We gave directors a day to try things.

Last week we gave directors something they almost never get — time to experiment with nothing riding on it. We ran a directors workshop with Hawk London, and it turned into one of those days that reminds you why rooms like that need to exist.

Directing is learned on the job. You are expected to have opinions about lenses, blocking and performance, and you are expected to have them by ten past nine with a crew stood behind you. Nobody gives you an afternoon to find out what you actually think.

So we booked one.

We got directors, students, actors and cinematographers into the same space and spent the day pulling scenes apart. Blocking performances. Testing coverage. Moving the camera two feet and arguing about whether it changed anything. Sometimes it did.

Nobody was there to get a shot. That is the whole point, and it is harder to arrange than it sounds.

What surprised me was how quickly people stopped performing confidence. On a paid job you protect your authority, because the schedule depends on it. Take the schedule away and directors start asking the questions they have been carrying around for years — about lens choice, about how to talk to a DP, about what a focus puller actually needs from them.

The technical language is the part people underestimate. A director who can name what they want gets it faster, and a crew who understand the intent will offer you something better than you asked for. That vocabulary is not taught anywhere. It gets absorbed on sets you have to already be on.

Which is the circular problem with our industry, and the reason we keep doing this.

Huge thanks to Hawk London for opening the space and backing the idea before it was really an idea. Our DOP Beatriz Delgado Mena and focus puller Alexandra Voikou, who ran the day with enormous patience. George, as ever. And everyone who came down and actually threw themselves into it rather than watching from the back.

We're doing more of these

The format works. A day, a space, some glass, a couple of actors and no deliverable at the end of it. Everything else is optional.

What would you want the next one to cover?