Rabiger Directing: Film Techniques & Aesthetics 4ed Part 1 Checklist Page 1

PART 1: ARTISTIC IDENTITY

These stage by stage reminders should help you along. Derived from their chapters, they
may also reflect pertinent information from other parts of the book. To locate further
information, use either the Part’s table of contents or the index at the back of the book.

Chapter 1 The World of the Director

A. To become a director I’ll need to:
a. Acquire experience of the production processes a director oversees. 
b. Learn most about writing, acting, camerawork, sound, and editing. 
c. Look hard at my abilities and decide which craft (writing, camera,
sound, editing, etc) to adopt professionally as my stepping-stone 
toward eventual directing.
d. Resolve to make lots of short films. 
e. Follow new technology as it appears and decide how it might serve 
my creative interests.
f. Recognize that hard work rather than talent gets a person ahead. 
g. Create differently in subject and style from the herd. 
h. Pace myself for the long haul. 
B. As a director I will need to:
a. Work at becoming a tough-minded leader who can liberate the best 
from my cast and crew.
b. Be ready to function when occasionally unpopular. 
c. Convert ideas into plans to film actual people, places, and things in a 
series of concrete steps.
d. Get interested in, and knowledgeable about, allied art forms. 
e. Develop original, critical ideas about my times—lots of them. 
Professional technique alone won’t mark me out as a significant
director.
C. Consider
a. Using digital media to complete lots of short work, which will be 
eloquent of my competency to direct longer films.
b. Accepting that most film production learning is negative learning, so 
I should finish a project even when I know it isn’t very good.
c. The importance of adapting and improvising when working on a low 
budget (because imagination and hard work make films, not
equipment).
d. Adjusting the script to capitalize on my cast members. 
e. Shooting rehearsals documentary-style so I learn to trust my instincts 
when living action unfolds.
f. Aiming for professional-level results prior to production by investing 
in a careful, experimental period of development.
g. Becoming so fascinated by the creative process that I can let it direct 
me when it needs to.
D. To entertain means:
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a. Giving the audience not just action and information, but mental, 
emotional, and interpretive work to do as well.
b. Provoking questions in the minds of your audience and delaying their 
resolution. This maintains dramatic tension.
c. Making films that activate the mind and heart. 
d. Drawing on myth and archetype for anything you want to be 
powerful.
e. Using screen language that implies rather than displays, so your 
audience can imagine.

Chapter 2 Identifying Your Themes

A. Questions to help you travel inward and develop your ideas:
a. What marks has your life left on you? 
b. What ongoing dialogue are you having with yourself? 
c. What is the unfinished business in your life? (Your next story could, 
in displaced form, use and further this quest.)
d. From making a self-inventory, what authorial role do you see for 
anyone marked by your kind of emotional experience?
e. What major conflicts do you face and which ones perennially interest 
you?
f. What kind of heroes or heroines do you respond to, and what does 
this say about your issues and needs?
g. What constants keep turning up in your dreams? 
h. What visual images remain with you, charged with force and mystery, 
waiting for you to investigate and develop them?
i. What areas of life always fascinate you? 
B. Avoid:
a. Autobiography. Displacing the actual into fiction so you can avoid 
self-absorption and libel suits.
b. Worlds you don’t know—unless you’re willing to do a great deal of 
research.
c. Any personal problem for which you really need a therapist. 
d. Anything or anyone typical. Nobody and nothing really is. 
e. Anything or anyone generalized instead of specific. 
f. Preaching. Louis B. Mayer said, “If you want to send a message, call 
Western Union.”
g. Illustrating what you know. That’s just another disguise for preaching. 
h. Any idea, situation, or character already familiar or clichéd. 
i. Clichés. All ideation begins with clichés, but only hard thinking 
brings something better.
C. Resources to probe:
a. What genres fascinate you? 
b. What themes and preoccupations surface as constants in your 
writing?
c. What kind of characters and themes turn up regularly in the clippings 
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you make from newspapers?

d. Whom do you identify with in history? 
e. Whom do you detest in history? (A nemesis can be important). 
f. What figures from myth or legend seem peculiarly your own, and 
which could you have fun developing in a modern setting?
g. What major characters or situations can you use from your family 
history?
h. What events from your childhood epitomize your growing up? 
i. What constant themes emerge? 

Chapter 3 Dramaturgy Essentials

A. Duality and Conflict:
a. The clash of values or temperaments is the heart of my drama. 
b. Drama which is about people trying to get or do things, needs 
obstacles, difficulties, and unforeseen consequences. Does yours?
c. My characters learn through problem-solving, so conflict is not 
necessarily negative.
d. The core of the main character(s) lies in his or her conflicts and 
“unfinished business.”
e. My characters are credible because each contains some contradictions 
and opposites
B. Microcosm and Macrocosm: 
a. Because truths are reproduced on large and small scales, individuals
in my film may represent a class or type of person
b. An individual’s complex psyche can be split up and represented as a 
group of characters, each representing different dominant traits.
C. Drama, Propaganda, and Dialectics: 
a. Minor characters are usually flat characters rather than round.
b. Without inner conflict, complexity, and ambiguity, major characters 
end up flat too. Which are mine?
c. Characters in folk drama and melodrama usually have one assigned 
characteristic and stand either for good or bad.
d. Cinema audiences are drawn to the ambiguities in their own lives and 
not to other people’s certainties (for which one joins a church).
e. If I must promote an ideology, I will make the opposition strong and 
intelligent.
f. My audience is as intelligent as myself. Better to reflect human 
predicaments than be caught lecturing people on how to live.
g. Duality and ambiguity in my movie invite the audience to make 
judgments. Using one’s judgment is a large part of being entertained.
D. The Difference Between Observer Filmmaking and Storytelling:
a. Most fiction needs a moral purpose in the telling and a moral attitude 
on the part of the teller. This should never be simplistic—even for
young audiences. How does mine rate?
b. A story gains much from the added dimension brought by the critical 
intelligence of its Storyteller. How evolved is mine?
c. Will my Storyteller draw the audience emotionally into the film’s 
Rabiger Directing: Film Techniques & Aesthetics 4ed Part 1 Checklist Page 4

world, and experience what it is like to be someone else?

d. Am I paying more attention to the story, characters, and human 
predicaments than to techniques, which are only the vehicle for
these?