How do you judge directing and acting?

To me, it all starts with the writing. My question is more how to distinguish it all, credit or fault. It's good to watch an actor play a few roles, especially different kinds of roles. I guess with a director it's probably a wise idea to read the book or whatever it's adapter from and to see what is chosen, that's the important part. I think the director has to take the credit and blame, because he can always say cut, or tell the editor to do this or that. I also try to be objective with the character, even if I don't like the person or actor, if I'm convinced, I'm convinced, but even that's hard.

Sometimes, it's the face, a smirk, something you're born with, or even the way someone sounds. I think most people notice that about 99% of the leading roles are taken by the beautiful people.

I also look at the director's different movies. For example, Robert Altman. A lot of writers didn't care too much for him, because he let the setting dictate what would be said, and I think it's creative. But I'm sure if it was my screenplay, there would be certain things I'd object to. Even though Nashville and McCabe are some of my favorite films, there's a handful of his films that I don't like at all. Was it content? Was Altman drinking the night before? Also, he likes to use the same actors a lot, almost as a troupe.

Curious to hear your thoughts and maybe read something I never considered before (the key to life).

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Acting is fairly easy to judge .. directing is much, much more complicated.

Sometime I'll judge a director by bad camera movement. Such as kick-ass 2 where it seemed every other shot was a push in. Like the director just got his first dolly or something.

But there is so much of reality that attacks a directors vision. Usually it involves time, there's never enough time. Do another take, try it a different way, go back and reshoot when you can see something isn't working.

Other times it will be producers overruling the director and saying things have to be a certain way.
Cracked had a good article on this phenomenon - http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-reason...-to-happen_p2/

Judging a director isn't too hard.


Paul WS Anderson = Never been any good
Spielberg = Used to be good, not so much any more
Fincher = Always was and always will be good


None come to mind who were crap but got better, though.


Simple.

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For the director, I look at the overall quality, cohesion and style of the film. The director, by and large, is responsible for bringing the production together into a cohesive film. (S)He influences how the actors perform, what is cut or added to the script, what direction the set / costume / prop design go in, the style of the score and cinematography, how shots are edited together, etc... It's definitely a hard one to pin down, because a director influences every single level of a film's production.

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Budget has a lot to do with it too... If one guy is given the minimum amount of money, and a very short time, I could see how a good director would look bad, and vice-versa... If you have a mediocre director with great writing, great actors, plenty of money and time, he'd get the credit.

If the acting is off, I blame either the director for not getting the type of performance needed or I blame the producer for allowing an ill suited actor to be hired for the role. Even the greatest actors have a limit to the characters they can play.

As far as directing goes: A director who uses cliche moments in the movie to cheat his way into the audiences emotions, is a hack. Though sometimes I expect that the producers forced the director to add just one big car chase to an otherwise sensible film.

See, that's a whole other thing.. Is the actor off? Is this director not directing him? Did the producer badly cast someone just because of a name or a role... And there's lots of people on here we haven't heard from.

Very interesting... I totally agree with the cliche car chases. It reminds me when "A Clockwork Orange" lost to "The French Connection" - I kept hearing about "the greatest car chase in history" when in fact I couldn't get less. We knew Popeye wasn't going down. Besides it being an inferior movie to "A Clockwork Orange" I think McDowell's performance was one of the greatest ever, and I'm a huge Gene Hackman fan. It's been a few years since I've seen French Connection, so I might give it another try, even though it was a simple cop story, whereas some stories grow on you, or grow with you because of experience, age, circumstances.

This conversation reminded me of the film I saw a few days ago with Kirk Douglas... He plays a producer, yeah, "The Bad and the Beautiful"

When I say 'cliche moment' a car chase that doesn't otherwise belong in a film is just one example of many.

Sensationalism... Almost like, "Oh, we have time to kill" - show some breasts, show some violence, show something blowing up, car chase.. The problem is that it works. I think if there was a channel called "TRAINWRECK" people would watch it all day.

It's just like these "reality" shows which are so fake. Not only fake as in pre-planned, but if people know that millions will be watching them, they'll show what they want, and the producer probably cuts 90% of it.

a director is like a soccer coach, whoever watches soccer would understand my point, no matter how crappy your team members are, you can end up in one of the top 3 positions as long as you have the qualities of a genius director.

What I'm trying to say, great directors should always deliver masterpieces never mind the cast (but the are of course excused for 3 or 4 movies in their career, depending on how many movies they've made)


a great actor doesn't have to be perfect all the time, because in many times he has limits sat by his director, and boundaries he cannot cross, but whenever he's given the chance he should give a great performance and it's necessary to be in versatile roles!
It's not about, this actor is great if given the right role, no, it's about this actor would make any character stand out no matter what the role is

(there are some cases where you can judge the excellence of an actor in just one single movie by playing two opposing personalities and playing them so good like Dominic Cooper in The Devil's Double & in a way Forest Whitaker in The Experiment)

(this rarely happens to directors, one of the examples I can think of is Woody Allen's Melinda & Melinda)

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Acting, IMO, is hard to fit into a box. I look at two things when judging acting; do I buy the character? And is the actor on board with the overall film? That second question can be explained by the film Hobo with a Shotgun. No one would say the performances in that film are excellent in a vacuum, but in the context of the overall film all those people were on board with the joke and they work in that universe.

That said, it's still the director's job to pull those performances from their actors. I judge directing basically how I judge the overall film. It's tough to pin down any one particular thing when it comes to directing because of how far reaching the director can be on a film (when they aren't being heavily leaned on by the producer).

Personally I'm a cinematography guy. I love a beautiful shot and that can sway my opinion on a film, but it can't overcome a boring or bad story.

I want to challenge the OP on one thing. Writers in film mean next to nothing. There's an old saying that TV is a writers medium and film is a directors medium. I agree with that completely. I offer the following in evidence:

Transformers and Star Trek (2009) were both written by Orci and Kurtzman. Both are pretty crappy in their writing, but J.J. Abrams can make a film exciting and fun where Michael Bay can take writing by the same team and make it nonsensical fluff. A good director can overcome a weak script while a bad director can accentuate poor writing.

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Those are both pretty easy for me. All I have to do is decide whether I like or dislike a film based on the acting, directing or both, which for me has always been easy to do.

I think with directors it may simply be that they are comfortable with a genre and will always stick to it which is fine but if you are not a fan of one film of they directors or a genre chances are you will dislike other things that director has done or will do,

I hear so many bad things about Michael Bay, that he makes cheesy, over the top films with little substance and more like music videos. This may all be true but that is his niche, that is what he does, I liked Bad Boys 1 and 2, they were fluff but for me enjoyable fluff but I have no intention of seeing any of the transformers films. I also have heard people say bad things about George Lucas and that he could not direct his way out of a paper bag but I don't see it, it may simply be I have not seen enough of his work outside of the Star Wars films though.

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