These tips go to 11.
Nepotism can get you pretty far in Hollywood, and having Carl Reiner as a father was surely a benefit to Rob Reiner’s career. In the end, though, the younger Reiner still went to film school (though he got kicked out) and turned out some of the greatest movies of the ’80s and ’90s, all of his own merit. His varied work includes classics of the rom-com, horror, coming-of-age, courtroom drama, and mockumentary genres. They’ve been up for the Oscar for Best Picture and the Razzie for Worst Picture.
With more than 30 years experience as a filmmaker, on top of his half-century in the TV and movie industry as a writer, director, and Meathead (er, actor), he is a source for lots of great advice. Here are 11 of his best filmmaking tips:
Study Anything But Filmmaking
Reiner is a genuine film school reject, having been kicked out of UCLA for skipping classes. He went on to do stand-up comedy and improv theatre before becoming a TV writer and star, then began his movie directing career in his late 30s. He learned a lot of the technical stuff as he went along, but he had a talent for storytelling and interest in different sorts of stories because he’d lived awhile and had other kinds of experiences before stepping behind the camera.
In a recent article for Moviemaker magazine on things he’s learned as a filmmaker, Reiner gives a few tips about what to study other than filmmaking. First:
“If you want to be a filmmaker, I would suggest you don’t go to film school. Go study humanities, or English, or art history, because whatever frames of reference you have, they’re going to come into play when you start making movies. The technical part of making movies, you can learn that. But what you can’t learn is different frames of reference.”
Take Acting Lessons
In another tip, he says you should you have to have loved and lost to do a love story. In another, he says director’s aren’t perfectly fluent in anything, just fluent enough in everything to communicate with all areas of production. And in another, he addresses how being an actor first has been good for him and other directors:
“I look at a lot of the directors that I admire, and most of them were actors to start with. I just feel like they have a closer connection to the human experience and what people go through. A director should take acting classes because then you understand what actors can and can’t do and what you can ask them to do. If you want to make these big action franchise pictures, or commercials, then you’re better off just studying the technology of it. I don’t find that to be as creative as telling stories about people and what they go through. If you’re making a film that’s CGI and the dialogue is ‘Get down!’ or ‘Run!’ then you don’t have to worry about it. But if you’re making a movie about relationships between human beings, then it’s good to know how human beings get from one moment to the next; how to talk to them and get them to do what you want.”
Alter to Fit
Also in that Moviemaker article, Reiner addresses how a film production is like a traveling circus made up of all kinds of people, but everyone is there to “serve the master.” The master is the film. As the director, you’re the ringleader guiding the whole thing to that goal, and that includes working on the script and altering it to fit everything that serves the big picture.
In the 2000 book “Directors Close Up: Interviews with Directors Nominated for Best Film by the Director’s Guild of America,” Reiner says the following about the process of bringing script to screen:
“I open the hood and get in there. Hopefully the writers are not too upset because they see that it’s not a director trying to make it into his film and ruin their material, but it’s really trying to shore up what they already have. I worked with Bill Goldman on ‘Misery,’ and it even got to the point where the last couple drafts, I wrote without Bill. To where he would say, ‘Go ahead, you know what you are doing here.’ And it doesn’t take anything from him, his name’s there, and everybody knows, he worked on it, and Stephen King wrote the novel, and it’s his story, it’s not mine. But if everybody understands the process is collaborative and there is no ownership on it, then you get in there and do whatever it takes. Once I have the script then obviously there are problems with locations that don’t work and because you can’t get things there, you alter things slightly to fit what’s there. A particular actor may have a problem with a certain kind of emotion so you alter it to help him, but always never to destroy what your main plan is to begin with.”
Don’t Be the Silent Schmuck
“You’re not part of the cast, and you’re not part of the crew,” is another important bit Reiner says in both the Moviemaker article and in the below video of an extensive interview at the New York Film Academy in 2016.
Near the end of the talk, he admits that you shouldn’t be afraid to ask if you don’t know something but also don’t be afraid to say what you want. Don’t let the crew think you’re an idiot. Don’t be the silent schmuck, as he was advised by Herb Gardner, but understand directing is a lonely job. There’s more great pieces of wisdom to be found as the segment goes on. Watch:
What We’ve Learned
A lot, especially if you look over the whole Moviemaker article of his and watch the entirety of the two video interviews featured here and read all of his advice and lessons in the “Directors Close Up” book (including stuff about music and editing).
Of the tips we highlighted, though, the main things to take away are that you shouldn’t go to film school, you should just make something, don’t worry about sticking to the script, don’t worry about sticking to any genre, and you should also be educated in a variety of areas and be able to communicate with all the different fields of collaboration on a movie set. Be like a Meathead but not like a schmuck.
Additional research and reporting by Natalie Mokry.
The article 11 Filmmaking Tips from Rob Reiner appeared first on Film School Rejects.
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