ALFREDO DE VILLA (director-co-writer, Adrift in Manhattan)

One of the biggest risks I took while making Adrift in Manhattan came from the initial conceptualization of the film. From its initial stages, I set a challenge to my writing partner Nat and myself: to write a movie following the rhythm of daily life without imposing any outside strictures and structures. While this may sound heady, it’s actually quite simple. I set out three characters around whom conflict developed strictly through the exploration of their lives. Any plot devices would stand secondary to their needs.

Sometimes this basic rule took me to confronting my deepest fears, even to the extent of not knowing I had even touched upon them. We delved into incest, loss, punishment, guilt, grief and falling in love when you least expect it. Normally, when you reach a point in the film that just scares you, you make a million excuses and happily abandon it. But on this film I just plugged along, following my instinct.

 From there on, the biggest risk through preproduction, production and post was just to keep the initial intent honest. It’s like flirting with someone. You remember your first impressions — those that excite and entice you. The rest is secondary.

Making this movie was a process of stripping myself bare of the unessential. What remains are pieces of something that hopefully means something. But I have no idea what that is.... Nor do I ever intend to find out.

SARAH POLLEY (writer-director, Away From Her)

The greatest risk for me was taking on the direction of icons on my first film. The nerve it took to give direction to Julie Christie and Olympia Dukakis was only mustered up with the help of the general insanity that comes with insomnia and working in the middle of a -35 degree Canadian winter.

CHERIE NOWLAN (director, Clubland)

When writers write rain (try saying that quickly) into a film, my heart sinks. I’ve never been convinced of the added emotional or dramatic value of fake rain to a scene, especially when I’m up against a budget that allows for one F/X person, two handheld hoses and a couple of buckets. The English do good rain (e.g. Pride and Prejudice and Four Weddings and a Funeral), but I put that down to bountiful, natural rainfall year round. As opposed to Sydney, where we face severe water restrictions every year due to Australia’s worst drought on record.

We shot Clubland through a very hot 2006 Sydney summer, so I took the risk of disappointing the writer and my good friend Keith Thompson and cut his references to rain. Sure enough, a film shoot in Sydney is bound to threaten the worst drought on record. In fact, film shoots could help fight the war against climate change. But luckily for me, it was all good weather karma. When it added value to a shot, it seemed to rain on cue. We captured some pretty Michael Bay–like wet-down driving shots and the day-for-night shoots were blessed with afternoon storms that cooled the cast and crew down. These storms also delivered me a perfect day-for-night transition into the third act of the film. As night fell in a series of lap dissolves, showers distributed perfect rain throughout the shot, clearing into a dry evening with house lights ablaze.

The moral of the story is you don’t have to unnecessarily complicate a scene or a shoot to tell your story well. Make good and brave decisions, and fate will take care of you and your film.

ULI GAULKE (director-co-writer, Comrades in Dreams)

My son Bruno was born in February 2004. I had to go on a research trip to India a short time afterwards, which lasted three weeks, and my wife had a nervous breakdown. I came back home for a couple of weeks, and she went back to work, three days a week. Bruno was just two months old. I tried to force some milk into him, which he kept on spitting straight back out again. Finally I succeeded by putting my little finger in his mouth and letting the milk run in after it. Then I had to go to America on research and a short time after that to North Korea. When I got back home, I said to him, “Bruno, Daddy’s here.” He turned away and started to cry. I decided to take a break in order to really get to know him again. He slowly began to realise just who I might be. Then I went off to Burkina Faso and was gone for two weeks again. On arriving back in Berlin at the airport, my wife was standing there with Bruno in her arms. He was excited, joyful even, and immediately pointed to the man standing next to me and said “Papa!” I lost count of the number of times he left me out in the cold, especially when I went away for a long time, but today this all seems like a long time ago. He now tells me on a regular basis when I should shave, that I should change my trousers because they’re dirty and that I should bring Mummy a cup of coffee in bed on time. He’s set to get a little brother or sister in May, and then I’ll try to shoot a film on our doorstep for a change.

JUSTIN LIN (director-co-writer, Finishing The Game)

Making independent films are always a huge risk -— that’s the price of having full control. In the case of Finishing The Game, it was making a ’70s film on a shoestring budget. Because it’s a period piece, elements like location, wardrobe, props, and hair would now be in the forefront. No longer could we run and gun and steal shots. Everything needed to be period. If we have a crowd scene, everyone and everything has to be period. I knew going in preproduction that there’s no way in hell we could make the film for the budget, and we only had two choices — figure it out or don’t make the film.

My first challenge was to go through the script and use the limitations to my advantage. I broke down the dramatic beats of every scene and thought about how to use elements like framing, lighting, editing, camera movement, lens choice, etc. to help bring out the essence of that particular beat. The exercise allowed me to know and communicate what needed to be achieved to the creative team, allowing us to all be on the same page and be economical.

Then it was all about relationships. I’ve been fortunate to have been able to experience being a filmmaker in both the independent and studio worlds and to have made some great friends. This allowed me the opportunity to approach them and ask for help. This process I think has to be genuine and made me articulate why I had to make this film. The only reason I would approach them is if I was passionate about what I was doing and had no other options. And everyone stepped up and helped us.

SHIMON DOTAN (director, Hot House)

In making Hot House, I risked becoming the mouthpiece of Hamas and Fatah.

Sitting in a locked cell in a maximum security prison with prisoners serving multiple life sentences for killing scores of Israelis is unsettling. In the first several days of shooting, I was preoccupied with the physical risk, be it rational or not, that my crew and I faced in being in such close quarters with people who had committed terrorist acts. I soon realized, however, that the element of risk at hand was not physical. When I adopted their view of themselves as prisoners-of-war, and not as imprisoned terrorists/criminals, the risk of my becoming their mouthpiece became clearer to me.

Yet I could not escape my conviction that if there were a military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we would have reached it by now. The only solution must be some alternative to military action. And the starting point for that is by listening to the other side. We all talk about the crimes one side commits against the other, but to turn a deaf ear to the “Other” would itself be a crime.

ZACK GODSHALL (director-co-writer, Low and Behold)

There were crumbling homes filled with black mold, non-actors from all walks of life, and about 60 locations to organize down into 25 days. But in making Low and Behold in hurricane ravaged New Orleans, the greatest risk I encountered as a director was faith-based. Barlow Jacobs (co-writer-producer-actor) and I knew we wanted to make a film that would somehow convey the essence, or spirit, of the post-Katrina New Orleans environment.  We wrote a script that we knew we would elaborate upon, deviate from, and scratch out altogether. We didn’t know how it would all work. We just had faith in our idea. And this was the biggest risk for me — diving headlong into a project that I deeply cared for without knowing exactly where we would end up. Here we were shooting improvisations, interviews, comedic scenes, dramatic scenes, and lots and lots of scenery, often letting Daryn DeLuco, our cameraman, run wild.  And for some insane reason I held faithfully to the idea that these diverse elements would fit together and be of a piece — a story within a mosaic patchwork of a people and a place.

Before I ever made a film, I was a storyteller.  So my inclination is to begin with a strong, unbreakable story.  But there is another kind of storytelling.  It’s one based in evolution and spontaneity.  It’s reactive and not pre-determined.  One shouldn’t think it has to be risky to collaborate with all that the world offers. But for me it was. Perhaps next time around it won’t be a risk but a revel.

AMIR BAR-LEV (director, My Kid Could Paint That)

My Kid Could Paint That is a feature documentary about Marla Olmstead, a four-year-old girl who sold over $300,000 worth of abstract paintings and achieved international notoriety. To me, Marla’s popularity raised interesting questions about the meaning of art and the making of celebrity. But five months into production of the film, a bombshell dropped: Marla’s father, himself an amateur painter, was accused of secretly authoring the paintings. Overnight, the press and public turned against the Olmsteads, and they came to believe that my documentary would help them exonerate themselves.

The riskiest part of my filmmaking process was in adapting this film to this brand-new development. The fascinating thing for me was that we were still, in essence, asking the same questions and exploring the same issues as before this potential scandal. Only now these questions suddenly had-real world consequences, with fraud and exploitation, and a family’s reputation, hanging in the balance. Ultimately these questions led the film to a place that was vulnerable, not just to Marla’s parents but to me, the filmmaker, too, as I tried to submit myself to the same scrutiny that I was submitting my subjects to. At the height of the craziness of making My Kid Could Paint That, I had a conversation with Barbara Kopple, and she gave me some sage advice: “Don’t box your film with preconceived notions. Just let it take you where it’s going to take you.” I’ve come to realize that this type of filmmaking not only yields a better film (and many sleepless nights), but it is also downright exhilarating.

JOHN AUGUST (writer-director, THE NINES)

My film The Nines was an ambitious movie by almost every metric: its self-referencing narrative, its breakneck schedule, its demanding roles. We faced freak rains, killer bees and rattlesnakes. But one of the biggest risks I took was pissing off my neighbors.

I wrote the film intending to shoot a large portion of it at my house — 12 days out of a 22-day schedule. Because of its big, East Coasty houses, my neighborhood gets a lot of filming, and with that, a lot of angry neighbors who’ve grown weary of those giant white trucks parked on the street. So I decided to knock on every door and humbly explain how I was hoping to make this tiny little movie, which might someday get into Sundance, and would they mind terribly? I wanted to give a face to a faceless production company, so when they got the “Notice of Filming” door hanger, they’d remember that it was that nice boy down the street and not another Target commercial.

I promised my neighbors there wouldn’t be any big white trucks, which was almost true. We loaded all the equipment into the garage and ran catering out of my neighbor Pearl’s back yard. But at almost any moment, one of my neighbors could have complained, and the city-mandated Site Monitor could have shut us down. But it was more than that — this was my home. This is where I hoped to live for the next 10 years or so. By shooting a movie there, I was risking the eternal enmity of my neighbors. But moviemaking is all about figuring out what risks you’re willing to ignore.

PETR LOM (director, On A Tightrope)

What was the biggest risk I took? Making the film.

My film is called On a Tightrope. It is a film about the Uighurs, the Muslim minority, numbering eight million, in the Xinjiang province in far northwestern China.

Xinjiang is another Tibet. It was independent until Chinese unification in 1949. The Chinese want to keep it this way, and so 10,000 Uighurs are political prisoners today, and there is an equal number of secret police in Xinjiang to keep the Uighurs under control. The Chinese don’t want filmmakers here. To give you an idea: PBS sent a film crew out two years ago to make a clandestine film. Their correspondent was deported, and the interviewees disappeared.

I realized that I’d have to make my film with official Chinese permission, and I had better pick a seemingly innocuous subject that the authorities would approve. So I picked tightrope walking (which happens to be an old Uighur tradition). Through this subject I was still able to tell a little bit about the daily reality of the Uighurs, particularly about the state-sponsored religious oppression they face.

Filmmaking has taught me a lot about risk taking, and how taking the first risk, the first step, is the hardest of all. But after that, with practice, from initial baby steps, taking risks becomes a little bit easier. This is my second film. I started making films only three years ago. I was terrified when I started. And, it seemed for good reason. What I’d heard about my plans to make documentary films for a living was not encouraging: you’re too old (I was 35); you’ve never been to film school (I hadn’t been); you can’t make a living making documentaries; don’t quit your day job (I was a university professor). But I did. I quit my day job, and am making a living now as a full-time filmmaker, so far, just fine.

Before I started making films, I never really followed my heart. I didn’t really know how to listen to my heart properly, and I also lacked the courage to do so. Now I’ve learned that in the end, to my surprise, following your heart is not all that hard. It requires a bit of courage (not that much, really, in the end) and just a lot of persistence. So to anyone out there who is at the starting line of their film career, or anyone who is at a crossroads, and wondering if they might be able to make a go of it as a filmmaker, my advice is simply this: DO IT. Live your dreams!

JESSICA YU (writer-director, Protagonist)

Ah, this is an easy one. With Protagonist, the biggest risk by far was to feature wooden puppets speaking ancient Greek. It sounds crazy even typing it now. “Ix-nay on the uppets-pay,” I can hear our sales team hissing. With that single phrase I know I may have flung our film out to the furthest reaches of esoterica in the minds of most, but I believe (perversely, perhaps) that it was this creative decision that makes the actual experience of watching the film so accessible. The idea behind Protagonist was to tell the stories of four very different men whose lives mirror a certain kind of Greek drama. The characters — a German terrorist, an ex-gay evangelist, a bank robber, and a martial arts fanatic — seem to have little in common, but as the film weaves their stories together we start to see how they have lived the same dramatic arc. I struggled with the question of how to tie the men’s stories and themes of Euripides’ plays together until I fixated upon the masks that actors wore in originally presenting those plays. If the film could incorporate a common element in depicting both the scenes from our characters’ pasts and the Greek drama, it could underscore the thematic commonalities and create a stronger, unified narrative. This film could not be a lofty exercise — it had to tell a good story. Hence the coolest Greek-mask-wearin’ puppets you’ve ever seen. And they make it work.

ANDREW WAGNER (director-co-writer, Starting Out in the Evening)

The biggest risk I took in making Starting Out in the Evening was to direct it from the seat of truth. (This seat was not on the set, and directing from it obliged me to do no sitting at all). I recognize the seeming loftiness in this statement, but I mean to admit a feeling very much subject to the laws of gravity. What I mean is that I made Starting Out in the Evening from the truth of who I am. This felt like a risk because Who I Am does not always feel like enough. I devoted a solid decade seeking the elusive Unlimited in my work in response in part to the much less obscure limitations I feel in myself. This compensation filled a closet or two with 400-page screenplays — had I been a novelist I would have called myself prodigiously afflicted, but because I am a filmmaker I had to call myself a pizza delivery man, Little League umpire and public school teacher; a slurping quicksand of an existence I had to pull myself from by persuading my mother and father to star in my first feature — talk about instant liberation from the quest of the artistic infinite. Well, even if making a film as Who I Am felt like risk-taking, what choice did I have? I couldn’t have made it as someone else. That’s not entirely true. I could have attempted to make it as the Director Who Shows Up With All the Answers. Having to shoot 100 pages in 18 days certainly ignited in me a self-preservation instinct that nudged me (a sharp-elbowed nudge) to presolve every creative enigma I could forecast. Huddling in the most intimate work space with Frank Langella, Lili Taylor, Lauren Ambrose and Adrian Lester — among the most gifted actors of their generations — only intensified this impulse to be all-knowing. Internally, at least, I resisted this. I boxed up my cliff notes. I let the battery drain on my desire for mastery. I emptied my mind. I came as I am. Because I needed to serve something more critical than my self-preservation and far more beautiful than an ornery scrap of ego concerned with making a deep impression — I needed to serve the emotional and behavioral integrity of the actors. In Starting Out in the Evening, Frank Langella plays Leonard Schiller, a novelist of faded repute who in the evening of his life has learned to starve his hope for reimbursement from the ephemeral world. And then Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose) enters his life. A graduate student blazing a path toward the stage of her aspirations, Heather is writing her thesis on Leonard’s out-of-print novels, and their involvement reawakens his longing for artistic recognition and romantic love. This turn in her father triggers Ariel Schiller (Lili Taylor)’s protective gene, a response which threatens to delay her own individuation. It’s a story born out of the theme that life is not designed for our comfort or safety but for our struggle, for in struggle there is growth. Any success we hoped to have in penetrating this theme was reliant upon the supple and authentic transformation of the characters, and this condition called for a grade of truthfulness from Frank, Lili, Lauren and Adrian that could not be anticipated; a nakedness of being that could be true only once, in the moment of doing. Their common goal was an egoless simplicity that asked them to forget what they knew about their characters, to become preconscious of their character’s motives so they could exist in a scene without knowing what would come next, in the shades of gray that hold a mirror up to our own lives. Frank described the experience as leaping into the void. 
It’s one thing to trust in Frank Langella’s capacity to exist un-tethered to preconception in the truth of the moment and bank on Lili Taylor’s ability to be unbearably real; that came easily. It was another thing to find myself as the agent of all this tenderness. I understood that I could miss the innermost quality of it if I didn’t direct the film in the present moment, if I didn’t unmask myself and leap into the void with them. For me this meant attending to each scene with a beginner’s mind; it meant staying open in the unknown and not retreating to a prepackaged vision of the film; it meant forgetting what I knew about the film and trusting that I knew it on a cellular level, and that out of the tension of the moment a language would come and that it would be enough.

I don’t like risks, but I’ll take them. Following hardcore drug addicts for three years, I ventured into the darkest corners of the city, entering alleys and abandoned buildings I wasn’t sure I’d get out of with my camera or my life. Once, stupidly, while documenting volcanic activity on the Big Island, I had the camera assistant hold on to the back of my pants as I leaned in to get a shot of red-hot lava flow. The intense heat knocked me back and melted the lens shade.

Luckily, these situations are not typical. More common is the everyday challenge of trying to hold on to your integrity while doing everything you can to make a good film. On White Light/Black Rain we interviewed 14 Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors about what they saw and felt on the day of the bombing, and how it forever changed their lives. Once we found the right people, the interviews were relatively easy. Their memories were sharp. Few people had asked them about their experiences, so they were eager to talk. The hard part was the other side of the story, interviewing the American soldiers and scientists who dropped the bomb.

I wanted them to tell their side of the story as directly and honestly as possible. I didn’t want to mislead them. I hate documentaries in which the interviewee squirms in his or her seat, clearly set up by the filmmakers. But I worried about how they would respond to my Japanese name and face. They might assume I was there to make them look bad and refuse to do the interview. But I didn’t want to deceive them by sending an all-white crew, and I also didn’t want to make assurances before the interviews that somebody else wouldn’t have to, such as, “I’m not Japanese, but Japanese American, and my father served in the army fighting the Germans and Italians in World War II.”

So I took a chance, moved ahead, and they all said yes, though one of them clearly stopped himself short every time he was about to say “Jap” and awkwardly switched to “Japanese.” After the interview, I told him about my father, and he suddenly turned friendly. But all of the interviews were terrific. They give the film a different perspective and an added dimension. Though none of them expressed any regrets about their roles in the bombings, they provide authoritative voices against any further use of nuclear weapons. As “Dutch” Van Kirk, the navigator of the Enola Gay, says in the film, “There’s always some guy who says, ‘Let’s nuke Iraq!’ The jerk doesn’t know what he’s talking about. If he did, he wouldn’t say that.”