Whether or not you like the movies that Zack Snyder makes, there’s no denying that he’s been a great success in the industry, not just in terms of his ability to get incredibly well-paying gigs — like his latest, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice — regardless of the performance of his previous works but also in terms of how much control he manages to wield with his projects, in spite of sometimes making people mad, from the executives all the way down to the viewers.
So, if you’re looking for tips on how to be a filmmaker like Snyder even if you don’t want to necessarily make films like Snyder’s, the six pieces of advice collected here are worth following.
Start With Commercials
Snyder is really into creative freedom and artistic integrity, which is interesting because he comes from such a literally commercial background. After graduating from the industrial-minded Art Center College of Design, he worked for many years shooting ads and corporate promos, many of them for cars and beer. It helped him hone his skills as a director but also made him accomplished enough to get to the point where he could do his movies his own way.
In one of our own first interviews with anyone, back in 2007, Snyder told us of the benefit to that background:
I’ve been shooting commercials for, you know, 15 years. Three a frickin’ month in the old days. But I think the way it prepared me is, you know, in commercials every single job is a production problem. It’s a hundred and eighty degrees different from the problem that you just faced the week before. So when we did 300, it was the same problem over and over. You know, like how the fuck do you make this landscape look real? And how do you make this fuckin’ cool? With a commercial every single day is different, and every project and every shot is different. And in that way, I think its awesome training ground for a director to hone his skills with problem solving. Because that is your job as a director, you know, to solve problems.
And Continue Doing Them. Snyder probably doesn’t need to keep making commercials now, but for a number of years he found it vital to maintaining his overall career, for financial security. Here’s what he said during a roundtable talk for Ad Age also back in 2007:
In advertising, you get into a groove, let’s get some boards, conference calls. The feature business doesn’t really care about your time. You’re on an endless time continuum. I don’t know how they think we’re paying the rent. [Dawn of the Dead] cost me. It’s such a great honor we’re letting you direct this movie, and a year later it’s like, “Holy shit! What am I doing? My kids are going to starve if I don’t get this thing done!”
Just Do It
In the below interview with the UK’s FILMCLUB, Snyder is asked for his top three filmmaking tips (at the 3:00 mark), and he keeps his response rather simple. “Write a small story” is one. “Then you just need to shoot it,” he says. It’s just a matter of getting the people together to do it.
He is primarily addressing young people starting out, but the general easy-as-that mentality probably works for a lot of directors in Hollywood, too. In the Ad Age roundtable, he makes filmmaking sound effortless, referring to his experience on 300: “You stand in front of a blue screen, film the actors, put some crap behind it … Anything is possible now, with the right amount of money and time.”
Snyder is also into just doing something himself if nobody else can get it right. He told the New York Times in 2011 that if he hires someone who isn’t doing a good job, he’ll take over without confrontation. And it’s not just on set. “It can be doing anything,” he said. “It could be a bad gardener, and he’s not mowing the grass that great. I’ll just mow it myself.”
And as he notes in the video below on how to become a superhero movie director, if you can’t find a comic book to adapt, just draw your own and then adapt that.
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