Guest Post: Pascoe on Writer/Director Symbiosis

OVER THE LAST few days, it being the Festival and all, I've been running into some of the same faces over and over. One of them is a delightful writer-director, Will Pascoe. Will's prepping to Direct something soon, and recently spent some time on set of The Border. I cajoled him a little bit when he told me how interesting a time he'd had, and suggested he write up a guest post for Dead Things On Sticks. Many promise, and so few deliver. But my man Pascoe is one of the good ones. So now, for a change, you can hear someone else go on about The Border on this blog -- and also give some much-deserved props to my colleague, Consulting Producer Sarah Dodd, and TV Alpha Director Ken "Boot in the Pants" Girotti. Over to you, Will. And to the rest of you promisey promisers, "oh sure, I'll write a guest post, sure, sure I will," alls I can say is, put your Pascoe where your mouth is...

Will Pascoe writes:

I’m not a fan of mosquitoes but the little bastards are certainly a fan of me. Recently I had a chance to shadow director Ken Girotti on an episode of The Border and by extension I somehow managed to accidentally shadow the episode’s writer, Sarah Dodd, as well.

As a writer who sometimes directs and a director who sometimes writes, I like seeing how others do it because I always observe something useful. In the past, I’ve seen directors who are afraid to talk to actors and I’ve seen directors who communicate through yelling obscenities. Not surprisingly, neither approach works well.

A lot of people whine about the lack of good Canadian drama, but when pressed they admit they haven’t watched The Border. Personally I think the show succeeds more often than not and makes for good, compelling action and drama, often equaling (if not surpassing) its better-funded American cousins. This episode will be no exception.

When I was on set, The Border was shooting on location, in Dundas, Ontario, which was passing for the BC-Idaho border (and passing quite nicely I thought). As I watched Ken skillfully block a sequence with his actors and crew, I was reminded of the scene from film Patton, where George C. Scott is directing traffic (post-D-day) at a muddy crossroads in France. Like Patton, Ken was on top of his game, in complete control and loving every moment of it. With other directors this is not always the case.

The shoot was approaching the end of a long, wet day. The skies were getting dark, we were losing the light, rain was coming down in buckets, and the big HMI lights were drawing mosquitoes by the thousands.

Everyone just wanted to get the hell out of Dodge.

The final scene that night was a simple phone call that would be intercut with another scene shot back in the studio the following week. It was a simple half-pager with one main actor and a couple of extras in the background. The scene was a standard conversation piece used to get across some expository information that the audience needed to know. It’s a scene we’ve all seen a thousand times. Most of us - even those who couldn’t care less about directing - could probably block that scene in our heads and shoot it quickly – it’s thatcommon on TV and in films. But what was for most people just a “talk scene” whose sole purpose was to get some info across, for Ken had taken on a deeper meaning. So he took just a little bit of extra time with it. He worked with the actor, set up his shots (and yes, he was going to cover it with a few angles) and essentially blocked out the wet weather and the swarming mosquitoes.

After, I asked him why he just didn’t bang it out (director-speak for just shooting the scene quickly and moving on) as everyone on set had expected him to do.

Ken said that he had found a little emotional moment in that scene that he wanted to hang his hat on. I can’t reveal the details for fear of spoiling the scene, but I don’t think anyone on set saw it. He told me what he was going for, and he was right.

It was that subtle.

Ken said that “if no one notices it, that’s fine. If someone does and they get it, then I’ve managed to add a little something extra to the scene.” Now, Sarah Dodd had written a complex and powerful script with all the good stuff – action, drama, tension, mystery and conflict - so Ken certainly had great material to play with, but like smart directors do, he added a little bit more, putting his own spin on it and in so doing, enhanced the writer’s original work.

Ken liked to say that Sarah’s script was “director proof”. On the way back to Toronto, I told Sarah about my conversation with Ken and about the other layer he had seen in her little phone call scene. To Sarah’s credit (and non-existent ego) she pointed out, “that was all Ken.” And more to the point - she was thrilled that Ken had found something to add to the scene. So while Sarah’s script might have been director proof, the director had found a way to add his little piece to it, much I think to the audience’s eventual benefit.

That lesson alone was worth the fifteen mosquito bites I took watching Sarah and Ken make it happen.

Thanks, Will. And I hear you on the mosquito thing. Put me on set and I swear I'm the Las Vegas of insects.