Week 1: What does a director actually do?
Directing as translating a given objective and intended interpretation into a playable action, judging a take against that objective, and telling a genuine redirect from a note that quietly changes it
22 February 2027
A director doesn’t make the shot. A director says what a shot is for, decides whether it did that, and tells someone — a cinematographer, an actor, a model — exactly what to change. That loop is the entire craft this course practices: direct → generate → evaluate → redirect. It’s the same loop whether the person on the other end is a human actor or a model: what changes with an AI cast and crew is turnaround time and the cost of being wrong; what doesn’t change is judgement, taste, and the discipline of saying precisely what’s wrong.
This course uses one running story to make every week’s technique concrete: “Before It Stops” — on the final night before her late mother’s apartment is cleared, a woman receives a call from the brother she hasn’t spoken to in years, and must decide whether to answer before the ringing stops. It’s a worked teaching example, not a project you’re being asked to adopt — what you actually direct, later in the course, is your own choice.
What you’ll be able to do after this lecture#
By the end of this lecture you should be able to:
- tell a director’s note apart from a wish, and rewrite a wish as a note
- given a scene’s stated objective and the interpretation it’s meant to produce, name one playable, observable action that would realise it
- judge a take against the objective and interpretation it was meant to produce — not against whether it’s generically well made — and diagnose the specific gap when it misses
- tell a genuine redirect (adjusting the playable action, timing, emphasis, or degree) apart from a note that quietly swaps in a different objective
The chain: intention, objective, action, result, interpretation#
Every note this course asks you to write comes from the same chain, and skipping a link in it is why notes fail.
- Intention is what you, the director, want this moment to mean.
- An objective turns that intention into something the character is actively trying to do or get, inside the scene — not a mood, a want.
- A playable action is the one specific, observable thing a performer (or a model) can actually execute to pursue that objective: a look, a pause, a shift in posture, a change of pace.
- The result is whatever gets generated when that action is executed.
- The interpretation is what an audience — someone who wasn’t told any of the above — reads into the result.
The chain only works end to end. An intention that never becomes an objective stays an abstraction nobody can act on. An objective that never becomes a playable action is still just a want in your head. And a playable action that doesn’t produce the intended interpretation hasn’t failed randomly — it’s failed at one identifiable link, which is exactly what you diagnose when you evaluate a take.
Take this week’s scene. A woman sits alone at a kitchen table at night — her late mother’s apartment, cleared out around her, the last night before it’s gone for good. Her phone, beside her on the table, vibrates once: her brother, calling.
- Objective: she wants to answer but consciously prevents herself from doing so.
- Intended interpretation: an audience should read her stillness as restraint — a difficult choice being made in real time — not as indifference, boredom, or an absent-minded pause.
- Playable action: something like “reach toward the phone, stop your fingertips just short of it, hold for a full second, then withdraw” is playable — it’s one instruction a performer or a model can actually execute. “Show she wants to answer but won’t” is not; it just restates the objective in different words and gives nobody anything to do.
Everything this week’s workshop asks of you — diagnosing a provided Take A against a fixed objective, writing Note B as a genuine redirect — is practising this same translation: the objective and the intended interpretation stay fixed, and your job is finding the playable action that actually produces them.
The real demonstration#
A genuine Note A → Take A → diagnosis → Note B → Take B pair, generated against exactly the scene above, with the objective and intended interpretation held fixed throughout.
Watch Take A before opening the notes below. Write down what she does, where the action changes, and what her behaviour makes you think she wants. Keep that first reading so you can compare it with the diagnosis.
Reveal Note A and the diagnosis
Note A: When the phone vibrates, look toward it, begin reaching with the right hand, stop before touching it, and slowly withdraw.
Diagnosis: Take A establishes the scene and produces a reach-and-withdraw action, but the stop is too soft and the performance reads as generally downcast throughout. Without being told the objective, the behaviour could pass for ordinary hesitation, sadness, or distraction — the moment of actively preventing herself from answering isn’t unmistakable. The hand also comes very close to the phone, weakening the requested “stop before touching” boundary.
Compare this diagnosis with your own reading. Which visible detail made restraint clear or unclear to you?
Watch Take B and compare the behaviour
Watch Take B before revealing its note. Name the observable differences from Take A — when the reach begins, where it stops, and how she withdraws. Do those differences change your reading of her intention?
Reveal Note B and why it is a genuine redirect
Note B: At the vibration, inhale and snap the eyes to the phone; reach urgently; stop the fingertips two centimetres above it and hold for a full second with tense fingers and a tightened jaw; then deliberately withdraw the hand into the lap while keeping the eyes fixed on the phone, ending on a controlled exhale.
Why this is a genuine redirect: Note B doesn’t change what the character wants or what the audience should understand. It targets the diagnosed gap by changing only observable behaviour — onset speed, stopping distance, duration of the hover, muscular tension, eye line, and the endpoint of the withdrawal — turning an ambiguous slow reach into a legible act of self-restraint while preserving the original objective.
Check the differences you observed against the note. Specificity matters because it targets a diagnosed gap while preserving the objective.
A note, not a wish#
A wish names a feeling you want more of. A note names one specific, observable action — a way of realising an objective — and roughly when and how much. Wishes fail for a chain reason, not just a vagueness reason: they skip straight from intention to result, naming neither an objective nor a playable action, so there’s nothing for a performer or a model to actually do.
| Wish | Note |
|---|---|
| “Make it more emotional” | “Look up half a second before you say it” |
| “It doesn’t feel right” | “Hold the pause one beat longer before the line” |
Both notes on the right name a playable action and roughly when it happens. Neither invents a new objective — they’re translations of an existing one into something executable.
Guided judgement: redirect, or a different note?#
Say a take on this same scene came back reading as boredom, not restraint — the wrong interpretation for the stated objective. Which of these two notes is a genuine redirect, and which one has quietly swapped in a different objective?
- “Hold the hand a half-second closer to the phone, and let her exhale shake slightly before she pulls back.”
- “Make her seem like she’s already decided the call doesn’t matter.”
The first is a redirect: same objective, same intended interpretation, an adjustment to timing plus a small added detail — a genuinely playable next step. The second isn’t a redirect at all; it directs toward a different character, one who’s actually stopped caring whether the call is answered. Confusing the two is the most common failure in a redirect: closing a gap by inventing a new scene instead of correcting the one you already committed to.
Synthesis#
The chain — intention, objective, playable action, result, interpretation — is the tool for both writing a note and diagnosing why a take missed. Every later week in this course adds a new layer onto this same chain: how an objective survives a shot list, how a moment-before produces the objective in the first place, how a cut argues for one interpretation over another. None of that replaces this week’s judgement; it depends on it.
“Before It Stops” stays this course’s worked example throughout — useful because it’s small enough to think through completely, not because it’s the film you’re required to make.
Teaching team
- Marisol Quaye — convenor