AUGUST 13, 2006
"REVELATIONS" DIRECTOR BLOG, PART II
It was probably the beginning of the Second Season when I approached the producers and told them of my desire to direct and they gave me some very insightful advice. Shawn Piller said I should sit in the editing room as much as possible; Lloyd Segan told me I should try and shadow some directors; and so on and so forth. I had a couple of conversations with Robert Petrovicz, who made everything wide open and available to me, as did everybody. You know, I'm a very lovable guy, so no one could deny me anything. Ha ha. But, no, everybody said I could sit in the editing bays, and follow the directors around. That's how it all started.
Not having any background in that aspect of filmmaking, I didn't really know at first what I was watching. It's like your first time going to watch a play in Portuguese. You've never seen it before and all of it sounds like the teacher on "Charlie Brown": wa waah, wa wa-wa waah. But, very quickly, everything started to materialize and I began to get the gist of certain lingo, like seeing the importance and necessity of coverage. As I would sit and watch certain things, I began to recognize that a lot of problems can be solved by simply getting an insert of something so that, if something doesn't cut together, you cut away to the insert and then cut back to whatever story you're trying to tell. I was just picking up small little details like that and, at the end of the Season Two, I was really kind of adamant about pursuing directing. I said, "I think I would really like to do this."
I followed several of our directors all the way through their episodes. Actually, pretty much each one of them -- Mike Rohl, James Head, Michael Robison, Shawn Piller -- I followed them around from the beginning of their prep until they actually started shooting and then a couple of days into their shooting. So I got to see everything, sit in all the meetings, sit in on some of the editing and post production ... things of that nature. I gained a lot of insight into what the process was from that perspective.
But shadowing directors and then trying to direct is a lot like shadowing a neurosurgeon and then saying: "Okay, I think I'm ready! Cut that guy's head open!" You know what I mean? "I can do it. I'm ready. I followed him around!"
It was made pretty clear to me that I needed to direct something before I tried to direct The Dead Zone. So, I did a short that's actually on the end of the Season Three DVDs called "Five Minutes 'til Mitch" which I did with the help of a friend of mine, Rob Chynoweth, and a couple of buddies of mine in Vancouver. One Saturday, we made up this little short, made up a shot list, and we shot it ... and it was completely eye opening as to a lot of the difficulties that directors encounter all the time.
That was the end of Season Two. The beginning of the Third Season, I did more shadowing and followed those guys around a lot more. And, by this point, my vocabulary and my ability to recognize certain things was becoming more apparent. And I was getting antsy. I was like: "Yo, I think I can really do this. With the help of the people that were around me, I think that I could do a competent job."
One of the best pieces of advice that I got was from James Head who told me: "Every day, something is going to go wrong. And the quicker you can get used to that, the better you'll be." He said "something," but he should have said "somethings," but that advice kind of stuck in the back of my head and then, my first day on set ...
