Directing Modern Family
Working at a breakneck pace and with creative solutions, directors have made the everyday humor and documentary style of
Modern Family seem like real life—only funnier.
Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky
Berlinger and Sinofsky’s trilogy followed the trial, conviction, and ultimate freeing of the West Memphis Three for 17 years. It’s a classic story of how talent, perseverance, and the power of film can change lives.
Millicent Shelton
As an active episodic TV director going from show to show, Millicent Shelton has a sometimes crazy schedule. She wouldn’t have it any other way.
Blue Bloods
With hundreds of extras, elaborate stunts, and numerous locations, the directorial team on the cop show
Blue Bloods has plenty to think about. Making sure the subway is running on time is the easy part.
Zhang Yimou
Once forbidden to travel outside his homeland, acclaimed director Zhang Yimou was recently in the U.S. to talk about his latest international epic. Does that mean a thawing in cinematic relations with China? Maybe. Maybe not.
Mitch Singer
As chief digital strategy officer for Sony Pictures and leader of an industry-wide digital consortium, Mitch Singer talks about how the UltraViolet cloud could revolutionize home entertainment.
Christopher Nolan
Christopher Nolan prefers film to digital, shoots with one camera, and doesn’t believe in 3-D. The director who resurrected
Batman, made time go backward in
Memento, and deconstructed dreams in
Inception speaks his mind.
David Dobkin
David Dobkin, the director of
Wedding Crashers and
The Change-Up shares ten tips learned through trial and error-not divine inspiration.
Bennett Miller
In Stanley Kubrick’s
Barry Lyndon, the story is not the main attraction. Bennett Miller explains how it’s the filmmaker’s restrained style that casts a sublime spell.
Paramount and Universal Classics
As both Paramount and Universal Studios celebrate their centennials this year, it’s a fitting time to remember some of the directors who helped give the studios their identity.
The Right Stuff
Director Philip Kaufman explored American heroism in the early days of the space program in his 1983 feature
The Right Stuff. In this
DGA Quarterly: Shot to Remember sequence, Kaufman reveals how astronaut John Glenn earned his stripes.
Tom McCarthy
Trained as an actor, Tom McCarthy hadn’t planned on becoming a director. But then inspiration struck and after three successful features, including
Win Win, he’s hooked.
Fritz Lang
In a career that spanned the history of cinema from silent to sound, dodged the Nazis, and navigated the studios, Fritz Lang proved himself a master craftsman—and artist—for the ages.
Capturing the Beat
With the emergence of youth culture in the ’50s, rock ’n’ roll became an important element—and sometimes the subject—of features and documentaries. Here are some directors capturing the beat.