Coherence applies to making a film or documentary or any kind of audio-visual project. Most accurately connects to drama. What I mean is that you have a uninformative creative line through every aspect of your project. That starts with the idea (the hunch and curiosity) which is the thing you want to investigate. It’s the ‘germ’ of the idea. If say one is making a film on a story you’ve heard, there’s some aspect of that idea that really touched you – which was the core of what drew you to that idea.
That’s a memory or something that triggers something in you. There’s usually something in that book, but there was something in that book Heart of Darkness which Coppola found interesting in Apocalypse Now. Often something comes from something very small. Even if you read a great novel, there’s an image in it, or a moment in it, or an emotion in it, which is what you connected it to. There’s always something that triggers inside of us.
When we make a film, it’s very important to try and find your central hook – find your emotional route that routed you into that idea. If you can’t find that single moment in your idea, most ideas spring from ‘the thing’ (the question, the image, the sound, the line, the moment). It’s very important that you clarify that for yourself in your creative project. Everything else grows from there and if you get clarity and coherence, usually everything else is dictated by that aspect.
If we look at the different aspects of a film project, you should always ask yourself that question. But taking a traditional combination of other elements (you have cinematography, production design, editing, etc.), they become silos. The creator of the idea has to bring a continuity to that – which is not to say that it won’t happen when you don’t, but it won’t happen without that clarity that you bring. This applies to even a small documentary with your peers. The tendency of film is to divide – underscored by the capacity of people to work for and everything needs to be divided. As the director/creator you need to bring coherence to that. But also bring a creative intelligence to each decision.
If you’re making a feature film, there’s a circus involved. Ultimately, there is a quiet time for script development. Suddenly, there’s that horrible period where you’re trying to raise money, and suddenly, it’s happening. It gets professional and people start coming in and out like a factory. What is slightly less obvious is that you, the creator, then connect all these decisions to your colonel, so your artistic decisions reflect the idea. How does all these decisions creatively embody the colonel of an idea of how I make these decisions?
Two crucial things are (i) communication and (ii) keep hold of each aspect. Even if you don’t understand cinematography (for example), you have very people who go into a film and make it bad, you talk to the cinematography and you say; “when you say Steadicam, I don’t know what you’re talking about”, that’s fine. But, connecting to the colonel of the idea, the feeling is this…. Then they’ll say “I see, is that the kind of thing…?” with the best will in the world. It’s about a communication and be relate to the core idea. Even when you’re under pressure, you have a reference point.
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