CS Weekly Archive > From the Trenches > 03/09/07

"It's All About The Next Thing":
300's Zack Snyder on Directing

by jeremy smith

From the walking dead to the walking wounded, writer-director Zack Snyder has a battle-tested knowledge of how to transfer his blood-soaked vision intact from the page to the screen. With his adaptation of Frank Miller's and Lynn Varley's 300 opening this weekend, Snyder offers up some advice for screenwriters eager to make the leap to hyphenate status.

A graduate of the prestigious Art Center College of Design and a veteran commercial director with three Clios to his credit, Zack Snyder, coming off his feature filmmaking debut, the up-tempo variation on George A. Romero's zombie classic, Dawn of the Dead, can't help but write screenplays with a strong sense of the visual, which makes him an ideal facilitator in bringing to the screen Frank Miller's and Lynn Varley's celebrated graphic novel 300, an unflinchingly gory depiction of the Spartans' heroic last stand against the Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.

Working with co-writer Kurt Johnstad, from an earlier draft by Michael Gordon, Snyder hews to almost every word of Miller's text while slavishly restaging the graphic novel's most indelible frames as dynamic, live-action tableaux. By his own admission, Snyder is not a classic screenwriter; he's always written to direct, and employs a two-tiered writing process that begins with the screenplay and ends with a complete, hand-drawn illustration of his final draft. In other words, Snyder has unique insight into what it takes to become a successful director—and he was generous enough to share his thoughts over a phone interview a week prior to the release of his second feature while preparing to tackle his next project, a long-awaited adaptation of Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons' classic graphic novel Watchmen, currently scripted by Alex Tse.

What advice do you have for screenwriters who want to direct?
The thing that's awesome about most screenwriters is that they have an idea. To me, that's fundamentally the hardest thing to have. If you have an idea, you have a point-of-view. I think that's the thing you need to be most true to and most protective of.

When I was at Art Center, a very visual school, one of my favorite pieces of advice was given by a fashion photographer who said, "You know better. What you think is cool and what you think looks good, you know better." The point of view is the hardest thing—not everybody has that. You can't be a director without a point of view. Well, you certainly can be; there are a lot of them. But the thing that makes the best directors is point-of-view. I think people get obsessed with "Where am I going to put the camera?" and the technical aspects of directing, when I really feel like that's the thing you have to worry about least.

It's funny. The first thing I ever did with actors in it was that ridiculous Michael Jordan's Playground. They wanted Daniel Stern to co-direct it with me because he loves basketball. And he said, "Zack doesn't need me to co-direct this with him!" And they said, "Well, what's he going to do with the actors?" And Daniel was like, "Directing's easy! What you do is, you have that guy talk, and you point the camera at him. And then the guy he's talking to? Well, you point the camera at him and have him talk. So Zack knows now!" [Laughs]

Daniel's a funny guy anyway, but it is one of those things you over-think. Even when I'm working, I'm often thinking, "What am I doing today? What's going to happen? Where am I going to put the camera? What am I going to tell everyone?" But it's a really fun job. And your instincts will not betray you.

What's the best thing about directing?
As with any art, when you feel it working, that's the best part. Because you do feel it. It sounds abstract, but it's not when it's actually working. You know. You're like, "That's good. That feels real, those guys seem smart, the decision feels good." You can tell when you're in the groove. It's really rewarding.

It's weird, because in the commercial world, I'm a director-cameraman. To be a writer and a director and a cameraman…in many ways, it's too much! [Laughs] It's interesting, because I feel like I have a perspective on all the departments. But the biggest and most fun thing is what happens in the reality of the actors' performance. There's mystery there. One of my favorite things I say on a location scout, when everyone's asking me a bunch of questions, is, "I'm more prepared than I want to be. I feel like I know too much, like there's nothing left to do, so let's not talk about it anymore." The thing that a first-time director might feel is a liability might actually be an asset. I don't mean to be too cheesy, but it's like that Zen koan: "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the master's mind there are few." If you keep that idea, that anything's possible, that's the best fucking advice there is.

What's the worst thing about directing?
I think the worst thing about directing is the compromise that you've got to make. Coming from being a writer to directing, I think the compromising will be a thing that is most disheartening. If you're writing something down, you just write it down and get at it. But filming it, and marshalling everyone into that physical act, is a big deal. When you realize, "Oh, we can't go over there," or "The day's going to end in a second, and we're going to run out of light," or "We can't get a shot that's that far away because we didn't put it in the package," or whatever. That's when you really go, "Wow, there are huge limits to this thing." And it's pretty awful. [Laughs]

What's the one thing about directing that no one thinks about until they're actually doing it?
I would say that the thing that surprises me most is what happens with time while you're directing. Basically, a day that for everyone else was the longest day in history went by for you in a second. All the things that you thought you were going to do in that day, you wind up saying, "How could I have ever thought that was going to be possible?" Time just turns into a vacuum. Shooting days go by so fast. A lot of being a director is just time management.

It's weird, because I've never had another job. I came right out of film school and started directing. In some ways I think I have good perspective, but in other ways I think I have bad perspective.

How would you suggest a writer break into directing?
The best way a writer should break into directing, and this is something I think every writer knows, is to have that great idea that no one else has. And that they have to get to you because you have it. It's like, "Look, if you want this idea, I'm doing it. Otherwise, sorry." Nine times out of ten, visual directors are already directing. And I don't know if this is true, but most writers are not people who have been doing photography their whole lives, and are just so talented visually that you have to hire them to direct your movie. I don't want to say that for sure, but it's possible.

But I do think people surprise themselves by how visual they are. When you ask someone what would be a cool shot, I think people surprise themselves. Everyone has good shots in them.

How does a writer need to rethink his or her script as a director?
When you write something for yourself to direct, you become more practical with what you're asking of the scene. I'm always like, "What is all this other bullshit? I don't need this." I admit that my process is strange, but I write the movie, then I draw the movie [by hand], then I shoot the movie. So by the time I actually go to film the movie, I've kind of made it twice: once with words, once with pictures, and then the last time with pictures and people. By the time I get to drawing the movie, I start cutting shit out right away. The drawing process is when I really get practical, because it's sort of the first step of production. But when I'm writing the movie, I'm a little bit more impractical…not so much with what I'm planning to shoot, but with my time management. I'm more like, "Oh, I can do all of this in one day!" And that's not very practical.

But when you really start talking about making a movie, everything becomes about what you can afford to do. What you realize is that the greatest scenes in your favorite movies were done in a day; they were shot on a schedule, people woke up and came to work, and they went, "Okay, we're going to do your favorite scene that you've written. And you've got six hours to do it." And that's it! There's no coming back to it, so you hope everyone's on it, and you're focusing, and it works.

It's crazy when you think about it that way. In my mind, when I think about my favorite scenes, I always imagine that they just had all the time in the world, that they were doing their art, and that there was no pressure on them. When in reality it was like, "Okay, right after this, we need to get a shot of him coming out and going to the car, then we've got to pick up that insert of that thing…" In some ways, your favorite scene in your favorite movie was just part of another day's work. That's the thing that you don't normally think about, and that's the reality of making a movie.

What do you wish someone had told you before you started directing?
I guess it's the advice that I give now: trust your instincts. Do what you think is cool. Don't try to second guess yourself; don't try to make a movie that you think an audience might like. Make a movie that you like. There's really no other way to do it; although, there are a lot of directors that do that, that go, "I wonder if audiences would like this scene?" And, honestly, they usually don't. You can't second-guess what other people will like.

At Art Center, they're very practical about the way they teach you; you make your student films, and then they go, "Now, if you want a job when you get out of school, you might want to think about shooting some TV commercials or music videos for your reel." I mean, it's cool to make a student film, but the truth is it's hard to walk out of film school and have someone hand you a feature film unless you've written a really great script. And in that case, you must've written a really great script and shot a couple of student films or something. That's the tough thing.

What's the worst piece of advice someone ever gave you about directing?
"Copy what other people have done." Look, I understand borrowing ideas you like, but the idea of borrowing ideas wholesale without making them your own is a mistake, and you shouldn't do it. It goes against everything I've said about trusting yourself, because a voice is what people want. I believe people go to the movies because they want someone to say, "This is cool! Look at this!" And do it in a way that they couldn't think of themselves.

What was your best experience as a director?
I love the physical act of shooting. I just do. I like to operate, because in the commercial world, I operate everything. But in the movie world, it's a little different; you have professional camera operators who go, "This is how you do it." And that's all they do. But I do like making a great shot. I like operating a great shot, too. It's like shooting a jump shot. You're doing a physical thing. And being a director is such a cerebral thing. You're always evaluating things mentally. So when you can have that other outlet to do both, where you're watching a performance and you're the eye that observes it, you're physically looking through the camera and watching a performance that you like? There's kind of nothing better than that for me.

It's a moment-to-moment thing. It's a thing you do at the end of every shot, where you go, "Bam! Got it! Next!" That's the day-to-day of it. And for me, that happens at every set up. I think that's the thing that people also don't realize about being a director. That's the job: looking and going, "Do I have what I need? Can I go on to the next thing?" Because it's all about the next thing. You can sit on one shot your whole frickin' life. You really could. No bell rings when it's right. You're the only one that knows it, and that's the part that's both satisfying and scary.

What was your worst experience as a director?
When we were making 300, in the last few weeks of the job I hurt my ankle [while] training. And because I was camera operating, too, it was crazy. I was trying to operate these last shots that we were shooting at the last part of the day on the last part of the schedule. Basically, I was limping around like an idiot with the camera trying to get these shots, and just killing myself eating Tylenol, trying to muscle through it. It got to the point where my ankle was swollen like a grapefruit. I had this physical therapist on set trying to rub it down, but I couldn't pass it off because these moments I was trying to get were so particular; we didn't have time to explain it to everybody. It was one of those things where it was painful, but it was the only thing that could be done.

Doesn't that end up affecting the way you get the shot?
That was the problem. I couldn't let it. It was just me going, "This sucks!"

Jeremy Smith is a freelance entertainment journalist and screenwriter in his non-existent spare time. Hailing from Bowling Green, Ohio, and "educated" at Ohio University, he is enamored of James Garner.

Stephen Moffat, Coupling, Doctor Who courtesy BBC Home Video

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