Why do TV shows use so many different directors?

Cafe Society
1

I’ve never really though about this before, as I don’t normally watch much TV, but I’ve noticed it now as I’ve been following Breaking Bad. The show mostly sticks with the same set of writers, the same crew and (obviously) the same main cast throughout the seasons. However, it goes through a bunch of different directors - 24 in total as of now (episode 60), according to the Breaking Bad wiki. That’s just 2.5 episodes per director on average. Lots of them do only one episode or maybe two. Michelle MacLaren has directed the most, with eleven episodes so far. A couple of episodes are directed by Bryan Cranston, and the different writers, as well as Michael Slovis (the DP), have each directed a couple of episodes each, but a lot of the time the director is someone who is not otherwise connected to the show, and comes in just to direct an episode or two.

Apparently, this is also common practice on lots of other shows.

What’s the reason for this? Doesn’t it make it harder to keep the look and feel of the show consistent? Why is this practice different for the directors than it is for, say, the writers, the DP or the editors? Wouldn’t it make more sense to use a smaller group of rotating directors?

2

One director typically can’t produce an episode a week, especially if the show is an hour and/or uses sfx - they can possibly shoot one in a week, but there’s up to a week of post-production work to do. So while one director does post on the last episode shot, the cast and crew shoot another with a different director to keep things moving.

As for consistency, that’s the executive producer’s job, and why show-runner is such an important gig for television; they keep the show on course, not the director, as with a feature film.

3

Some shows (usually comedies) do use a single director. All of Green Acres was directed by Richard L. Bare, and Jame Burroughs directed nearly all episodes of Cheers. That’s easier to do with a three-camera comedy, where most of it is done on a single set and which doesn’t require much in post production.

For a dramatic show with location shooting, the director has to go over the location and plan the shoot, so while one director is actually shooting scenes, another is going over the location and is making plans. Or he’s shooting scenes involving different actors. And there’s the post production, too.

4

A lot of shows do use a small group of directors. Look at a season of Big Bang Theory, for example. Mark Cendrowski directs most of the episodes, but every three weeks or so someone else takes the reins so Mark can finish up post on his episodes. Or BtVS.

5

Some manage to do so, but typically when a Director has finished one episode of a show, which might have been as much as five or six weeks work from pre- to post-production, they then leap over to do an episode on another show, then again on a third show, and perhaps back to the first show again completing an irregular cycle. Here’s a typical example.

6

Sort of already been answered, but in terms of prep and actual work:

Writers have somewhat a luxury of time when writing a series - they start while everyone else is on hiatus and will be working on those scripts while everyone else is off on vacation or doing other projects. They are only needed later for minor re-writes or whatever, but have all of the scripts for the season completed - or at least several shows in advance. This will occasionally change if a series is canceled, but note that many shows don’t even have the time to change a last episode to a finale episode, as that script was probably finished months before they found out about the change.

Set designers and costume designers and special effects and stunt actors usually get their scripts with ample time to prepare, with maybe a few tweaks to be made on the days leading up to the shoot, or the day of the shoot.

The actors get their scripts perhaps a week early if they are lucky - but pretty much churn through the filming week by week, memorizing tons of lines days/hours before the actual shoot. Once the scene(s) are completed, they are off to the next script.

Directors, however, need to set up the shoots - determining camera angles, locations, interior or exterior, special effects (if any), day or night, rain or snow, chases, jumps, crashes, explosions, etc. They have to create an entire storyboard and often shooting is not in chronological order. Once completed, they then have to go in and edit the footage (multiple takes) to make it all coherent and fit with the story board. Thus - they have a lot of prep to get ready, the actual shoot (and changes during the shoot due to unforeseen circumstances) and then lots of post production to edit it down to the correct timeframe and pacing.

This is somewhat easier for a 30 minute sitcom - after they get the hang of it and get the pacing and timing down - but for 60 minute dramas, depending on the quality, this is essentially making a movie and takes a lot more time to get it right.

Think about some of the great shows - The Wire, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Dexter, Justified, The Shield - many of those individual episodes easily have the quality of film direction of any major movie release.

7

I’ll note that all of your examples aired on non-broadcast networks, which is an interesting distinction, for a couple of reasons:

(A) The “seasons” for series which are produced for cable networks are typically shorter than the ~22 episodes that a network series usually is expected to deliver for a full season. For example, “The Sopranos” usually ran 13-episode seasons, which seems to be a pretty typical season “size” for cable dramas.

(B) Cable series don’t necessarily hew to the typical network schedule – i.e., those 22 new episodes air across the 40 or so weeks from September through May, with a new episode expected to air every week during the sweeps months of October, February, and May. This means that a hour-long dramatic series on a broadcast network will have to crank out an episode every 2 weeks*, perhaps less (taking into account the break in production over the spring / summer), while a cable series may have the luxury of more time to spend in production on each episode.

    • As an aside, a friend of mine worked on the production crew for two Star Trek series (TNG and Voyager). He’d relate that, when they started up production for a season, they’d have a pretty good lead-time between the shooting days for an episode, and the air date for the episode, but it was pretty typical that, by the end of the season, they were cutting things very close.
8

Bryan Cranston has directed a few episodes of Breaking Bad and they’ve all (I think) been the first episode of its given season, because of how much time is involved in pre-production such as scouting locations, storyboarding, etc. Once the season gets going he just wouldn’t have the time to undertake directing duties on top of his acting.

9

The one director thing is a mild peeve I have with “Episodes.” It’s a show about two writers from England working in Hollywood to translate their critically-acclaimed show into a dumbed-down US sitcom starring Matt LeBlanc. They show the two executive producers talking to the same director all the time, maybe to save on casting, but maybe because in the UK it seems an entire “series” is shot before it airs so one director does the entire run (“Episodes” itself has had one director/season for all eps).

10

Battlestar Galactica(the new one) had a group of directors and they found that they could assign certain episodes to certain directors. Most key episodes were directed by Michael Rymer. He became their go-to guy for premieres, finales, and major episodes.

Meanwhile, Michael Nankin was assigned a lot of less major episodes.

They didn’t follow the system perfectly and do have a few one-off directors, but they tried to keep a solid core.

11

A three-camera sitcom in the US can easily have one director handling 80% or more of the shows. In addition to what I’ve already mentioned, The Big Bang Theory has had Mark Cendrowskl directing 118 of 138 shows and James Burroughs directed every episode of Will and Grace. Pamela Fryman has directed 173 of 187 episodes of How I Meet Your Mother. So it’s not out of the question that a dumbed down US comedy (which usually is a three-camera show) has a single director.

This is possible because that type of show is primarily shot on one or two main sets, with occasional different sets. It’s also shot and filmed like a play, where the actors perform on a stage. This eliminates the need for a lot of the prep time and camera angles are usually pretty simple. The director can do the post production in a day or so, while the actors are off and the stage is prepared. Also, obviously a half-hour show takes less time to film that an hour show.

12

Exactly. I know it’s possible, especially when the show limits the sets like they did in the 70s and early 80s when everything happens in the Bunker’s living room, the Cheers barroom, or the squad room on Barney Miller. The fictional show on Episodes, which went from a highbrow comedy about the headmaster of a prestigious school in England to LeBlanc as a school hockey coach, has been portrayed as doing multiple sets and various location shoots, a lot like “Episodes” itself. Ironically, LeBlanc’s character Matt LeBlanc pointed out the changes needed to do a show in the US in the 2nd ep. Part of wooing the creators to America was that they’d already written several seasons, and he pointed out they’d clear that backlog in a single US season, exhausting some of their key long-term, story-lines in no time and making some impractical. He or someone from the studio should also be pointing out “yeah, one guy can’t shoot something like this in the US.” “You mean like we’re doing, right now?” “Yes. Nine episodes a year is not the same as 22 eps a year, guys.”

13

Louis C.K. directed every episode of Louie so far. He also wrote each episode. He was also the editor for two seasons until he fired himself. All the editing was done on his laptop before that. Pretty amazing for a single camera show.

14

For a lot of its run, ST: TOS was directed by two men, Joe Pevney and Marc Daniels. Not only were they intimately familiar with every aspect of the show, they were able to work fast and help stay on budget, and the cast and production crew enjoyed working with them. Through most of the second season, they alternated episodes, which helped ease the production schedule greatly.

Other directors were frequently hired to bring (as AP Bob Justman once stated) “variety” to the show. Some were invited back, some weren’t, for various reasons: at least one did great work but ran way over budget, another supposedly bruised star William Shatner’s ego. Others found the assignment interesting, but never really got into the show; one was a former choreographer for Fred Astaire who had no idea what he was doing.

15

PUCKS! seems like exactly the kind of show that could be filmed with one director. It’s mostly shot on a few standing sets, like the locker room and the school library, and the few locations shoots I can remember being shown have been at the hockey rink. It’s certainly no more complicated a set-up than something like How I Met Your Mother, which has basically the same director every episode, and uses a large number of standing sets, regularly has new sets and does a lots of outdoor shots.