If You Were a Director, What Would Be Your Hallmarks?

All directors have certainly hallmarks that characterize their films, whether it's a particular visual sensibility or a fondness for certain kinds of stories.

If I were a director, I would make a concerted effort to be the most versatile and unpredictable director of all time. For example, I would unleash the most horrifyingly graphic, disturbing film ever made, then I would immediately follow it up with a heartwarming, family-friendly animated film. With that said, there would undoubtedly be certain qualities that would characterize my work, including:

1. Incredibly complicated characters with multi-faceted personalities. There would never be any one-dimensional caricatures or "joke" characters. There would be no black-and-white morality, and nobody would ever be 100% good or 100% evil.

2. A completely detached, non-judgmental view of all characters and events. I would just observe things in an aloof manner and let the viewers decide for themselves. Even the most hideous characters (like child molesters and serial killers) would be portrayed in a neutral manner as three-dimensional human beings.

3. Extremely intimate and personal views of characters' lives.

4. Frequent use of very bizarre and unorthodox camera angles.

5. Very striking and visually stunning cinematography. The camera would go underwater, underground, inside molten lava, into outer space, into clouds, onto swings, and wherever else I wanted to take it. The camera would usually be constantly moving, but would be still and static when necessary.

6. Constant desire to do things that no filmmaker has ever done before, like shooting an entire movie with cameras attached to drones, filming with the fastest frame rate in cinema history, and filming a movie entirely in the made-up language of Lojban.

7. Extremely graphic, no-punches-pulled approach to unpleasant subject matter. There is absolutely nothing that I would not be willing to show on screen in unflinching detail. Nothing would ever be censored or cut away from, and everything would be portrayed as graphically as if you were seeing it in real life. I fully believe in showing evil as it really is, with absolutely no phony sugar coating of any sort. With that said, not all (or even most) of my films would feature any shocking, disturbing content in them.

8. S*x scenes would be extremely explicit, but shot in the most cold, clinical, detached, and un-erotic manner possible. In addition, my characters would usually have very weird attitudes about s*x, and "normal", healthy sexual behavior would be pretty much unheard-of in my films.

9. Shooting absolutely every single film in 3D. At the moment, 3D is universally seen as being only for mindless popcorn films and not for "serious" artistic films. I would do everything that I possibly could to change that.

10. Incredibly extensive use of licensed music, spanning every genre and era. With that said, the music would mostly appear in-universe (like on car stereos or in nightclubs within the film). However, some of my films would have no music at all.

11. Frequent use of music that clashes wildly with what's being portrayed on screen, like soft pop music playing during a brutal murder scene. At times, it would feel like the soundtrack was just chosen completely at random.

12. Extremely naturalistic dialogue, documentary-like in its realism. The dialogue would always feel like real people talking and never like a contrived movie script. In addition, there would often be highly frank, candid conversations about subjects very rarely discussed on screen.

13. Tendency to "leave the cameras rolling" long after most filmmakers would have cut away.

14. Tendency to show things not normally seen in movies, like characters farting (in a non-comedic context) and characters emptying their bowels and bladders after dying.

15. Tendency to cast singers, stage performers, and other non-screen actors in acting roles.

16. Tendency to give films highly ambiguous, enigmatic titles that seemingly have nothing to do with the actual film.

17. Frequent use of extreme close-ups.

18. A desire to give each film a wholly unique and memorable visual appearance.

19. Tendency to focus on very young, very strange (and sometimes outright disturbed) female protagonists. My protagonist would usually be a young girl, and my protagonist would never be a quote-unquote "normal" individual. A perfect example of my typical protagonist: a detached, emotionless, hyper-intelligent, and sexually abused 11-year-old albino girl from a family of Georgian immigrants who begins filming suicides and posting them on the internet. My protagonists would often be frighteningly amoral at times, but with a certain vulnerability that would make them at least somewhat sympathetic. You would view them the same way that you would view a troubled daughter.

20. Tendency to end films in the most chillingly sad, heartbreaking, and gut-wrenching manner imaginable.

21. Recurring themes and motifs: ladybugs; fireflies; butterflies; moths; dragonflies; the moon; visually dazzling photography of water, blood, lights, and sand; dreams; music; mute people; mental illness; physical disabilities, deformities, and abnormalities, especially albinism; deviant sexual behavior; alienation; circuses/carnivals, especially acrobats; and childhood (especially abusive childhoods). Ladybugs would be my most common motif, would appear in some form in every single one of my films, and would be used for all manner of symbolism. In addition, every film of mine would have at least one albino character and at least one mute character.

22. There would always be an underlying pathos and tenderness, even when delving into the darkest depths of human evil, cruelty, and depravity. The overall tone would never be mean-spirited or sadistic, even if many of the characters are.

23. Real-world events and pop culture would never be depicted or referenced. Any celebrities depicted or referenced would be entirely fictional.

24. Tendency to give characters unusual names (like Apollo, Scheherazade, Lumina, and Galaxy, to give some examples). In addition, characters would often have meaningful/symbolic names like Pandora and Thana.

25. My films would usually be heavily steeped in a particular culture and/or setting, as my characters would come from every single background imaginable. However, my protagonists would typically be completely indifferent - if not outright hostile - to their culture.

26. Tendency to eschew special effects in favor of "the real thing".

27. Fondness for silent-era visuals, especially those of avant-garde silent films and early special effects films like those of Georges Méliès.

28. Tendency to have multiple different plots running at the same time in the same movie, and the plots wouldn't always have any clear connection to each other.

29. The majority of my films would be animated. All voices would be done in a very naturalistic and realistic manner, and child characters would always be voiced by actual children (except in certain cases where it wouldn't be possible to protect child voice actors from extremely mature content).

30. Making films in multiple different languages (sometimes in the same film).

If you were a director, what would be your hallmarks? What would characterize your unique cinematic vision?

!kino