Directors Close Up: Interviews with Directors Nominated for Best Film by the Directors Guild of America

by Jeremy Kagan (Editor)

Since 1992, The Directors Guild of America has hosted annual seminars featuring its nominees for outstanding feature film directing. Since its inception, film and television director Jeremy Kagan has moderated these sessions in which the finest contemporary directors weigh in on every aspect of the filmmaking process. In this book, Kagan has culled the most insightful and entertaining responses from these acclaimed directors. From script development through pre-production to production and post-production, they offer personal insights into every step of the creative process. They also reveal their candid takes on the best and worst aspects of their profession. This second edition includes all the nominees from 2000 thru 2005 and features personal materials from many of the directors, including storyboards, script notes, sketches, and on-set photos. Directors Close Up will be of interest to both professional and aspiring directors, as well as to film fans who will enjoy this inside look into making movies.

Genres: Film

360 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2000

About the author

Jeremy Kagan is an internationally recognized director/writer/producer of feature films and television and a tenured professor. Some of his feature credits include the box-office hits HEROES, the political thriller THE BIG FIX, THE CHOSEN (2 time Grand Prize winner),and THE JOURNEY OF NATTY GANN (Gold Prize Moscow Film Festival). Among his many television shows are KATHERINE: the Making of an American Revolutionary and HBO’s CONSPIRACY: THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 8 (ACE Award for Best Dramatic Special). His film ROSWELL,THE UFO CONSPIRACY garnered a Golden Globe nomination and he directed the pilot for the hit series DR. QUINN: MEDICINE WOMAN. Other television films include, for Showtime COLOR OF JUSTICE about racism and BOBBIE’S GIRL about a lesbian couple and CROWN HEIGHTS about the 1991 riots which won the Humanitas Award for “affirming the dignity of every person.” Kagan has won an EMMY for Dramatic Series Directing and directed “West Wing” and Spielberg’s ”Taken.” He has made films for The Doe Fund which is the most successful program in America helping the homeless and for The Bioneers which organizes leaders in ecology and social justice, and TreePeople. Professor Kagan teaches graduate courses at USC in directing and has created the Change Making Media Lab which has made projects on cancer prevention, obesity and ADHD. Kagan has served as the Artistic Director of Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute and is on the National Board of the Directors Guild and Chairperson of its Special Projects. His books DIRECTORS CLOSE UP, Vol. 1 & 2, are published by Scarecrow Press. A Graduate Fellow of the American Film Institute, he has an M.F.A. from NYU and a B.A. from Harvard University. He has taught master seminars on filmmaking in Hong Kong, Hamburg, Hanoi, France, Lebanon, Israel, Ireland and India.

Web references:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Kagan
cmml.usc.edu
parshas.weebly.com
www.imdb.com/name/nm0434571
cinema.usc.edu/faculty/kagan-jeremy.htm

Reviews

[Alexa · Rating 4 out of 5]

"How must he educate himself?
Of what skills is craft made?
What kind of man must he be?

I will merely try to list the fields of knowledge necessary to him, and later those personal qualities he might happily possess...

Literature
-of theater
-the craft of screen dramaturgy
-painting and sculpture; their history, their revolutions and counterrevolutions
-dance
-music
-I recommend that every young director that he start his own collection of clippings and photographs, and if he's able, his own sketches
-costuming
-lighting
-colors
-the city
-the sea
-topography
-animals
-acting, its history and its techniques
- voice and speech
-history
-economics
-food
-the flow of life around him
-travel
-sports
himself

On final thing. The ability to say "I am wrong" or I was wrong.

So, my friends, you've seen how much you have to know and what kind of a bastard you have to be. How hard you have to train yourself and in how many different ways. All of which I did. I've never stopped trying to educate myself and to improve myself." - Elia Kazan, "On What Makes a Director"

[Javier Badillo]

so far its amazing. one-paragraph interviews with top notch directors separated by categories (on writing, on directing, on production design, etc). It reads fast and every interview is worth its weight in gold!