Steven Soderbergh’s advice for first-time directors
The 1990s was an incredibly successful decade for independent cinema, transforming the landscape of Hollywood. Steven Soderbergh emerged in the late ‘80s, kicking off his reign as one of indie cinema’s biggest names with 1989’s Sex, Lies and Videotape. Featuring Andie MacDowell and James Spader, the film was a critical and commercial hit.
From there, Soderbergh made a string of independent movies through the ‘90s, such as Kafka and King of the Hill. In the 2000s, he found much more success than his indie pictures did, making Oscar history when Erin Brokovich and Traffic landed him two ‘Best Director’ nominations (winning for the latter) at the same ceremony.
Soderbergh has been acclaimed for his ability to bring an indie sensibility to even his most high-budget projects, suggesting that Hollywood blockbusters don’t have to be derivative or follow a predictable formula to be a hit. Subsequently, Soderbergh is one of the most successful filmmakers of our time, with a diverse collection of movies under his belt, ranging from Ocean’s Eleven to Magic Mike and Contagion.
Clearly, Soderbergh is a filmmaker who knows what he’s doing, never afraid to push the boundaries of his medium and experiment with new techniques, such as shooting a film entirely on an iPhone 7 Plus (Unsane).
In an interview with the LA Times, he discussed what it takes to become an astounding filmmaker. He explained, “In my mind, there are three components to directing that a filmmaker should have some grasp of. The first being narrative, the second being performance and the third being the camera. There have been very good people who’ve had very good careers knowing one of those things or two of those things.”
However, Soderbergh believes that “it’s rare to see somebody that I felt had a grasp of all three, and a pretty significant, sophisticated grasp, not only in one movie but in a first film,” referring to Andrew Patterson, the director of The Vast of Night. Soderbergh was enamoured by Patterson’s film when he first saw it, deciding to converse with him about the nature of filmmaking and subsequently sharing vital advice, not just for the first-time director but for all budding filmmakers.
Soderbergh’s advice reveals what often makes a movie mediocre or bad – having a grasp on one element of a film but failing in another department. For example, the actors’ performances need to be as strong as the cinematography, no matter the stylistic choice made by the director of photography. While good performances can make up for subpar directing, this will never result in a true masterpiece. Thus, Soderbergh believes that these key elements – “narrative”, “performance”, and “camera” – must all be executed strongly and work in relation to one another for a film to succeed.
