It sometimes might seem like directors are the singular creative voices for their projects – but as four 2023 Directors Guild Award nominees explain during Gold Derby’s Meet the Experts: Directors roundtable, it is the collaborations with their directorial teams and the cast and crew that brings out the best in everyone.
“The favorite thing for me being a director is building relationships with my crew. I love my crew,” three-time DGA Award nominee and past winner Joseph H. Guidry (“The Big Brunch”) explains. Guidry started out as a camera operator and learned that the best way to capture great work is to make sure the on-set experience is conducive to creativity. “Being a camera operator for years, you get the screamers, right? You get the screamers,” he says. “I always said to myself, I will never ever be like that because that’s counterproductive in my eyes. So for me, when I direct, I love to create an atmosphere in an environment where all people can be creative.”
For four-time DGA Award nominee and six-time Emmy Award winner Amy Sherman-Palladino, the connection she’s fostered with her crew proved of utmost importance during production on Season 4 of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” which took place during the coronavirus pandemic.
“When this thing hit, and suddenly you can’t even have lunch with a person and everybody’s behind masks, being with a group of people who so have your back [was key],” she says. “So we all want the same thing. And we sort of clung to each other in an almost unhealthy way. But, you know, there were a lot of games, a lot of trivia nights, which I hung up on immediately as soon as I saw everybody was breathing – but it was this atmosphere of we are here to make sure that we are all going to be okay.”
Sherman-Palladino adds, “I think this business is just a nightmare. Sometimes people can be so cruel and egos are so involved and there’s so much money involved. But but there are moments like that, that nobody talks about or hears about or sees, where it’s a group of people who are really taking care of each other.”
A community rising together is the theme of “Station Eleven,” so it’s not a surprise director and DGA Award nominee Jeremy Podeswa agrees.
“You create something out of nothing, but you are relying on the expertise and the talents of everybody around you,” he says. “We are all better together than we are independently, and we all come together with our own unique talents; together, we make something that’s greater than the sum of the parts. And I think that’s what’s so beautiful about what we do.”
Echos “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” director Eric Appel, “My favorite thing is just being on set with everyone and collaborating. I come from an improv comedy background. So, you know, 20 years ago, I was getting up on stage with people and making everything up on the spot. And, you know, what that really taught me was, how to collaborate with people and you all have to trust each other.”
Watch the full roundtable above. Click on each person’s name above to watch the individual solo chat.
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