"Other, far fewer, directors are more like the composer - conceptualizing the piece, scoring it, distributing its musical lines among a range of registers, chords, and instruments"
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Harrison draws a quiet but pointed line through the mythology of directing. Most directors, in the popular imagination, are conductors: charismatic coordinators who interpret existing material and keep a volatile ensemble on tempo. His “other, far fewer” is the tell - an exclusivity claim that flatters a rare breed while demoting the rest to competent management. The sentence is less taxonomy than value judgment.
The composer metaphor shifts authorship upstream. To “conceptualize the piece” isn’t just to stage a script; it’s to decide what kind of work this even is, before anyone steps on set. “Scoring it” pushes film or theater into the register of total design, where mood, pacing, and meaning are engineered the way leitmotifs are engineered in music. The director-as-composer doesn’t merely choose performances; they allocate attention. “Distributing its musical lines” implies a mind that thinks in counterpoint: multiple story threads, tonal registers, visual motifs, and sonic textures arranged so that no single instrument (star actor, dialogue, plot) monopolizes the melody.
Subtext: the director’s highest calling is not fidelity but invention. Harrison is arguing for cinema/theater as authored art, not assembled product. The context feels like an aesthetic debate - auteurism by another name - but with a craft-based rationale. By talking about “registers, chords, and instruments,” he frames directing as orchestration: a discipline where meaning emerges not from isolated “good scenes,” but from the designed harmony and friction between elements across the whole.
The composer metaphor shifts authorship upstream. To “conceptualize the piece” isn’t just to stage a script; it’s to decide what kind of work this even is, before anyone steps on set. “Scoring it” pushes film or theater into the register of total design, where mood, pacing, and meaning are engineered the way leitmotifs are engineered in music. The director-as-composer doesn’t merely choose performances; they allocate attention. “Distributing its musical lines” implies a mind that thinks in counterpoint: multiple story threads, tonal registers, visual motifs, and sonic textures arranged so that no single instrument (star actor, dialogue, plot) monopolizes the melody.
Subtext: the director’s highest calling is not fidelity but invention. Harrison is arguing for cinema/theater as authored art, not assembled product. The context feels like an aesthetic debate - auteurism by another name - but with a craft-based rationale. By talking about “registers, chords, and instruments,” he frames directing as orchestration: a discipline where meaning emerges not from isolated “good scenes,” but from the designed harmony and friction between elements across the whole.
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