INT: So, Ernest, can you talk a little bit about the difference between your directing process for features versus episodic?

ED: Well, I actually… I actually treat every one of my episodes like a mini movie. I know that there are two schools of how to shoot a show. There’s one school where the Director shoots everything he can think of and then leaves it to the Editor to put it together. I think Gordon Willis called it the dump truck school of directing where you just shoot everything you can think of and then it’s put together. But I believe in being very specific. I only shoot what I’m going to use. And, you know, I notice this is something that comes out of features. The Directors that I, whose work I admire, they know what the shot is. They know what they want the shot to say. They know what they want the audience to see at this particular point or what they don’t want the audience to see at this particular point. And to me, that’s the essence of directing, you know? You show the audience what you want them to see when you want them to see it. So, I think that’s why I’ve been more successful in cable and streaming because to me, being very specific in what you shoot, what you show, when you show it, to me that is directing. You’re deciding what the show is, as opposed to shooting every possible permutation of what a show could be and letting somebody else decide what the show ultimately is. So, that’s why I haven’t done network in a long time because they wanted me to do that. They wanted me to just shoot this, shoot that, shoot that, shoot that. I’m never gonna use it. Now, we might figure out a way of using it. Shoot this, shoot this, shoot this. And all the time I’m spending time shooting all this other stuff, I could’ve been spending more time on a more specific shot to make it better and better and better, you know? So, that to me is my approach. I approach it like a movie, because, you know, even though I’m working primarily in television, I still look at movies for inspiration, you know? And that’s what always inspires me.

INT: I remember you used to carry around a suitcase full of DVDs. When you were doing THE WIRE, you had this big suitcase full of DVDs. Can you talk about the importance of, you know, references in your work, in your visual approach to different projects?

ED: Well, yeah, you know, I feel if you’re a filmmaker, you know, you know, you have to study what other people have done. You got to study, you know, you have your influences, you know? I love finding out what different artists are inspired by. I remember one afternoon I was able to catch this great NPR on Sunday afternoon, Paul McCartney talking about what music he listens to when he’s at home. I love hearing that stuff. I love hearing, you know, what kind of music did Prince listen to? You know, what kind of music did Miles Davis listen to? You know, what inspired them, you know? Because I’m inspired. I love listening to Marty Scorsese talking about the movies that inspired him, you know? And I’m always getting inspired by movies. And I really think that if you love your craft, then you have to know the history of it. You got to know, you know, who came before and what they did. I had an opportunity to do a show one time and I hired a couple of really cool Actors, you know, young Actors, young guys, you know. They were like early twenties and I was talking to them. And I was talking about, you know, the relationship. And I just happened to bring up the conversation between, you know, Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger in the back of the taxicab in ON THE WATERFRONT. And I said, "Yeah, you know it’s like that scene in ON THE WATERFRONT." And they were like, "What’s that?" "ON THE WATERFRONT, you know, the movie with Marlon Brando. You know, Marlon Brando." They said, "Oh, yeah, I heard of him, but I don’t know anything about…" I said, "You’re an Actor and you don’t know anything about Marlon Brando? Are you fucking kidding me? How can you not know what the other people in your art have done? You know, what are you basing what you’re doing on? Where do you get your inspiration, you know?" And I find that, you know, the jobs that I just finished. Well, something that we did, something that my wife and I started doing, we started having movie nights, where we would invite young Writers, you know, young up and coming Filmmakers, young Actors. We’d invite them over, you know, make some pizza, serve some pizza and show a couple of movies, you know, and you know, that they had not seen. And we did that when we were just in South Africa, did the same thing, turning these young Actors on to films that they had not seen. You know, Actors that they didn’t know anything about, that blew them away. And, you know, I think that, you know, you just have to know your history. You just got to, you know, you got to know that because what else are you gonna base your work on?

INT: Can you talk a little bit about your rehearsal process with Actors in movies and in television, if the process is the same or different? Just how you like to do that.

ED: Well, I don’t always have a chance to rehearse. But when I do, I like to get together with the Actors, read the lines, discuss what the emotional arc is, the ins and outs of the different scenes. And I just wanna get an idea of where we’re gonna go because I don’t wanna find it in rehearsal. My personal thing is I think sometimes if you find it in rehearsal, by the time you get it in front of the camera, it might have grown old, you know? I think there’s something really exciting about finding it on set. Getting the Actors to the point knowing where you got to get to and then just stop, and say okay, let’s not find it now, let’s find it on set. You know, let’s have that moment, you know? It creates an interesting tension there, you know? And one thing that I had to learn, you know, was to always tell the Actor how I felt about what they were doing, and also to tell Actors that you trust them. If you hire somebody for a role, it’s because you trust that they know. You’ve seen something in their audition that shows you they know who that character is. And so, you trust them to become that character, you know? And that’s something that I think a lot of Actors maybe don’t get. Maybe they don’t get a lot of reinforcement from their Directors telling them how much I trust you. I trust you. That’s why I hired you, you know? I hired you to do a job, you know? I can’t tell you how to do your job. I hired you because I saw that, you know, and I’m trusting you and I’m giving you the space to create that character. And that’s another thing, you know.

ED: You know, I took like one semester of acting at NYU Film School, you know. And I’m always amazed at the choices that Actors make because they’re most of the time things I would never even think of. And that’s one of the things I love about this job is that, you know, you get an Actor who knows their character, knows how to bring that role to life and as the first audience, you’re surprised. I love that, you know? I love just being surprised, you know, at seeing… Sometimes, you know, just that little surprise, I’ll say, "Okay, I love that. Let’s try a little bit of that with this." You know, it’s nice when you don’t have to, when directing, all you got to do is maybe give a little nudge here and there, whisper, you know, one word in the ear or something like that. And for me on set, that’s a very private moment between that particular Actor or Actress. You know, if there’s one little thing that I wanna feel, maybe sometimes it’s just a whisper in the ear, you know. So, you know, when I do rehearsals, I just try and stay away from finding it. I just got through shooting in Cape Town. And basically, what I do whenever I can, I have the Actors come over to my place. We serve food, you know. My wife cooks, you know. We’ll sit down. We’ll go through the script page by page. We’ll have, you know, page turner and discuss each and every move, you know. Where do you think you wanna go here? What are we gonna do? Let’s try this. Well, we’re gonna try a little bit of that, you know. What if I do this or do that? Okay, I don’t know, let’s try them both on set. It was a great Cast because the two leads are playing non-humans. They’re playing androids who are programmed to raise human children in an alien environment. And as they are doing this and becoming attached to the children, humanity is starting to kind of like sneak in. And so, you know, we were always trying to find that moment, well, how human am I, you know, at this point? You know, or does it come and go? You know, so, you know, it’s interesting. And you know, to find Actors who are willing to go there, you know, to just to try something entirely different is really cool. But the first thing I wanted them to do was to feel very relaxed. I didn’t want our first day to be on set. I wanted to establish a family kind of a situation, you know, where we knew each other. We had the chance to hang out, discuss the role, share some pizza, eat some food, chicken wings, you know, a little bit of wine and stuff. And then we get on the set and what we talked about, okay, now let’s find it, you know. So, to me, I think that’s one of the primary jobs as a Director is to make the Actor feel comfortable enough to explore, you know. Let them know that you trust them to explore in ways that you think what’s gonna make the show work. But I think showing that you trust them is really important. [INT: That is amazing. That was exactly what I was gonna ask you, what you thought was the primary role of the Director. So, perfect.]

INT: Can you talk about your transition into directing episodic? When did you make that move? Why did you make that move and, you know, not from a standpoint of your visual approach, but just, you know, what is different in episodic as opposed to features?

ED: I started making my move into episodic on THE WIRE when I did the penultimate episode of the second season. And I had seen some of the first season. You know, I didn’t watch it religiously, you know. So, I only knew bits and pieces of it, but, you know, I just loved the acting that I saw. I loved the characters. I loved the look and feel of the show, the grittiness of it. And, you know, it’s eight days, you know, you got to do it in eight days. And that’s when I guess I got spoiled, because THE WIRE wanted filmmaking. And so, you know, I didn’t have to be like a traffic cop, you know, because there’s that old saying, you know, and I guess maybe that was older television, older classical television. But I could go and then be very specific about this shot, that shot, you know, and what I wanted to do and not have to shoot stuff that I couldn’t see in my cut, you know. So, always, you know, always when shooting, always be cognizant of how, what you cut together. That’s also part of directing. You should know how you want it to cut together and just go from that. So, you know, it got a little dicey when I went on to a network show and they wanted, you know, more footage. Well, they weren’t looking at what I was shooting but they were counting how many setups I got. It was basically judging my work on how many setups I got in a day. So, you know, without looking at… sometimes I like to stage a nice moving master in-depth where it’s out of that one I’m getting like several different shots, you know, moving, shifting compositions, you know? I love a good moving master which where it’s always mutating, going from here to there, foregrounds, backgrounds, changing and stuff like that. And you know, when you do that, it counts as like one setup, but, you know, but maybe you’ve got, you know, four, five different setups in that one shot. You know, I just love that great story about Orson Welles’ first day shooting on TOUCH OF EVIL. How he had this scene, he had to do it, they gave him two days to do it. And the studio was very worried about him. You know, can he pull it off? Can he do it, you know? We heard stories about, you know, how unreliable he is. And sure enough, he spent all day rehearsing, all day rehearsing, all day rehearsing. Camera did not start turning until around 3:30, 4:00 in the afternoon. But he turned it into one long moving shot, shifting compositions, beautiful stuff, got the whole two days of work done in one take in a one take thing. He was already ahead of schedule, you know? And that to me is filmmaking, you know. You really make that that work, you know?

INT: You’ve done three shows with David Simon now, right? [ED: Yeah, I did THE WIRE, and TREME, and one episode of THE DEUCE.] Can you talk about that working relationship? What is the collaboration like with the head Writer in television space?

ED: Well, you know, it’s just great writing, man, you know. It’s great getting a script that just inspires you, you know, where you have great dynamics between characters, where you don’t know where it’s gonna go, where you see there’s some interesting ways of telling the story visually. And you know, especially if the Producers are gonna back you up on that, you know. You know, I remember doing a TV show that really rubbed me the wrong way, but it’s like you had to have overs, you know, for persons talking to five different people, you had to have boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom for each and every head turn, you know. The Producer wanted to see two eyes on everything. It was no going like this and talking to somebody over there. No, you didn’t do a profile. To me, that’s, you know, that’s when filmmaking becomes more like accounting, you know, because it’s just covering the bases. But it doesn’t really add anything necessarily. You know, because body language has a lot to play into it. And I remember I did a scene in THE WIRE where a character finds out that a friend of his got murdered, you know, got killed. And he’s talking to somebody, he’s in a truck, in an SUV. And I’m on his back. And it drives away and I just held on his back because his body language told me everything. And I remember Nina coming up to me and saying, "You gonna shoot? Aren’t you gonna come out front?" I said, "No, Nina [Nina K. Noble], look at that." His body’s telling us everything, you know. Then she’s, "Okay, do me a favor, shoot close up." I said, "Let me…" She said, "Shoot the closeup." So, I shot the closeup. But I didn't put it in my cut. And then they honored my cut. When I turned in my cut, they honored my cut because they saw what I saw, you know, just being on his back, you know, and you just see the despair in his body posture, you know. So, you know that was honoring, you know, my vision of that, which was a great thing about that show. You know, the problem is sometimes if you... and that was my fear. Sometimes if you give Producers too much, they'll use it. [INT: Yep.] You know, you've been there. [INT: Oh, recently.] Yeah, I mean.

ED: I remember one time I had done an episode of DEXTER. And I had already been doing the show for a couple of seasons, so I had a good relationship with the Cast and the Crew. And, you know, as the Director, sometimes if I can get the Crew out early, you know, like in a studio, get them out early, then I'll be on their good side because I know there's gonna be days when I can't get them out early where I'm gonna have to like really work them and go over, you know, into rough situations. So, this was a day and actually it was a new producing regime, and we were shooting in the studio in the police station set, so it was a set everybody knew. So, I said okay. We got in, we got out. You know, it was a good day’s work. We got out early, we left early. So, I came in the next morning and the Producer comes up to me and he says, "Man, you're gonna get some shit today." I said, "What do you mean?" He says, "Listen, man," he said, "This new regime," he said, "They didn't look at your dailies, but they counted your setups. They didn't think you gave them enough setups." I said, "But did they look at the coverage? Did they...?" He said, "They didn't look at anything. They just counted the dailies." He said, "They just counted the setups." I said, "Aw, man." And sure enough, they came and they complained because they wanted to be able to rewrite everything if they wanted to. And the previous regime prevented that from happening. And so I said okay, they want... I got... you know, they want stuff, I'll give them some setups you know. So, that... at the end of that day, I think I did like 98 setups or something like that. I was putting the camera in places I would never even use. You know, it was ridiculous. And I was just, you know, overcovering everything. And then there was one night we were shooting the scene in an alleyway where Dexter is really giving some justice to this guy who has been abusing his daughter and he, you know, he stomps him. You know, basically he's threatening him. And he stomps him on the ground and basically the guy's on his hands and knees and I had this angle over his shoulder. We see the foot come up, so you don't... you know, so you're looking at the foot and the body is there, so you don't actually see the distance between the foot and the body because it's looking straight down at the foot. And I shot it like that. Then the next angle was gonna be the guy coming into frame, you know, in close up, in pain, after being kicked down. And just, you know, I just overlapped it, you know, just, you know, just to, you know, just for Michael [Michael C. Hall] and for the Actor playing the guy who's receiving the kick. Did it, did my cut, I did not shoot this one, you know, because in this one he's not actually connecting. His foot isn't actually connecting. And I thought it worked perfectly over the shoulder, where he goes like that because it looks like he is connecting. So, that was my cut and I let it go. Then I think I was some place shooting something else and my wife called me up and she said, "I saw your DEXTER episode." She said, "Why did you put that shot in there?" I said, "What shot?" She said, "Where he kicks that guy. You can see his foot is like six inches away from his body." I said, "I didn't put that in there." She said, "It's in your cut." I said, "I didn't put it in my cut." She said, "It's in there." And sure enough, it was. They went in there and they put in that extra bit of footage. So, then they asked me to submit it for an Emmy and I said no way. So, you know, you just have to be careful, you know. You know, know how you're gonna cut it and don't overshoot it. Never shoot something you would never use. Only shoot what you need to tell the story, you know? I mean, give yourself some room, I think, sometimes to try different things in the cutting, but don't give meddling Producers too much footage because they will definitely meddle and they can ruin what you were trying to go for. [INT: Word.]

INT: Your collaboration with Production Designers, can you talk a little bit about that process and does your background in architecture inform that process?

ED: Yeah, I love working with Production Designers. Actually it started when I was a Cinematographer. And the films I did with Spike [Spike Lee] working with Wynn Thomas was great. In episodic, you don't have a chance to really work with Production Designers that much because it's pretty much already figured out. But on pilots and on first shows, it can be a lot of fun because you get to decide what the look is. I love working with Designers and, you know, trying to come up with what the look of the show is. It's a patient search. My life mantra is that creation is a patient search. And, you know it is, you know, you're trying to find what it is that's gonna really sing to you in terms of how the show is gonna work and, you know, I spent a lot of time going through Google Images, you know. I collect books of photographs, books of paintings, and movies, you know. And a lot of times, you know, if you're in a movie and you have a good idea what you want the show to look like, you know, then you spend time with the Production Designer and you look at stuff and you explore stuff and get their imagination going. And then they can, you know, maybe take it to the next level, you know.

ED: I just got through doing a show in Cape Town, RAISED BY WOLVES. And it's produced by Ridley Scott and Ridley Scott directed the first two episodes of the first season. So, he designed the look of the first season of the show. When the Producer called me and asked me if I would consider doing the first two episodes of the second season, his hook was like okay, you saw the show, you know it ends on a totally different part of the planet, the tropical zone, which we have not seen yet, so you have a chance to go in and redesign the look of the show and that was like, I was hooked, man. I was hooked because that's what it was, you know. The show became bigger and working with... and I was working with production design for about a good two and a half months before I even went to Cape Town to start another month of preproduction on location. And, you know, we were designing a world, designing a part of the world which is something you don't always get a chance to do, you know. And me being a long time student of science fiction, you know, a chance to design a whole 'nother world is amazing, you know. And working out the visual effects and looking at the different locations and how the visual effects are gonna work with it. And so, I had a chance to, you know, work with a good Production Designer. And, you know, we did a lot of work on Zoom, you know, at first, until I went there because of COVID. But every morning I'd wake up and get new conceptuals, you know, and say what do you think about this, what do you think about that, you know, give them my opinions and stuff, you know. And then it'd go back and come back with new conceptuals that had the ideas that I had, you know, just the detail of trying to bring this world to life. And, you know, that, to me, was great, you know, that was great. That was always what was great about, you know, making a movie because you're creating that world, you know, or doing a pilot because you're creating that world.

ED: That's the one thing that I miss doing episodic is that a lot of times when you're in episodic, that basic world has already been built or designed. But, you know, it didn't even out at that, you know, sometimes you get a chance, you get a great scene and you get a chance to find a great location for it. you know, work with the Production Designer, you know, and just say, "Ah, okay, I love this place, but I wanna go this way. I don't wanna go that way or that way but this is it, against those windows," you know. And, you know, you really also build a real appreciation for the people that work with the Production Designer, painters. The people that paint the set, those are some of the true geniuses of the film business, you know. To age a set, paint it, make it look like that, knowing that when the work is done you got to take it all down and then put it back to looking like brand new again. You know, that is, you know, to me that's the real magic of movies, you know. But now it's on television, which is cool because now television wants to be more like the movies. [INT: Yeah, it does. I mean, that's... yeah. The painters and the scenics are, you know, the ones that make those sets come alive. I really think of the sets as like in a particular location scouting is like another form of casting, you know. And so, for me, it's critical.]

INT: I wanna ask you about, I imagine it could be, maybe it's not. But I imagine it could be intimidating for Cinematographers to work with you given your background as a Cinematographer. What is that collaboration like and, you know, as someone who used to shoot, you know, do you find it challenging to find Cinematographers that you like the way they get down or is it, you know? Tell me about that process for you.

ED: I mean, you know, it's been pretty cool, you know. I mean, in episodic stuff, you know, the DP [Director of Photography] is the guardian of the look of the show. So, you know, by the time I get there, I could've seen how he or she has dealt with different moves and different sets and, you know, in different locations. So, I know what I can ask them, you know, if it fits in with the look of the show. If it's a pilot or if it's something new, like on RAISED BY WOLVES, I was working with a British DP, Mark Patten. And we had a chance to, like I said, redesigned the look of the show. And so being a Ridley Scott show, we had to have atmosphere. So, you know, we had tubes of death on every single exterior location, man, because we always had smoke in the air. I would arrive on set in the morning and the smoke was already there, you know, the tubes of death had been working. You know but we also did a lot of, you know, playing into the sun and everything. And, I mean, the great thing about it is that I know their job, I can speak their language, I can get pretty exact with them, you know, about some things. And I found it that most DPs appreciate that, you know, that I've worked with, you know. Because I guess sometimes they work with a lot of Directors that don't know what they want, you know? But, you know, I can be very specific with them and line up the shot and, you know, I do my own storyboards and I share those with them, so they know how I'm gonna approach it. You know, how I'm gonna approach shooting it so they can, you know, and we can talk about lighting. We can talk about, you know, where the light's gonna come from. We can talk about if we're gonna have atmosphere. What kind of atmosphere? Is it gonna be smoke? Is it gonna be visible smoke or is it just gonna be atmospheric smoke or is it gonna be seeds in the air, you know, or is it gonna be snow, you know? You know, we can talk about all that different types of stuff. You know, I'll always be cognizant of trying to use scenes playing back light as much as possible, you know, because it makes their job easier and it makes controlling the image easier. So, you know, so I can always do that, you know. So, you know, it's been okay. Working with DPs has been okay. [INT: Good.]

INT: And then like when it is a pilot or even on the feature side, you know, what is your process for coming up with the look of the show? You get the script, you have a story, how do you deconstruct it?

ED: Everything starts with the script. It's a story you wanna tell. It's the environment that the story is taking place in. It's the characters. But it has to start with the script. I don’t know, you know, I start reading it and usually for the first time I'm just trying to get through the story. But then when I read it again and I'm starting to put what the, you know, what some of the images are, then I start really thinking, you know, what do I want the film to feel like? Because what it looks like is what it's gonna make it what it feels like. And the style and the story content really kind of like come together pretty much, I think. I'll get an idea of what the light should be like, what the environment should be like, and how the light is gonna play in that environment, and start getting an idea of where we wanna go with color, because I love to use color expressively. I guess sometimes expressionistically, you know. You know, to me, sometimes, you know, different color temperatures just, you know, delineate where a room is or, you know, what a place is. I mean, if you're outside looking in in a window on the inside, the interior is probably gonna be tungsten lighting and outside is daylight. So, when you're in daylight looking into a room inside, it's lit by tungsten light, it's gonna look warmer, it's gonna look... the light inside is gonna be much yellow-er, you know, because that's the way it is. And sometimes I like to see that, you know. Sometimes you want your fluorescents to go green because that's gonna give you the mood that you want for the show, you know. To me, life does not have a neutral color balance. So, I’m always trying to find the color balance of the environment of where we are. And, you know, I love the fact that you can put sodium vapors and fluorescents in a scene and one's gonna kind of RNG, the other's gonna be kind of blue green, you know. But those, that color contrast from two opposite ends of the spectrum are gonna vibrate against each other and make some interesting, you know, visuals. So, it's little things like that, you know, always playing with. You know, to me, that's a city look, you know, sodium vapors as opposed… and tungsten or fluorescents, you know, because you got your lights on the street and you got the lights in stores and the lights inside of apartments or houses or whatever. That's why I got so upset when they started putting LEDs on all the city streets because now they're trying to make the city streets have a neutral color balance. They made everything so boring, you know. So, but you know, you can get some really interesting mood by using colored light in some really interesting ways. And I'm always trying to find ways of using color visually because, you know, I think color is one of the things that you take for granted. We see it all the time, you know, but thinking of it as a tool for drama, you know, it's not something that comes to mind all the time and it's something I'm always trying to find a way of using color dramatically.