All of this implies a third approach to staging: directors who trust their own abilities to respond impulsively but effectively to the concreteness of their immediate work environment. A d coupage created hour by hour as the film progresses.
VII
Regardless of the staging method chosen, a director must be able to handle crew and actors. Somehow they should become a team, molding themselves to the needs of the director. That is not always the case unfortunately. Some directors of photography, for instance, unfortunately insist on using cumbersome equipment which can undermine the director's control over the film. Godard once diagrammed the consequences for the shoot brought about by the choice of a camera. 34 In his drawings, the large Panaflex is shown as producing enormous traffic on the set (all sorts of assistants, grips, etc.), activity that makes it difficult for the director to concentrate on the scene at hand. In contrast, the Aaton 35mm, which Godard expected to be even smaller than the actual camera eventually marketed by the company, leaves a clear line of sight between the director and the actors. In the first example the director must manage an army of employees, in the second he/she is surrounded by a group of friends.
To choose a camera is thus not without consequences. A large camera implies more crew and goes hand in hand with these other excesses that happen once people realize you are making a "movie" (to recall Jaglom's pertinent remark). Two examples involving directors who graduated from smaller independent films to bigger Hollywood productions show what is involved here. Martin Scorsese, ever the most vocal and lucid of all American directors, once complained about the size of the equipment he was suddenly forced to use and the number of people buzzing around it. "It gets to the point," he said, "where you can't even fucking turn [around on the set]."35 As for Arthur Penn, he had additional problems on The Chase (1966):
I was dealing with a cameraman and I remember Marlon [Brando] coming to me and saying, 'Why? What's this about not getting our first shot at night until one o'clock in the morning?' And I said, 'That's this guy.' He looked at me in a leery fashion. He was implying: 'Get rid of him!' It never occurred to me. I bought into the whole system when I bought into that picture.'36
