Being the human in the room

I've always admired Lenny Abrahamson, ever since he took the time to chat to myself and some friends in UCD at a FilmSoc event around screening his exceptional first feature Adam and Paul. He's a consummately professional craftsman, but with great integrity to his filmmaking.

I heard him speak recently at an Irish Film Board Event about his approach to directing and he articulated something I think I've felt on some level since I started out as a writer and director. Filmmaking, like computer game design and development, is an intrinsically technical affair. You'd can't make a film worth watching without giving serious consideration to the processes involved, and I imagine that is doubly true of game development.

However, if you are aiming higher than the likes of Transformers and Pirates of The Carribean 3, at stories and characters that people care about, filmmaking transcends a technical exercise and becomes something more personal and natural. The art shows up.

Lenny described this as becoming "the human in the room". The person who ignores the cameras, lights, sound department, art department, assistant directors, location department, special effects, electricians, drivers etc. and watches the interactions between the actors and their environment like a real, normal person unencumbered by the preparation and experience leading up to that moment.

Being creative in an authorial capacity requires, in my opinion and experience, some involvement of instinct. The challenge seems to be exercising your instinct and your rational application of ability in a way that doesn't result in one or both being detrimentally compromised. I haven't figured it out yet, not definitively, but I think it must come back, as always, to fundamentals. Getting the basic things right will always make everything else easier and better, and being fluent and comfortable with the basic elements of your craft will make it easier to clear your mind when it matters and look at what you're creating with a human, natural eye.