Nuri Bilge Ceylan

  

Continuing through the film craft directing book the next director I've been introduced to a Turkish film maker by the name of Nuri Bilge Ceylan. I think whats remarkable about this guy is the fact that for a lot of his early films he financed them and worked on them with such a small crew. 

Here are some notes for future reference -   

• He says watching films is the best kind of education because if you know a little bit of the technical stuff then you can watch a scene and work it out, what lens was used and where the camera is ect... 
• He is a minimalist when it comes to his approach to film making - he made his first feature with just himself and a focus puller. His family and friends were the actors. 
• He says his script is not the bible - he will look to change things depending on what he sees during filming. 
• He raised the money himself for his 2nd feature. $100,000. He sold it to TV and made a few foreign sales so he got his money back in the end. 
• He will take photos of the scene from every angle and stick them in the script so he can think of the mise-en-scene. 
• He values sound very highly - he says you can easily change the meaning of a scene entirely by changing the sound. Also it's important to use sound to modify the characters emotion on screen. 
• He believes the reality or the truth lies in the facial expressions of his characters, not always in the spoken word. He likes to shoot close ups now rather than wide as he once did. 
• He says he doesn't watch his dailies, he prefers to use that time getting extra takes. 
• He makes an interesting point that as a director he is the only person who truly understands the film while shooting. That is a very isolated position to be in, no one really understands what your intentions are not even the people closest to you.