Who holds the power in Features and TV

After posting the last blog about the differences between features and TV I realized that there's still more to say -- 

Who controls their medium, how they control it and why. 

Features, as I mentioned before, are the big guys on the block. They get more money and more serious attention and go back over a hundred years. While TV was working in the mid 30's it didn't really catch on until the early 1950's. Color came in the mid 1960's.

Features are primarily a director's medium. The director is king and believe me, you get taken with that power quite easily. Anything you want or need is there in seconds, a coffee, a new chair, anything. You get driven around and your every wish, albeit realistic (although sometimes...) is taken care of.


I experienced this the first time I directed a feature, the oft-mentioned Ghostkeeper. Once when I sat by a crewmember at the bar (we were on location in the Rocky Mtns) and talked to him he said he'd never had a director who actually spoke to him in a casual situation. Since I had directed and produced hundreds of commercials, I had no illusions as to my status, I was and am an ordinary guy who lucked into extraordinary jobs.

But there was someone on the crew who wasn't a big fan. He was the 1st Assistant Director, a position that is second only to the director and his job is primarily to keep the show moving. He deals with handling the crew according to the director's wishes and pacing and schedule is everything to him.

This 1st felt he should be directing the movie as he had far more experience than me. And each day he would put down little caustic remarks in his log; "lost 15 minutes due to director indecision" etc. What he forgot is that my company was producing the movie so at the end of the day, his remarks went directly to me. This situation is rarely worked out, as egos figure into the equation and we had a few good arguments in front of the crew. Ultimately, he backed off, as I had the power to fire him.

Features also have big budgets and schedules, a big movie can shoot for 6 months while one episode of a series is done in 5-8 days.


The director has the power on a movie as he is the train engineer, he's driving, the rest of us follow. That is until he screws up. Most important is making the day, staying on schedule, followed by shooting good scenes although a good DP can cover for them. And the budget is most important, you take too long or spend too much money, you can be out and replaced faster than you know. It's not uncommon to replace the director but rarely happens.

The writer is sometimes dismissed when the studio hires another writer to replace them. Sometimes a handful of writers will take a shot at a screenplay for a feature before it's made. And more than often, a battle for credits ensues resulting in a panel of peers who have to read each draft and decide who should get the credit. It's not unusual for the original writer to just have a "story by" credit. Credits are important to writers as they determine residuals as well as provide a credit to their resume.  Often these panel decisions are met with heated arguments.


Good directors will often have the writer on set or nearby should a change be required. Insecure directors often don't want the writer around and the joke is that some directors don't like the writer on set because he/she is the only one who knows the director is faking it.


WGA rules state that a director cannot change anything in a screenplay (or script, the words are interchangeable for both TV and features) without permission from the writer. This happened to me only once, on Gentle Ben, when the company was filming in Lake Tahoe and I was 300 miles away in Los Angeles.

In some cases, the Producer is the power on the set and everywhere. These are usually huge egos and since they find the money, they are on set and watching as the director directs. I've been lucky to not have that situation in the 3 films I directed although dealt with it directing commercials.

The basic difference between features and TV is summed up like this; features are what you saw and TV is what you heard. Putting it clearer, you watch feature movies (Lawrence of Arabia, Avatar) and you listen to TV (Grey's Anatomy, CSI, etc). One medium is visual and one is talking.


Television is where the the writers rule TV. This could be dramas like Law&Order, comedies like Two and a Half Men, action shows like the CSI franchise and others.

The director is usually a paid employee who comes in, has a week of prep, does the show and then goes home. Since consistency is the heart of episodic, all directors pretty much film the episodes the same way and they are really nothing more than a traffic cop.

Having worked for months on the show, The DP and crew know how to shoot it and the director occasionally has a few ideas... pending writer approval. I always wondered how TV directors get nominated for one specific episode as compared to the others, which all look the same. I think it's more about the script for that particular episode than the way it was directed.

How did the writers get this power?

One simple thing. 

They can write.

Unlike a movie where one script is needed TV requires a new show every week, or at least 13 episodes, usually 26 in a year. And so that means 26 scripts for the same actors for the entire season. Again, consistency is needed; writers learn the strengths and weaknesses of individual actors and tune them as the show goes on.

It wasn't long  until writers realized they were the most important thing in the entire production. Nobody else could deliver a new script every week. And without a script you have a crew and director unemployed.

How many times do TV actors thank writers in speeches? Always.

How many times do they thank TV directors? Not nearly as much but often in features. Cher thanked her hair dresser for her award to which director Norman Jewison was rumoured to have said "at least she didn't do it all by herself".

Today there can be around 10 to 15 writers on some shows and they almost all use the deceiving titles of "executive producer, creative consultant, co-producer, producer, co-executive producer" and finally" written by". Ironically, there were only one or two writers in the "golden days" from the 1950's to 1970's and more freelance writers were used. 

When shooting TV series on studio lots, the writers are there on set everyday or when required and the director quietly goes about his job. It's also becoming common for a handful of directors who also share in the production and also have producer credits. Watch an episode of CSI and count the number of producers sometime.

And somewhere in the group credits is the real producer, the one who actually handles the money and makes sure each show is brought in on time and on budget. Sometimes it's one person, sometimes two or more.

Making movies and TV is an inexact science at best. The only rule is that rules change.

Maybe that's why I like it so much.

Coming soon:  F.U. money

Where are we now?

Still recovering from the positive news of making Travel Day with Canadian tax credits and awaiting any news from the people Rachel contacted who might co-produce with me.  This amounts to the usual fears and apprehension that writers, producers and actors share, maybe directors too. Are the forces going to approve of us, will they like us (in my case, the script), and 100 reasons why they should.

Countered by 101 reasons why they shouldn't.

Rejection, as I've posted before is a daily thing for anyone in the film business, and judged by others, often of less ability.  Actors can get or lose a part just because of how they look, writers can fall prey to envious readers who can't write but who want to punish those who can by giving a bad reader's report.  After all I had 9 original screenplays produced but 24 still on the shelf, all rejected.

There is a lot of envy in this business because so much of it is a lottery. Take the cast of Friends, that hugely successful series from the early 90's.  None of the actors are particularly talented, but for some reason they seemed to click with each other and more importantly, with the audience.  In other words, they won the lottery.  On their own, they're quite unremarkable, as evidenced by their lame efforts at movies.

Joke in LA is "what's the difference between Jennifer Aniston's movies?"

Answer is: "Different titles." 

In the meantime, I studied the tax credit system in Manitoba, where this might be filmed if it all falls together (cup half empty??).  It's not all that difficult as I compared the other provinces incentives.  My main concern is the general lack of good actors in the city, considering that it's relatively small, around 700,000 compared to Los Angeles 10 million. 

And many of those are Canadians who left Canada to be successful here.  And not to belittle Manitoba or any of the other provinces, there simply isn't enough choice in the talent area which means we would have to cast in Toronto and Vancouver.  I remember casting once in Calgary with a Toronto director who privately lamented to me "this is like the Gong Show" relating to a now-defunct game show of the 70's.

And that's not to say LA has all great actors, just more of a choice of the good ones.  Of course, some Canadians will label me as betraying Canadian talent, but the truth is, most of the best Canadian actors are in L.A.  Michael J. Fox once said that in Canada he would do crazy things and people would look at him, in Los Angeles they paid him.

There is one exception though, and that is Quebec.

The French-Canadians consistently make good, if not great movies, one even won an Academy award for best foreign film, Barbarians at the Gate, by Denys Arcand who consistently makes good movies.  I've always thought that it's because the French Canadians have a strong identity and culture whereas English Canada struggles to be somewhere in between England and the U.S. 

Nonetheless I still constantly remind my American friends of Canadian actors, as in "Keifer Sutherland is Canadian, so is Michael Cera (Napoleon Dynamite), Ellen Page, William Shatner, Leslie Neilson, Jim Carrey" and dozens others.  Some people think it indicates that general lack of self esteem Canadians seem to ooze, always feeling it necessary to validate ourselves to our big rich cousin America.  It probably is, but we all continue doing it.

And that's not including the hundreds of Canadians that flow to LA during pilot season in early January in hopes of grabbing a part in a series. There's even specific motels that are filled with Canadians, places like the Highland Gardens on Franklin in the heart of Hollywood, where a documentary was made on aspiring actors and the majority staying there were Canadian.

But how will it affect Travel Day?

With the exception of the "star", the leading role of Katherine, we will cast in Canada, it means more expense and of course, travel and accommodation and of course, per diem, expense money given to anyone from out of town,crew can get around $400 a week for meals and anything else they can get for that much money.  And stars can get whatever they negotiate, meaning a lot more than a paltry $400 a week. And remember hotel costs are extra and meals are usually eaten on the set for free.

The great part of filming in LA is that you simply pick up the actor/star at their home, drive them back at the end of the day. No per diems, no hotel expenses, no first class airfares.  All this will come out of the budget and the way the American dollar is sinking (today 93.48 cents Cdn) the Canadian dollar will be worth the same by February. This means that the U.S. investor's money won't be worth that much more and would cause the budget to go lower even as costs for airfares, etc. remains the same or higher.

So now I have to do a new budget to reflect the exchange rates. That's at least 2 days of work. All for nothing of course.  We don't make money until the money is there.  All I am doing now and for the last 3 months is gratis, free.  Working a good 8 hours a day in the hopes we get the money. Same as Shirley. 

As with many things, a new opportunity presents a few more hitches that mean re-adjusting the budget and the original vision. There are 2 schools here, it can't be done right if it's not what you originally set out to do, meaning location, actors you wanted, etc.

Or you roll your sleeves up and make it work so that you still make the movie you wanted to do.

If  it all works out. Notice a similar theme you hear from me?  

And I'm optimistic.



(Next: The sad state of the film industry)