7.7.12

on being asked whether the film is political or not

The process of a director's Q&A obeys certain rules.

It is a public event, in front of an audience. But it must be born in mind that the filmmaker is not an actor.

- The first rule is that the filmmaker has to defend and promote their film. (If there has ever been a Q&A where the filmmaker has chosen to slag their film off, this could be seen as breaking the rule.)
- Secondly, given that this is a public scenario there is a minor obligation to entertain. There is nothing worse than having enjoyed a film and then being bored by the director's words afterwards.
- Next, related to the above point, the director needs to be concise. Even the best of points can be subverted by verbosity. The filmmaker will have spent hundreds, even thousands of hours working on the process of making the film. This cannot be encapsulated within the framework of a Q&A session.
- Finally, the filmmaker's ego should not come through too overtly. The film will be no better or worse for anything the director subsequently says about it.

Given all of this, and the other rules which will exist but have not been noted, there are all kinds of pitfalls to be negotiated which may impede fluency, spontaneity or clarity at the point at which the microphone is handed over.

There are things that need to be said and things that don't need to be said. Maybe there's a technique for striking the balance and finding the right words.

The microphone is indeed handed over.

Avoiding all eye contact, the co-director starts to speak.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

eye contact or no your performance has garnered praise in many and varied circles

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