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I try to keep myself informed on what other people in the industry are doing, and I have recently subscribed to Joe Harmston’s blog (you can find it here). Mr. Harmston has some pretty good articles. Specifically, he wrote about the role of a director. One thing in his article struck me as absolutely brilliant.

According to Frank Hauser, a director, there are only three phrases that a director needs to know:

1) “That thing you were doing in scene two, do it more.”

2) “That thing you were doing in scene two, do it less.”

3) “That thing you were doing in scene two, don’t.”

Brilliant. Brilliant! It accomplishes one of my biggest difficulties as a director (although this is not on my Top 7 List of annoyances) . You see, I have acted for several years, and it takes very little effort for me to begin to crawl into the minds of the characters. I certainly don’t do it as in depth as the actors should (but probably more than some famous ones do), but I do attempt that process. Therefore, it is easy for me to come up with specific reactions that I would do if I were playing that particular role. The problem with this is that the director is not the actor! The director’s job is not to micromanage the actors, but to allow them to creatively explore their characters within the guidelines set by the director.

These phrases effectively eliminate such directorial intrusions. It basically says “I don’t care how you got that, but I want more/less/none of that in the future.”

Brilliant.

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