come from a back down design myself.
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Others might come from a background in screen performance or photography,
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for example.
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It's also understanding
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that the stories we tell for film and TV are told with images and sounds.
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So again, it's about being curious about images both online and offline.
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It's scouring the internet.
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It's going to the art gallery.
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It's understanding about the meaning and the impact of images.
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For an emotional impact of storytelling.
What different roles are there in film?
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What different roles are there in film?
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I talk about this to my students
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a lot, and particularly when they start their degree,
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I don't think they particularly know
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the exact direction they want to end up at the end.
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But even in a short amount of time, as you go through your degree here at UTS,
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you understand two things.
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Firstly, what you like
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and secondly, also what you're good at or best at in screen production.
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What this really means for our students is that where is the best place
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that they see themselves creatively contributing in either,
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development, for example, screenwriting and producing or production.
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For example, working as a film set in cinematography or sound recording
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or post-production in the editing kind of environment as well.
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And between these three different major phases of screen
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production, students kind of find a way into finding out
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where the happiest, where they can do their best work,
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and where they can contribute to screen stories.
What different settings can a director work in?
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What different settings can a screen director work in film
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and television in the main industrial settings?
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This doesn't prevent you from honing your skills in online content creation,
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and there's a deluge of that which is which is in demand and out there as well.
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Also, at UTS, students undertake internships at channel seven
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or channel nine.
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For example, in live TV editing.
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All of these skills are relatable to directing and relatable to a larger
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kind of career pathway in directing.
What does a director do in their day to day work?
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What does a director do in their day to day work?
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It's a different answer depending on which part of their day to day work.
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On a film set, it's an intensive job.
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It's long days.
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It's being answerable
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about every creative decision of that film or television production.
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But in other sense, film and television productions take time to get up.
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They take time to finance.
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They take time to produce, to edit and get to an audience.
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So in a sense, the day to day journey of a director is also doing
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other things, for example, working in online content, and so on.
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So being agile, when you're creating skills
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which are shaping and honing those skills for the time you would be
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in the capacity to screen director on a film or television project.
What skills are important for a director to have?
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What skills are important for director to have?
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I would say perseverance is the number one skill.
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It's really important and I think without it
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I think you'd struggle in this job.
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The other skill, I'd say, is leadership.
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As a director,
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you're leading a team creatively and also technically to a degree as well.
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And that requires both a complex knowledge of the film
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practices of other disciplines and also your communication style,
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with crews getting the best creatively out of your collaborators as well.
What do you love most about your job?
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What do you love most about your job?
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What I like is the oversight of the strange story,
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the oversight from its participation with the script
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through to the pre-production and visualization of the story,
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the production on set, and then in the editing room afterwards.
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It gives you an ability
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to shape and experience from an audience from moment to moment,
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and really think about the ways in which images and sounds can really connect
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with an audience in order to make them think differently about the world.
What's the biggest misconception about being a screen director?
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What's the biggest misconception about being a screen director?
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Okay, I love this one.
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Probably that it's glamorous in a sense, and some of the things the questions
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that have answered today are really around film and television
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being quite complicated, organisations of creativity.
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But also that idea about hard work and perseverance for me is what I believe
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and what I see around me is more important than any sort of natural gift
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or kind of talent.
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I think you need more stamina as a film director than in the pizzazz,
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and that's really been kind of my experience.
What's your top tip or best piece of advice for someone who wants to work in film?
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What is your top tip or best advice to someone who wants to work in film?
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It's a contact sport.
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Get out there. That's all the questions today.
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If this got you interested, check out the UTS website and search Media
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Arts or Screen Arts to learn more about working in the industry.