Intro to Directing Directing Considered by many as the “author” or auteur of a film. Auteur originated by French film critics Andre Bazín, and Cahiers du cinema (French New Wave Roehmer, Godard, Truffaut, Rivette, Chabrol). Andrew Sarris and Auteur Theory Village Voice film critic Auteur applies to directors only; limits of theory "At the moment, my list of auteurs runs something like this through the first twenty:  Ophuls, Renoir, Mizoguchi, Hitchcock, Chaplin, Ford, Welles, Dreyer, Rossellini, Murnau, Griffith, Sternberg, Eisenstein, Von Stroheim, Buñuel, Bresson, Hawks, Lang, Flaherty, Vigo. Three Criteria for Auteur "The three premises of the auteur theory may be visualized as three concentric circles:  the outer circle as technique; the middle circle, personal style; and the inner circle, interior meaning." Role of director Oversees or (as the French and Greta Gerwig would have it) realizes the screenplay through shots, performances, editing and sound. Determines the style, tone, emphasis of the film through shots, performances, editing and sound. Casts and directs actors Directs creative crew in production (shooting of the film), primarily cinematographer, production designer and sound. In post-production (editing, visual effects and sound design), directs those crew people. Decides when to “cut”(end a take, or version of a shot) and “move on” (stop doing takes of a shot or setup, and do a new one). Or When to Stop. NOT Role of director Write dialogue, characters, setting or plot. If they do, they get writing credit. Some will shoot/operate camera (Spielberg, Soderbergh, Liman, Ridley Scott, Von Trier). Very rarely credited. Oversee business, financial or staffing aspects of the film. If they do, they get producing credit. Oversee organizational aspects of the film. In the theatre, the director should not also be the stage manager. The director should not be the assistant director or production manager. Most do not have “final cut” or final say on which edited version of the film is released. Directing is an entry-level Position “Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you're a director. Everything after that you're just negotiating your budget and your fee.” --James Cameron Get out (2017) Jordan Peele (Writer/Director) Peele started as a cast member on Mad TV. Co-showrunner on Key & Peele (with Keegan-Michael Key). Get Out was his directorial debut. Grossed over $255 million worldwide. Won Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (Daniel Kaluuya). 8 Peele on the sunken place “As I’m writing it becomes clear that the sunken place is this metaphor for the system that is suppressing the freedom of black people, of many outsiders, many minorities. There’s lots of different sunken p ...

1. Intro to Directing
Directing
Considered by many as the “author” or auteur of a film. Auteur
originated by French film critics Andre Bazín, and Cahiers du
cinema (French New Wave Roehmer, Godard, Truffaut, Rivette,
Chabrol).
Andrew Sarris and Auteur Theory
Village Voice film critic
Auteur applies to directors only; limits of theory
"At the moment, my list of auteurs runs something like this
through the first twenty: Ophuls, Renoir, Mizoguchi,
Hitchcock, Chaplin, Ford, Welles, Dreyer, Rossellini, Murnau,
Griffith, Sternberg, Eisenstein, Von Stroheim, Buñuel, Bresson,
Hawks, Lang, Flaherty, Vigo.
Three Criteria for Auteur
"The three premises of the auteur theory may be visualized as
three concentric circles: the outer circle as technique; the
middle circle, personal style; and the inner circle, interior
meaning."

2. Role of director
Oversees or (as the French and Greta Gerwig would have it)
realizes the screenplay through shots, performances, editing and
sound.
Determines the style, tone, emphasis of the film through shots,
performances, editing and sound.
Casts and directs actors
Directs creative crew in production (shooting of the film),
primarily cinematographer, production designer and sound. In
post-production (editing, visual effects and sound design),
directs those crew people.
Decides when to “cut”(end a take, or version of a shot) and
“move on” (stop doing takes of a shot or setup, and do a new
one). Or When to Stop.
NOT Role of director
Write dialogue, characters, setting or plot. If they do, they get
writing credit.
Some will shoot/operate camera (Spielberg, Soderbergh, Liman,
Ridley Scott, Von Trier). Very rarely credited.
Oversee business, financial or staffing aspects of the film. If
they do, they get producing credit.
Oversee organizational aspects of the film. In the theatre, the
director should not also be the stage manager. The director
should not be the assistant director or production manager.
Most do not have “final cut” or final say on which edited
version of the film is released.

3. Directing is an entry-level Position
“Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no
matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your
sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you're a
director. Everything after that you're just negotiating your
budget and your fee.”
--James Cameron
Get out (2017)
Jordan Peele (Writer/Director)
Peele started as a cast member on Mad TV. Co-showrunner on
Key & Peele (with Keegan-Michael Key).
Get Out was his directorial debut. Grossed over $255 million
worldwide.
Won Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Nominated
for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (Daniel
Kaluuya).
8
Peele on the sunken place
“As I’m writing it becomes clear that the sunken place is this
metaphor for the system that is suppressing the freedom of
black people, of many outsiders, many minorities. There’s lots
of different sunken places. But this one specifically became a
metaphor for the prison-industrial complex, the lack of
representation of black people in film, in genre. The reason
Chris in the film is falling into this place, being forced to watch
this screen, that no matter how hard he screams at the screen he
can’t get agency across. He’s not represented. And that, to me,

4. was this metaphor for the black horror audience, a very loyal
fan base who comes to these movies, and we’re the ones that are
going to die first. So the movie for me became almost about
representation within the genre, within itself, in a weird way.”
Jordan Peele on 'Get Out,' the horror
film about racism that Obama would
love
By Jen Yamato
"Get Out" director Jordan Peele at first didn't have high hopes
that his horror-satire would get made. (Jay L.
Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
Jordan Peele never thought his directorial debut "Get Out," a
horror spin on
"Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" for the post-Obama age,
would ever
actually make it to the big screen.
"I said, 'You want to hear a cool story?'" the comedian-turned-
filmmaker
says of his pitch to a producer years ago, teasing a thriller about
an African
American man who goes home to meet his Caucasian
girlfriend's parents

5. only to suspect insidious goings-on in her affluent liberal
hometown. "The
caveat is: No one will make this movie.'"
Happily for Peele, 38, a comedy star best known for his sketch
show "Key &
Peele," his run on "MADtv" and last year's "Keanu" movie, he
was wrong.
With backing from QC Entertainment, Blumhouse Productions
(the
company behind horror hits "Paranormal Activity" and most
recently "Split")
and distribution from Universal Pictures, Peele turned the pitch
into a script
filled with scares, laughs and searing social commentary about
race and
racism in America.
Little Haley Joel Osment in ‘The Sixth Sense’ can see
dead people. Well, I can see racist people.
Jordan Peele, writer-director of "Get Out"
Share quote & link
Wanting to make sure his vision for the film would come to life

6. with the
nuance and edge it required, he made the leap to directing, a
lifelong dream
for the cinephile. The result is a taut, unrelenting and
frequently hilarious
horror-satire that's scored a rare 100% positive rating from
critics on Rotten
Tomatoes, as well as raves from hip-hop luminaries like Chance
the Rapper,
who recently hosted a private screening of the film in
Hollywood.
With nods to paranoia classics like "The Stepford Wives" and
"Rosemary's
Baby," Peele turns his lens on the "monster of racism" lurking
in the
manicured suburbs. Like his predecessors and cinema idols, he
exploits the
conventions of the horror genre to open a universal window into
one of the
most marginalized voices in contemporary America: that of the
young black
man.
"I'm so in awe of movies like 'Alien,' 'Aliens,' 'The Shining,'
'Edward

7. Scissorhands,' most [Steven] Spielberg films — entertaining,
'give the
audience what they want' movies," Peele said on a sunny
afternoon in
downtown Los Angeles.
Growing up in New York, Peele would spend his nights
obsessively poring
over the films of Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick and David
Cronenberg, favoring
horror titles among his collection of more than 300 VHS
movies.
"My friend and I would spend the better part of an evening
figuring out what
to watch. While other teenagers were getting laid, I was just
trying to decide
between 'Dead Again' and 'The First Power' for the third time."
But one of his favorite movies — Ridley Scott's "Thelma and
Louise" — also
taught him how effectively film can open audiences to
experiences outside
of their own.

8. " 'Thelma and Louise' was a pretty important film for me, and
still is," Peele
said. "It's a social film about many things — gender, freedom —
and it puts
someone like me into the place of these protagonists. Watching
that movie,
you are living through the eyes of these women. It's an inspiring
movie that
affected me so much. And until I saw it I wouldn't have guessed
that it had
anything for me."
The trailer for "Get Out," written and directed by Jordan Peele.
"Get Out" puts its audience into the shoes of Chris (Daniel
Kaluuya), a New
York City photographer who joins his girlfriend, Rose (Allison
Williams), on a
weekend trip home to meet her parents (Bradley Whitford and
Catherine
Keener). He's apprehensive about how her family will react to
their
interracial romance, despite her reassurances. ("My dad would
vote for
Obama for a third term if he could," she insists.) But as odd
encounters rack

9. up, he begins to wonder if the paranoia and fear is all in his
head.
"Part of being black in this country, or being a minority in this
country, is
about feeling like we're perceiving things that we're told we're
not
perceiving," said Peele. "It's a state of mind. It's a piece of the
condition of
being African American, certainly, that people may not know.
They may not
realize the toll that it does take — even if the toll is making us
doubt
ourselves."
"Little Haley Joel Osment in 'The Sixth Sense' can see dead
people. Well, I
can see racist people," he chuckled, his smile fading to a more
sober
expression. Although he couldn't have planned for its
unexpectedly acute
real world relevance, "Get Out" arrives in theaters at a time of
post-election
tumult and terror among the country's minority population under

10. President
Trump's first two months in office.
"It's not impossible to think why someone might miss a deeper,
darker,
crazy twist, because we do have this absurd actuality that we're
dealing
with," he said.
British actor Daniel Kaluuya stars in "Get Out." (Justin Lubin /
Universal Pictures)
This film is how racism feels. You get paranoid and
you can’t talk about it. You can’t voice it.
Daniel Kaluuya, star of "Get Out"
Share quote & link
He cast Kaluuya after watching the 27-year-old British actor's
breakout turn
on an episode of "Black Mirror." Kaluuya was already a fan of
Peele's
comedy work — he and Emily Blunt spent their downtime
watching "Key
and Peele" in their trailers on the set of "Sicario," he remembers
— but

11. found in Peele's script an urgency that reflected familiar trauma
onto the
screen.
"That party sequence is why I really wanted to do this film,
because I've
been to that party," Kaluuya said of a scene in which Chris
politely navigates
a series of white strangers whose pleasantries are edged with
passive-
aggressive racist undertones.
Kaluuya, who got his start on the hit British series "Skins" and
is currently
filming Marvel's "Black Panther" for "Creed" director Ryan
Coogler, delivers
a nuanced performance that builds as the dread mounts. In one
scene, his
wide, expressive eyes stream unblinking tears, conveying a
horrifically
visceral feeling of physical and metaphorical powerlessness.
"This film is how racism feels," said Kaluuya. "You get
paranoid and you
can't talk about it. You can't voice it. No one around you gets it,
so you can't
speak about it. And in the end it just comes out in a rage."

12. Director Jordan Peele is best known for the sketch comedy "Key
& Peele." (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
You know Obama's got a devilish sense of humor. I
know he'll love it. . . . I can't wait for Trump to see it,
either.
Share quote & link
"Get Out" makes black lives matter far more than they
traditionally have in
movies, particularly in the horror genre, simply by depicting the
reality of
being a marginalized minority in white-dominated spaces.
"Those are the times you have to bite your lip, when an officer's
disrespecting you, in order to get by. In order to have freedom.
In order to
not be strip searched. In order to not be imprisoned," said
Kaluuya. "So you
circle at the party, having to smile, because if you stand up and
want to go,
you're the troublemaker, you're the nuisance, because you are
not playing
the game — you're not making everybody else feel
comfortable."

13. "Get Out" premiered as a surprise screening in January at the
prestigious
Sundance Film Festival, garnering glowing early reviews. The
critical
acclaim and strong box office tracking, with reports expecting
an opening
weekend take to quadruple the film's $5-million production
budget, put
Peele's career as a multi-hyphenate filmmaker in a promising
position.
"I've done enough time in sketch comedy where you know that
you're going
to piss people off, and you know that that's not the end of the
world, and
that that's OK," said Peele, who is developing several feature
film thrillers
similarly built around contemporary social ills.
Emboldened by the recent successes of films and television
show like
"Straight Outta Compton," Donald Glover's "Atlanta" and Issa
Rae's
"Insecure," and the accomplishments of director Ava DuVernay

14. helming
"Selma," "13
th
" and "A Wrinkle in Time," he sees change coming to a
Hollywood that has long resisted diversity.
"The theory that black doesn't sell overseas is . . . . We need to
give more
diverse points of views the platforms to do good work. And I
think part of
the key is for the underdogs to realize that this is a possible
aspiration," said
Peele. "I want to produce untapped voices, find people and help
them get
their platform."
Peele's push into directing comes at a time in America when
socially
provocative mainstream fare has the potential to permeate the
national
consciousness and drive vital conversations about race,
inclusion and
empathy for otherness.
"I feel like we're entering a time now when it's not as much
about being mad

15. as it is about being strategic," he said. "I believe Barack Obama
when he
says progress isn't a straight line. We just have to mitigate the
potential
damage and get through this together. I think art is going to
play a huge
part in that."
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-get-out-race-horror-
sundance-jordan-peele-1485477812-htmlstory.html
To Peele's knowledge, former President Obama, who famously
tapped his
comedy partner Keegan Michael Key to bring the duo's "Obama
Anger
Translator" sketch to the 2015 White House Correspondents
Dinner, hasn't
yet seen "Get Out" — although former first daughter Malia
Obama was in
attendance at the film's Sundance premiere.
"You know Obama's got a devilish sense of humor," Peele
grinned. "I know
he'll love it." He paused, his comedy senses tingling, teeing up
a joke.

16. "I can't wait for Trump to see it, either. You know he definitely
consumes
content. He probably spends 10 hours a day watching news and
Netflix," he
smiled. "He probably binge-watches shows on his iPhone during
national
security meetings. I'm sure he's caught up with 'The OA' at this
point."
Jordan Peele explains 'Get Out's' creepy milk scene, ponders the
recent link between dairy and hate
How Allison Williams mined the horrors of white privilege for
'Get Out'
Review: Jordan Peele's clever horror-satire 'Get Out' is an
overdue
Hollywood response to our racial anxiety
Jordan Peele's 'Get Out' — the scariest movie at Sundance
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-get-out-
milk-horror-jordan-peele-allison-williams-20170301-story.html
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-allison-
williams-2017-story.html
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-get-out-
review-20170223-story.html
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-get-out-race-horror-
sundance-jordan-peele-1485477812-htmlstory.html
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-breast-implants-fda-
20181126-story.html#nt=latestnews
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-

17. murder-incompetent-20181126-story.html#nt=latestnews
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-general-motors-
restructuring-20181126-story.html#nt=latestnews
https://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/hot-property/la-fi-
hotprop-ed-mcmahon-bel-air-20181126-
story.html#nt=latestnews
Intro to CineMA
The Art of making movies
Course introduction
Student Introductions
Major
Preferred Gender Pronoun
Your Favorite Movie You Say to Impress People
Your Favorite Movie You Are Afraid to Tell People
Syllabus
When is Cinema an Art?
Lady Bird
When is it Cinema an art?
Or When is a Movie a Movie?
Examining Cinema from the point of view of the filmmaker, not
the critic or scholar
Not post-modern, studying intentions
Intention: To Make Art or To Entertain
“I'm not doing movies for theaters where they serve cappucino
in the lobby. I'm doing popcorn movies.” –I’ll Do Anything

18. What is art?
“I come to the question of ‘Is it art?’ honestly: I’m an art
history professor who occasionally writes about food. In asking
whether great chefs are artists in the traditional sense of the
word, I use the criteria that Aristotle set out around 300 B.C.
One must pose three questions about each work of art: Is it
good—does it achieve what its maker set out to do? Is it
beautiful—in the case of food, does it provide aesthetic,
olfactory, and gustatory pleasure? Is it interesting—does it
break boundaries, make us think, or shake our heads in
admiration?”
--Noah Charney, art history professor
Three working criteria to judge Art
Is it good?
Is it beautiful?
Is it interesting?
Watch The Final Table on Netflix (Episode 4, “Brasil”
from 3:30 to 6:20
then 15:00 to 16:30
then 22:30 to 24:00
Which is art?
is this art?

19. is this art?
The Treachery of Images or
This Is Not a Pipe
René Magritte
1929
Cinema vs. TV
“Simply put: Film is a visual art form and television is merely a
visual medium…. Television will always be a medium that is
esthetically inferior to cinema…. Cinema's scale and detail give
it an emotional and intellectual depth that television can only
parrot but never match, like gold compared to pyrite.”
--Armand White, critic
“I just know when to take their drawings away from them.”
Flan Kitteredge from "Six Degrees of Separation"
9
Lady bird (2017)
Greta Gerwig (Writer/Director)
Gerwig was a key figure in the “Mumblecore” movement,
collaborating with Joe Swanberg (Naperville Central High
alum) as an actor (LOL), then co-writer (Hannah Takes the
Stairs) and co- director (Nights and Weekends).
Nominated for Academy Award Best Picture, Best Directing,

20. Best Original Screenplay, Best Lead and Supporting Actresses
Won Golden Globe Best Picture (Musical or Comedy) and Best
Actress (Soarise Ronan)
10
Gerwig on Writing and improvisation
“One thing I learned from my experience writing scripts
with Noah Baumbach for two movies, is that he’s relentless
about trying to get it right on the page, because you only answer
to yourself during that period of time, so you can really make it
as perfect as possible. I don’t do any improvisation, and I don’t
change anything once I’m on set. Because I spent so long on the
script, I didn’t really have to fine tune the edit, which really
serves the document and honors the performances that were
given. The final cut is very, very close to the shooting script.
Something like 95% of the script is exactly what’s in the cut,
and in the same order.”