Since making his debut in Canadian television back in the early 1990s, Jon Cassar has directed over 200 episodes of TV, ranging from his groundbreaking (and Emmy award-winning) action filmmaking on “24” to the sci-fi comedy of “The Orville” and some of network TV’s most popular procedurals (“Criminal Minds,” “Chicago P.D.”). When he’s not on set, Cassar spends his time sharing what he’s learned from his experience with younger directors, teaching classes geared toward filmmakers just beginning in television who want to learn how to sustain their careers.
One of Cassar’s teaching tools is a list of 31 rules he lives by when directing, a list that he shared on a recent episode of IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast. “I created it for a masterclass I did for the DGC,” Cassar told IndieWire. “It was a group of about 20 directors of varying ages. What they had in common was that they only had directed a handful of episodes, anywhere from 1 to 5. Many of the rules are cryptic and designed to lead me into explaining what they are.”
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Cassar’s first rule of TV directing is one of the most important: See problems before they happen. Cassar says that it’s a simple rule, but vital. “ The number one thing I say to every director is get to the set an hour early, at least,” Cassar said. “If you have to set cars [to appear in your shot], maybe an hour and a half. I’ll come in and set all the cars, so the second we do a blocking the cars are there, you’re not pretending where the cars are going to be. And then everything changes when the actors come back.”
One way Cassar keeps an eye on any potential problems is to make sure he stays on set while the crew is setting up shots. “I don’t go to a trailer,” he said. “I never leave the set. And I’m watching, so now I can see that what I designed has got a little bit of a problem. I can go to the operator right away and say, okay, let’s bring it over a bit. I’m even watching the boom guy, I’m watching the shadows. We rehearse the cues for the lighting [and the blocking], so when we do it the first time we can say we got it and move on.”
Cassar says that staying on set at all times and carefully working with the crew right up until the moment the actors arrive on set is a major time saver. “I’m not the kind of director that needs five or six takes before I know what the shot is,” he said. “I virtually rehearse it so that when the actors come in we can rehearse it once and roll. Sometimes we don’t even rehearse it, we just go.” That leads to another of Cassar’s rules: Go fast all day.
When he was a camera operator, Cassar noticed that some directors would take too much time at the beginning of the day, when it seemed like they had all the time in the world, and then get into trouble later when there wasn’t enough time left to get their coverage. “I come out of the gate moving fast,” Cassar said. “That way all my scenes have the same amount of coverage. I’m not giving up on one because I took too long on another one. They have all the coverage I want and I like a lot of coverage, because that gives you a lot in post.”
Wanting a lot of coverage doesn’t mean wasting time on unnecessary shots, however — one of Cassar’s other rules is to know when to quit. “Know when to move on,” he said. “I never look at my watch, ever.” Cassar learned early in his career that it was a mistake to work from a preconceived timeline and keep shooting a scene because the timeline said he had the time — even though he really had everything he needed. “I said, ‘Okay, great. Let’s get another shot over there. Sure enough, when I needed that hour at the end of the day I didn’t have it.”
To hear all 31 of Jon Cassar‘s rules for TV directors and make sure you don’t miss a single episode of Filmmaker Toolkit, subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.
