Behind The Curtain: TV director and showrunner responsibilities in episodic TV

Here’s the first in a new GITS series called “Behind The Curtain.” It arises from an inspiration Franklin Leonard had — you can read about it here: Basically if you have questions about specific aspects of how the film or TV business works, you can post them here, then Franklin will find experts in the field to answer them.

Our inaugural question comes from Tim Nargi Jr:

Since writers really have the control in television, how much creative freedom does a director of an episode (especially a heavily story arced show like LOST) have? Do the executive producers sit down with the director and make the final edit?

Great question. So Franklin went to the source and got this answer from Carlton Cuse, Executive Producer, Writer, “LOST”:

The role of the director is very different in television. In movies, the director is king. In TV the final authority is most often the writer/showrunner. In TV, the director’s job is to play a vital part in the execution of the showrunner’s vision, whomever that showrunner may be.

I usually have two collaborative meetings with the director and the production team during the prep of an episode. The first is a concept meeting right at the beginning of prep where we talk through the script for that week’s episode in general. It’s an opportunity for the director to ask initial questions, get clarification of intent, and make suggestions.

Then, much deeper into prep, we have a tone meeting where I will sit with the director and the writer of the episode and key production personnel, and we’ll go through the script scene-by-scene, explaining in detail the intent we had in the writing of each scene. We’ll discuss everything from how the director plans to visually execute the scene to the number of extras in the scene to what sort of emotional values are important in the actors’ performances. These are highly collaborative discussions.

Throughout prep I will talk often with the director, as will the writer of the episode, fielding questions, discussing rewrites, and jointly working out how we best modify the material to solve production or logistical issues. All the collaborative heavy lifting is done during prep. We should emerge from prep with a very clear shared understanding of what we want to achieve.

At that point, the director is on his own. Once we start shooting, the director has the freedom to go execute the episode.

Once we’ve finished shooting every director does a Director’s Cut of the episode. These cuts are always instructive because the director puts the film together the way he sees the story in his head. Often there are great ideas about how the story is told visually that transcend what we saw in our own heads in the writers’ room. But then once that cut is done, the showrunner does the final editing. Ultimately, it is the showrunner who is responsible for the storytelling, and each episode has to be shaped by the showrunner to be a piece of that overall vision.

A couple of things leap out to me as takeaway for screenwriting:

* It strikes me that pre-production is eerily similar to prep-writing with a lot of emphasis on working through as many of the story issues as possible before the shoot / page-writing. “We should emerge from prep with a very clear shared understanding of what we want to achieve.” That should be the same goal a screenwriter has before typing FADE IN.

* I really like that idea of a “tone meeting.” This is definitely something writers need to be aware of when crafting and writing a script, the “emotional values” we want to convey in each scene and with each character.

Thanks to Carlton Cuse for taking the time to respond and to Franklin for going “Behind The Curtain”!

Comment Archive