19 Attributes You Need to be a Great Film Director
A filmmaker – a great director – is more than a guy or gal who makes a movie.
Regardless of a feature film’s budget, a great director has many admirable qualities. Each director has their own strengths.
Do you possess the qualities of a great director? Where are you weak? Where are you strong? Where and how can you try to improve yourself? We can all work on strengthening our weak areas while further increasing our strengths.
Self-improvement is key to being successful. Those who fail to adapt and grow are always outstripped by their competition.
I wanted to share some attributes that successful people, including leaders, mentors, business owners, and filmmakers, share in common.
(Note: I have an important update at the bottom of this article, so keep reading to the end)
Personal Attributes
1. Stress-Tolerant. A great director can roll with the punches, be cool in a tough situation, and still make the decisions needed while under pressure. They don’t crumble under stress and have healthy stress-coping mechanisms in place.
2. Flexible. A great director is open to new ideas so they can make the best film possible. They don’t turn their nose up at ideas that could make the film better. The director doesn’t always have the right answers and has to rely on many professionals, including actors, crew, and other collaborators to advise him/her.
3. Positive Attitude. Great directors aren’t self-obsessed divas. They’re leaders of a team. Everyone on set looks to him/her to set the standard for behavior. If the director is always gloomy, pessimistic, has low morale, etc., so will everyone else on set.
A great director is mindful of this and sets the example (see ‘leads by example’ below).
4. Uses Time Efficiently. A great director has no time to waste—there’s a movie to be made, and time is money! Great directors understand the value of time and uses it properly. There’s a time for everything. If it’s time to rest, they rest. If it’s time to work hard, they work hard.
They try to maximize the time they have available.
5. Knows How to be Diplomatic. Great directors didn’t get where they are by treating people poorly when they were in a bad mood. Great directors have self-control and can deal with people cordially, even if the situation is frustrating or someone is being unreasonable.
The great director understands that you can’t always take a sledgehammer to an issue and call it a day. Sometimes you need to use more delicate tools; approach people with finesse.
6. Knows When to Speak Up (or Shut Up). This is basically an extension of being diplomatic. Sometimes that thing you really want to say, you don’t say. The great director knows this and exercises restraint in what he or she says.
7. Thinks Outside the Box. The great director doesn’t feel constrained or threatened by others creative ideas/input. Instead he or she uses them to his or her advantage. The great director is willing to try new things and take risks to get great results instead of only okay results.
8. Problem-Solver – Not a Problem Creator. There are those that focus on pointing out problems, often in a complaining manner. They want to be the first ones to point it out but don’t offer any solutions. There are also people who create problems where none need exist. This is counterproductive.
The great director identifies problems before they occur and current problems, but he or she never walks away without offering one or two solutions. The great director is always working to move the team forward one step.
He or she doesn’t unveil a brick wall in the path, only to walk away and tell others, ‘good luck’.
9. Takes Responsibility. The great director understands the distinction between fault and responsibility. He or she understands that everything that goes wrong or right about their film (as the leader of the filmmaking team) will be attributed to the director.
The great director accepts the risk and possible reward, his or her own mistakes, and always works to correct them without blaming others, because it is a waste of time to play the blame game.
Lastly, the great director isn’t afraid to attribute a ‘job well-done’ to members of the team that deserve recognition for their good work.
Relationships & Communication
10. Focuses on Fostering Relationships. The great director got where he or she is because he or she understands that business is largely about relationships. Therefore, the great director spends time building genuine relationships with a variety of people.
He or she networks, meets lots of people, and stays in contact with many of them regularly.
11. Communicates Effectively. The great director understands that communication is absolutely essential to efficient and pleasant working conditions. He or she has spent a lot of time learning these skills and making sure he or she communicates as clearly as possible at all times.
12. Motivates and Inspires. The great director inspires people to give their best effort, even when they aren’t feeling energetic or particularly invested. Their passion is contagious.
13. Creates and Shares a Common Vision. The great director knows that creating a strong vision and sharing that with his cast and crew is important step for inspiring people’s commitment and best work to a film.
The director does this through multiple methods, including doing thorough director prep, creating visual references, and more.
14. Leads by Example. The great director understands that leading teams to make great films requires sacrifice and hard work from everyone, and so he or she does what it takes to set the example of how others should behave.
He or she is always the first one on set, ready to work with coffee in hand, and the last one to leave set.
Storytelling Skills
15. Understands the Filmmaking Fundamentals. The great film director understands why they say, ‘you need to know the rules before you can break them’. Only then can you break the rules in order to get specific, desired results.
If you don’t know why you are breaking a ‘rule’, then you’re just shooting from the hip. You don’t know what you are doing and can’t predict the result. That’s fine on a passion project, but if there’s any money at stake, you should be surer of what result you will get.
Additionally, understanding the fundamentals will help you communicate and work with your crew since you’ll speak their language.
The great director knows many of the great number of storytelling tools at his or her disposal—both the technical and creative. He or she is familiar with them and can mentally flip through that toolbox to make great directorial choices.
However, the great director is always open to new techniques and isn’t afraid to lean on the expertise of the crew.
16. Understands Real Human Behavior. If one doesn’t understand how people react in real life to various events, how can one portray them believably on film? A great director can anticipate how someone might react in a real-world situation and transplant that into the fiction of his story.
Especially if the director is young and relatively inexperienced, he or she tries to experience the world and examine human behavior in order to learn.
17. Understands Film Conventions. It’s not enough to know about how people actually act in reality.
The great director knows that reality is sometimes perceived differently than the equivalent in film, and can adjust how he or she presents events, conversations, and storytelling techniques in order for the audience to see what he/she wants them to see and feel what he/she wants them to feel.
The great director understands various film conventions, from the most broad (genre) to the very specific (grenade explosions in film versus reality).
18. Can Walk in Others’ Shoes. The great director knows how to create believable performances from a variety of characters and perspectives because he or she understands how people tick, and has enough empathy and creativity to put him or herself in others’ shoes.
19. Understands How Humans Learn. The great director understand that film story arcs (and stories in general) mimic the process in which humans learn (deep personal flaw, inciting incident, ensuing struggle, a realization, and finally, change or growth), and applies that to his or her films in order to create believable characters and moving stories.
No one starts out with all these traits / skills / knowledge.
I’d like to add that no director knew all these things when he/she got started—or even many of them.
So don’t freak out. If you don’t possess the above qualities, you can learn them. We all have room to learn and grow.
If you aren’t sure where to start learning and growing, read this article for specific tips that will help you become a movie director.
The process of making films will help you grow as a person and over time you’ll get better at doing it.
Additionally, you should go out of your way to find and spend time around people who have the above qualities. The people you spend time around affect you greatly.
Personally, filmmaking has been one of the best things I’ve ever pursued. Along the way, I’ve learned many life lessons. If you haven’t yet, I’m sure you will! Get out there, learn to be a better Human, and make great films.
UPDATE:
Since the film industry is changing, it is more important than ever that filmmakers that want to direct their own work and make money from it need to understand the following key skill…
Audience building.
For the modern indie filmmaker, knowing how to build an audience is an absolutely essential skill, because the harsh truth is that most people never make it to mainstream Hollywood success. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make work you care about and make money from it.
Filmmakers have always been subject to middlemen in this industry, but affordable equipment and the internet changes that. All the tools are there – we just need to learn how to use them. This involves understanding how to tell stories for a niche audience, build excitement around your content, and design a method for selling your films to your audience.
So if you are interested in learning how to build an audience and make income from your filmmaking work, I personally vouch for the skills taught in the Film Audience Accelerator course by Rob Hardy. If you want to hear my explanation on why this is one of the best set of skills you should learn right now, you can go here.
If you want to skip that, go straight to checking out the Film Audience Accelerator course.
Stay strong and focused, fellow Storyteller.
