hanshotfirst1138
Second Unit
- Joined
- May 25, 2007
- Messages
- 284
- Real Name
- Mike
Causal, not casual. Damn autocorrect. Again, I'm not arguing that the director does EVERYTHING by any means, but there are generally more casual links between directors' work than anything else. How many Steven Spielberg films deal with father figures, nuclear families, etc, even those which he didn't write? How many Scorsese films deal with catholic guilt, self-destructive behavior, etc? How many repeatedly utilize the same stylistic traits or camera techniques repeatedly. Again, I'm not arguing that the director is the only authorial voice by any means, but "aeuter" directors are almost never hired for big studio projects, and you can almost always tell which piece is which in a designed by committee movie like that. Again, there are a broad variety of factors-choreographers, second unit directors, CG artists, etc. But a "aeuter" director (Orson Welles, Steven Speilberg, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, the lost goes on and on) almost always have specific visual tropes to which they return, themes which they repeatedly explore, etc, as opposed to more journeyman directors (Simon West, Len Wiseman, etc). As you yourself pointed out most "aeuters" almost inevitable take on other production roles as micromanagers-producer and screenwriter, and sometimes even editors, or hitch their wagons to specific artist collaborators, but the violence in Anthony Mann films is shot too similarly across many of his films for me not to see him as the link, and there's way too much of Tim Burton in Tim Burton films for me NOT to call him an "aeuter." By no means does that mean he was the ONLY creative force behind any picture, but there's too much of him in his movies not to define them as primarily his own. I've simply seen too many films with many interesting elements which didn't cohere together because the director at the helm wasn't a strong enough hand to pull everything together. Hell, I loathe Michael Bay, but the constant leering up women's skirts, slow motion, rapid fire cutting, military fetishism, and constantly roving camera in his films leads me to believe that he's the primary creative force in charge. Someone has to be able to unite the many disparate pieces of a film into a cohesive whole.