Finally, I return and post something of interest. The question for this week is:
Do you think directors have a signature? Can you identify the director of a film, just by watching it, without knowing in advance who the actual director is? If you answer yes to the first two questions, do you think this is true of all directors, or just a select few?
Post your answers on your blog, but don't forget to leave a link to the post here, so any other participants can come and have a read. If you don't have a blog, just post your comments below.
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Do you think directors have a signature?
ReplyDeleteYes
Can you identify the director of a film, just by watching it, without knowing in advance who the actual director is?
Yes, sometimes. Of the top of my head I can remember really disliking the film 'Full Metal Jacket' partly because it reminded me of a Stanley Kubrick film, and it turned out he directed it.
If you answer yes to the first two questions, do you think this is true of all directors, or just a select few?
I don't think all directors have this ability (or curse, I suppose it depends how much you enjoy their work) Some are very distinctive, for example: Martin Scorsese, Roberto Rodriguez and Francis Ford Coppola. Or the above mentioned Stanley Kubrick and Ken Loach - I don't like his films either. And you can often identify a John Carpenter film because of the lousy music (he often composes it himself which isn't a good idea). Others are not so obvious, some directors seem to go in a different direction with each film, others just don't make that much impression, that isn't always a bad thing though. Sometimes, a cast is so strong, the director doesn't need to do a great deal.
Yes. For example a Tim Burton will be dark and moody.
ReplyDeleteBut it's not just directors. I watched what I thought was a B-Movie about a plan crash. It was actually a real good ghost story.
I said after that some bits didn't seem to fit with the rest of the story. "Must have been a book" says I. Yep - terns out to be based on a book by a favourate horror author of mine.
It takes a level of skill for a director to have an effect on a film. Lesser directors are pushed along by the script rather than they pushing it. The result lacks "imagination".
If you knew every directory very very well you would probably pick out every last one of each film they made. This is because director and writer have the biggest impact on a film.
Yes, Tim Burton is very distinctive. As you say his films are dark and moody, but they have a quirkiness to them that only he seems to create. I think that is why Johnny Depp works well with him, he excels at dark and quirky.
ReplyDeleteYou're right about the impact writers can have. Quentin Tarantino writes a lot of scripts as well as directing, and you can identify them even without knowing in advance. A couple of years ago, I was watching a film and remarked that it had the feel of a Stephen King novel. It turned out it was based on one of his short stories.
Actors don't seem to have the same kind of impact. Well, I suppose there are exceptions such as Jack Nicholson, but generally they don't set the tone of the film.