What is your directing style?

[Popcorn_Bliss]

Assuming you were a director? Or perhaps you are?

I'm always fascinated by how many great directors there are yet how differently they sometimes go about making films.

A director like William Friedkin came from the school of Hitchcock (literally) and yet they made legendary films quite differently. Hitchcock was controlled and precise. He once said that creating the idea and plot of the film was the "art". Actually making the film was his least favorite part. Yet he was obsessed with every glance, every angle, and every detail.

Friedkin was much more a "free-lance director". He didn't believe in rehearsing a cast and even casted most of his films right on the spot! He sought realism and spontaneity by and large.

What the two directors shared was the talent for making the film in their mind before the cameras even rolled. Friedkin in fact has stated that every film he has made has never fully lived up to how good it was in his head. He said his only goal was to make a film as close to his vision as possible but that perfection is filming is always a mirage.

I've always seen myself as being closer to the deliberate, carefully-framed style of filmmaking. I wouldn't be the best action or documentary style filmmaker because I'm not a fan of quick-cuts in general nor in spontaneity to be honest. I think of great film as something much more akin to what Hitchcock or Fellini did - using the frame and characters to relay mood, symbolism, sensualness, detail, choreography, etc.

Of course, the film can dictate the style used, but my point is that I would only do films where I felt I could make them to my style. Who wants to see a dreamer or surrealist trying to make an action film?

What is your directing style? What directors would be your benchmarks?