2010: The Directors and Writers Thread

[bellcurve]

LOL. There are lots of good directors in daytime and alot of people's whose work, largely, go unnoticed because some people are more focused on the writing or their favorite couples. I admit sometimes I don't pay attention to directors, but the opening shot of Amanda walking down the hallway really took my attention away from whatever I was doing.

There are other good directors. The GH directors, like the scriptwriting team, 99% of the time hit instead of miss. And OLTL, given their budget and non-HD capabilities, also has a good directing team as well. B&B has a decent directing team when they try(except Deveney Kelly, whose episodes are generally weak and unimaginative). Kathryn Foster, from the episodes she directed of B&B, were definitely different and the acting and staging were far less...cartoony than usual. It's too bad she can't occasionally direct.

It was cliche, but I thought it worked given what the script probably asked for.

The new Chandler Living Room and foyer, although very bright and Santa Barbara-esque, gives the actors and the show alot more room to play. I love most of the F5s they've given to this show since the move. Visually, the move was the best thing for The Kids.

I saw it mentioned here that Tessinari is based in the East Coast, right? What a shame. Not saying based on that one episode that she's like, "OMG, THEEEE greatest soap director there ever was," but I was just really impressed with today's show.

[Kubla Khan]

She is based in NY, but she has been regularly flying out to LA to direct bulks of episodes. Casey Childs has been doing the same, in order to assist w/ the transition, but I suspect his episodes will be winding down.

[Adam]

So this means I can stop buying the Dramamine?

[bellcurve]

LOL!

[R Sinclair]

Fortunately, Childs hasn't been doing: SWISH PAN! chopping limes! SWISH PAN! ConFusion monitor! SWISH PAN! Sliding drinks across a bar! SWISH PAN! Random extras twirling on a dance floor...

[bellcurve]

I believe his style was so influenced by his work on The City. He directed for Another World and I believe other shows before that and I never saw anything that wild or out of control in his AW episode I saw on SOAPnet a few years back. The problem with trying to adapt a style like that to a show like AMC is that they didn't have any sort of collective creative vision from the top to pull something like that off. Julie Carruthers, as an executive producer, should have reined in Childs' tendencies for those awful quick cuts(or the scriptwriter who would suggest such drek).

Not to piss off R Sinclair by talking about yet ANOTHER Bell show, but B&B used to(and from time to time will continue to) do this sh*t like crazy and it came off as trying way too hard because everything else about the show was so damn dated from the dialogue to the sets and especially the atrocious Wal-Mart friendly fashions. You can't change the "style" and "tone" of a show by merely doing a few quick cuts and editing tricks that were cool in 1995. Especially a show that wants to be perpetually stuck in the 1980's.

[Toups]

B&B was really bad last year, or 2 years ago, when they tried some weird directing choices. The camera movements and angles were really bad. This was also when they tinkered with the backgroud music and they were playing more "cheap songs" (ala GL). I remember complaining about it for months. I'm glad they stopped it though.

I really don't like DAYS' directing now, especially coming off Ed Scott's tenure where the directing soared. The DAYS directing is so basic, they never try anything. It's like all static shots, it's all the same. The action scenes aren't good either, like when Melanie got shot.

I like OLTL's directing too. I love their overhead shots. And their hand-held camera shots are pretty good too and it's not nauseating.

GH of course has the best directing, now that Y&R's directing has fallen.

[bellcurve]

It pisses me off that the higher ups(it seems) refuse to pay for pop songs or will not pick a good tune for their couples. I.E. Rick and Steffy's cheesy Kenny G sax theme was completely and utterly atrocious. If they didn't want to pick something from Top 40 or Billboard 100 radio, then for God's sake compose something good. Maybe even lyrical. There's good soap composition cheese(Can You Love Me With the Lights On and The Change In Me Is You) and then there's bad composition, like that awful Rick/Steffy's theme.

The camera angles and movement didn't work because the show didn't want to spend the money to make those shots look good. Their outdoor stuff(i.e. Rick/Steffy/Brooke/Ridge at the beach) looked great and very Sunset Beach-esque. I have no idea why they can't spend the money to shoot in LA or partner up with some shitty coastal LA town and shoot exteriors and "Malibu" beach stuff an hour away there, like Beach did with Seal Beach, CA.

Although I suspect that idea may have been pitched anyway, but instead of going with that, the suits opted to use the swing "is it a restaurant, is it a fitness club, is it a cabana house" thing.

DAYS desperately needs a Tom Langan-esque figure there that will tone down those [!@#$%^&*] lights and translate all of that boring material into something remotely exciting.

But I'm a sucker for 90's Days.

You would say this after making fun of the editors and music directors for using "Host of Seraphim" and something else vocal and hymnal-esque in their montages. Love her or hate her, Jill has assembled the best directing team in daytime.

[Toups]

"Is it real, is it happening......is it destiny......destiny" LMAO!

I really hated the quick-cuts-across-the city.

Me too. I'm not complaining too much about the lighting, of course I wish it was darker. I just want the directors to "do something" with their cameras. And Gary's a director-at-heart too, so I don't know why the directing is so bad now.

*sigh* I miss Ed Scott's production.

I wasn't making fun of the directing. I was making fun of the vocal/hyms and Jill wanting to be Ridley Scott thinking it's a Gladiator montage and that she just overproduced that. LOL It was funny.

[R Sinclair]

It's funny you say that. What you think of current DAYS is what I used to think of GH when I first started watching around 1999-2000. I began to wonder if the cameras ever moved. Then JFP came along about a year or so later and there was a drastic change. Not only was Owen Renfroe directing every damn thing, but the cameras actually... moved! But the lighting still remained horrible even up until as recently as before they went HD (and we won't go there about the GH shot on Mars reddish orange lighting during the transition!).

[EricMontreal22]

Agreed, So who will replace?

Do you dig any of AMC this week?

Tessinari is one of the few great workers we have director wise ...

[JackPeyton]

Who was in charge of GL when they did these awful trying to hard transisions that i actually loved at the time... They would have a shot of a telephone and then cut to another phone and pull back into the new scene. or shane would throw a ball at the field and it would cut to a new scene of josh catching a ball and talking to reva at the house. that was some wonky ass [!@#$%^&*].

[detroitpiston]

^I think that was John Conboy.

[R Sinclair]

What are you talking about? That quote was about General Hospital's camera work.

[Jonathan]

Commercial music is really, really, really, really expensive to use. Using the right cut of music though can really enhance a scene. Can you imagine the Jesse / Angie reunion scenes without the Alicia Keyes song?