We just finished watching Megamind, and I noticed that Guillermo del Toro was listed as a creative consultant. Crazy huh? Apparently he was hired to assist with the post-production editing to make the movie more exciting, but I’d like to believe that the Amphibian Man is some distant relative of Minion.

David asked what other movies Guillermo del Toro had directed other than Pan’s Labyrinth and because I have been compiling movie lists for our upcoming movie club (and del Toro was a suggested director) I had just been looking up his filmography. So, I listed off a bunch of his stuff and said “Hellboy. The good Hellboy.”
And David said, “I didn’t know there was more than one.”
“Actually there’s 3.”

So, I ended up looking up the most recent Hellboy with David Harbour to see who the director was; Neil Marshall (and did you know Milla Jovovich was in that movie? No you did not because no one watched that movie because it looked terrible). Looking at Neil Marshall’s directorial filmography, I was kind of surprised they gave him Hellboy. He had mostly directed tv shows, an episode of Westworld, 2 of Game of Thrones, 2 of Constantine, 1 of Hannibal, etc.

That led to a discussion on the subject of how different tv shows are vs movies when it comes to directors. Where a movie usually has one, maybe two directors in special cases (Coen Brothers, Russo Brothers, the Wachowskis, etc.) and tv shows have multiple directors, sometimes a different director for each episode in a season. In shows like Doctor Who, there were a handful of directors who would direct 2-3 episodes in a row, and every now and then have guest director. Other shows like The X-Files, there were a handful of regular directors but they never directed multiple episodes in a row.

With both movie and tv shows, there’s a lot more that goes into directing than showing up and just yelling “ACTION!” Directors are usually involved in pre-production activities like editing a script, planning shoots and prepping cast and crew. Then there’s the actual shooting process, of directing actors and crew, determining if all of the shots are what they want and need and sticking to both time and financial budgets. Then, assisting with the editing in post-production to make sure their vision is what comes out of the can (so to speak).

So, when dealing with a serialized tv show, a single director is busy doing all of the pre and post-production activities when the episodes before and after their episode need to be filmed. It comes down to time constraints. When there are multiple directors, one can be prepping their episode (or a couple of episodes for a small story arc), one can be finishing post-production for theirs, and another can be filming yet another episode. With the multiple directors, it becomes very important that there is someone making sure there is a consistent tone and feel between episodes as well as direction and continuity. This is where a Showrunner comes in.

A Showrunner is a top level executive producer who has control over creative and management direction of a tv show. According to Shane Brennan, the showrunner for NCIS, the moniker was created to identify the producer who actually held ultimate management and creative authority for the program, given the way the honorific ‘executive producer’ was applied to a wider range of roles. There’s also the fact that anyone with any power wanted a producer’s credit, including the leading actors, who often did no more than say the writers’ lines. “It had got to the stage where it was incredibly confusing; there were so many production credits no one knew who was responsible.”

A neat side effect of having so many directors, especially for longer running shows, is that some of the actors get to stretch their directing legs, some stepping into the role for the first time. David Boreanaz directed episodes of Angel and Bones; Jensen Ackles directed episodes of Supernatural; Both David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson directed episodes of X-Files; Laura Linney and Jason Bateman directed episodes of Ozark, Ian Somerhalder directed episodes of Vampire Diaries; and I’m pretty sure the entire cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation has directed at least one episode of the show. Jonathan Frakes had his directorial debut on Next Gen and went on to direct over 100 episodes of dozens of tv shows, 4 tv movies, 3 feature films and a video game.

So, the next time you watch an old episode of show that you think is just better than the others, look up the director. Maybe they directed some other episodes that you may love too.