SMALL MOMENTS MADE BIG, AND VICE VERSA

I had the pleasure of speaking on a panel at SHOOT magazine's 2009 New Directors Showcase with Ross Katz, writer/director of Emmy-nominated Taking Chance and producer of Oscar-nominated In The Bedroom. Afterwards, we began chatting about his film, which is really all about "making small moments big" and he remarked this is why he'd been signed as a commercial director. I had yet to see the film, but when we got back from NY I watched it, and indeed, the main character's journey is pushed in various directions by way of these "small moments." Ross trusted that he would capture what I'll call the "emotional details" of a person's experience and it plays wonderfully. In my first film - Filmic Achievment - a mockumentary about film school, one of the main characters who aspires to be the first French auteur from America, directs his actors by telling them to "arch your eyebrows." It's meant to be a funny, satirical scene on directing actors - yet, there are times when I find myself making adjustments to physicality with actors more than anything, and how this effects their performance in interesting ways. "Clasp your hands behind your back" is one that always seems to change things.

We also got to chatting about how to go about making a "non-political" film about America within the current climate, as I'd recently attempted to do that with Running America. I told him that I would start my interviews with the very open-ended "So what do you think about what's going on in the country?" and people would begin ranting, screaming, crying - they would just let it all pour out to this camera crew who had stopped them alongside of the road. We guessed that it was all about intention and compassion for all types of people - be they conservatives, liberals, green party, members of the military, anarchists, libertarians, whatever. So, as we dive into the post of Running America I'm constantly reminded of the need to trust the small, interior moments to convey as much about our story as the big, conflict-driven moments.