directors

 Posted on 11/21/1997 by J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com> to CIS


Roseann <103510.1542@compuserve.com> asks:
> Who picks the director for the show?
> How is that done?
> Do you ever use fairly new people even though they might be young
> and have little experience? How much are you involved in the
> process? Have you heard of it?

I and John Copeland select all of the directors on the show.

Parenthetical to this: there are only 3 people who are in charge
of this show: me, my partner Doug Netter (who mainly gets into the
business aspect and casting), and producer John Copeland. That's it.
Ain't nobody else. We're very producer light on this show.

End parenthetical.

We go for directors whose work we know as a rule. In some
cases, an agent will send us a reel (clips) of a director whose work we
don't know, and if the material looks good, we'll sit down with the
director (whichever way he/she came in) and see if their philosophy of
production is the same as ours. If so, we give 'em a shot. If they
work out, they do more; if not, not. We've actually got a pretty good
track record on picking directors, and have rarely made a mistake we
couldn't recover from.

jms