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Director Guy Magar
is as intense and passionate in the classroom
as he is on the set. Here he brings his brilliant
seminar Action/Cut, Directed By and his own
brand of enthusiasm for his talent and craft
to Harvard University. photos: Steve Gianino
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Director Guy Magar rushed
up to a man sitting in the front row, stuck a finger
in his face and shouted, "Vinnie! When are you gonna
take responsibility for shooting Jimmy, god dammit!"
Magar stepped back and explained
calmly. "You have to be a psychologist in this business,
but you only want to do that with an actor you've
worked with before. And you always want to use the
character's name, so he knows it's not personal."
Magar hit buttons on the lecturn, a segment of SHOWDOWN
appeared on four screens and he said, "This is what
we got."
What Magar (pronounced Maygar)
pulled from actor James Acevido was an emotionally
powerful 90 second monologue that the actor couldn't
quite get to on his own. The anecdote was part of
Magar's discussion of the climax of the feature film
he wrote, produced and directed. The strategy was
also just one of many valuable tricks and techniques
the veteran director demonstrated during the seminar,
"Directing Film and Television," presented by Action/Cut
Directed By Seminars on March 3-4, at Harvard University.
The frame of the seminar was
a series of eight study scenes Magar shot for four
different television series, SLIDERS, THE YOUNG RIDERS,
LA FEMME NIKITA and FIRE COMPANY 132, as well as analyzing
six scenes from SHOWDOWN. The film starred Acevido
and a young Newton, MA born actor named Matt LeBlanc,
now a star on the series Friends.
The man with a shock of curly
black hair and a controlled presence simplified the
directing process by drawing diagrams on the chalkboard
and explaining the logic behind camera placements.
He also went over shot lists included in a fat packet
of materials, as were the script pages for the scenes
he took apart and screened. Always speaking in non-technical,
easy to understand language, Magar also offered quick
takes on a shooting schedule and a feature film budget,
materials that directors need to understand.
According to Magar, what director's
need most is self-motivation.
"The passion, the drive to
tell stories, to make movies, is the only thing you
will have to keep you moving forward," he said. Magar
told how he worked on a soup van that fed the homeless.
He won the trust of the London poor, a suspicious
bunch, who then allowed him to film their stories.
"I worked for two weeks on that soup van. But what
made me go to school all day and work all night? My
passion to make that film," he said.
The 11-minute black-and-white
student film won the Grand Jury Prize at the San Francisco
Film Festival. Magar moved stateside and eventually
landed at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles.
He shot the first color film ever produced there,
and after struggling to get people to watch it he
talked his way into a contract at Universal Studios.
"I got a Steven Spielberg
deal. I signed a contract for seven years and got
paid $250 a week. I was the last one to get that kind
of deal. They figured if I had talent they wanted
to lock me in for seven years," Magar explained.
He didn't last seven years.
He was signed to shoot a feature, but the production
folded and he was out pounding the pavement again.
He traveled to Manhattan for work, then North Carolina
to shoot a series of 90-minute specials.
"This is a people profession
interspersed with a lot of technical stuff," Magar
said, coming out from behind the lecturn. "More important
than talent is networking, keeping in contact. I spend
more time networking than doing anything else."
As proof he told how, while
in North Carolina, he went to a party where he met,
over drinks, the dean of a local college. The dean
mentioned that the drama department was producing
a movie. He asked, "Do you need a director?" Magar
was hired to shoot his first feature.
The movie didn't turn out
well. "They said, 'We have this great make-up artist,
she's great.' But it's an unwatchable film. There
were pieces of flesh falling off the actors' faces!"
Magar joked.
Now under contract with the
brothers Weinstein at Miramax, Magar didn't joke about
the two elements of film-making that a director must
love: actors and storytelling.
"The thing you must love
to do is tell a story with a camera. I get turned
on when I have a really good script. I love to interpret
material visually." What does Magar call it? "Magic
making. You're creating a very special world, and
you get that world from words."
How important is writing to
the business of directing? It's the golden key. "What's
the fastest way to become a director? Be a writer.
Master the craft of writing," Magar said.
He added, "You must also love
actors, and working with actors. There's nothing better
to me than inspiring actors and giving them great
direction, to go whisper something in their ear and
see them get it right." Magar nodded and said, "That's
magic. But it all comes from your basic drive to tell
a story. What get's the story across?"
The bulk of the 18-hour seminar
focused on the director's tools for getting the story
across, the nuts and bolts of catching images on a
set with a camera. For Magar, each shot offers the
chance for greatness. "Directing is figuring out all
the little pieces of the puzzle, one by one, and making
each one as great as it can be," he said.
One hint Magar offered was
the practice of shooting above or below the eyeline.
"Ceilings are more interesting than floors."
He emphasized depth of field,
the need for shot elements close to the camera. "Fight
for foreground. Without it the shot is flat," he explained.
Magar spoke of the emotion of a scene and its draw
for the audience. After screening the start of an
episode of THE YOUNG RIDERS he said, "I show you the
moment, the moment when his eyes come up and he sees.
That's the moment you need. That's what you want,
people asking 'Why?'"
Why does he offer a pillow
to actors before a sex scene? "So they can put it
between their crotches. It takes away that tension,
right away. You've got to be really sensitive for
your actors. But some people don't want it!" On locations:
"If you shoot in a shitty location you'll have a shitty
piece of the puzzle."
What helps make a location
great? Close proximity to a parking lot. "If you gotta
call up the actors and it takes them 15 minutes to
get in the van and come over to the set that's 15
minutes out of your schedule. The most important thing
as a director is to protect your work, your time.
Protect your time."
Magar made directing sound
difficult, occasionally using the metaphors of war.
"There are so many technical details, and so many
people you're counting on, that it does feel like
you're going into battle. You have to be like a warrior,
and have a warrior's spirit, to get through it," he
said.
Directors who protect their
time will see the evidence of their success every
day. "At the end of the day, what's the one thing
that determines if you're a success? The schedule.
If you've made the schedule you're a success. There
is a tremendous responsibility put on the director.
You have to make it happen. If you like responsibility,
tons of pressure ... then welcome to the club."
Guy Magar will be teaching
others how to join the director's club a dozen times
this year, in cities across the country. His seminar,
"Television and Film Directing," is informed by his
25 years of experience and offers a gritty look at
the craft and art of directing.
If you want to be a shooter,
don't miss it.
Lawrence
Pruyne is a screenwriting teacher and script consultant
reachable at lpruyne@msn.com
Guy Magar will return to
New England in the Fall. Save the dates, November
10 & 11, 2001. Visit www.actioncut.com. for more details.
