Clapperboard? Check. Gaffer tape? Check. Monitor? Errr, is that really another £100 we can spare on the budget, asks your producer. Well, surely it’s an essential. Having a monitor is on the list of all basic items you need to have on a film set. It’s what all the big Hollywood directors use on their shoots. Isn’t it?
No, ‘monitor malarky’ is not the name of a new Doctor Strange film, but rather a phrase coined by Alexander Payne to describe his relationship with this particular filmmaking tool. After having just directed the five-time Oscar nominated film, The Holdovers, and with two Oscars already under his belt for screenwriting, Payne certainly has a few choice words about the use of monitors on set.
‘[Monitors are] relatively new in human and film experience. All the great films that we worshipped were made in that traditional way with the director right next to the lens’, Payne points out. It’s pretty clear that Payne is a fan of the old Hollywood age, with the 70s-set The Holdovers harkening back to films of that era. Even the trailer for The Holdovers, with its soft-spoken narration, is a throwback to films of a time gone by.
The stars of The Holdovers also explore Payne’s distrust of this particular technology. Paul Giamatti, who plays the curmudgeonly Paul Hunham, confesses that the lack of monitors makes being on set ‘a better working environment’. He goes on to detail that, as quickly as monitors have infiltrated film sets, you still ‘can’t really see [the emotion]. [The monitor’s] too small’. As an actor, he says how irksome and deteriorating to the process it actually can be - ‘after several takes, [the director gets] bored. ‘’I’ve seen this before, do it faster’’ - you get that note all the time. You get bored just sitting there’.
The most important thing that Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who plays Mary Lamb, found when working with Payne, is that ‘he’s with us’. Being in the room and not shouting direction through a corridor, via an aide, is a humanising process and encourages a better working relationship. ‘[It’s] the kindest way’, Randolph says. ‘A soft, kind, gentle way. Again, there’s no judgement and for me, it felt like theatre’.
‘You have to direct whispering in their ears. If you’re correcting something, you shouldn’t do that through other people,’ Payne continues. And it’s clear he has a point - both Giamatti and Randoph were nominated for Oscars, following their performances as Hunham and Lamb. The relationship between director and cast is vital. Without this bond and understanding, it is irrelevant how a shot will look, as the performances won’t provide. You look back at your kit list and see the word ‘monitor’ glaring back at you. Sure, directors' monitors can be useful - they can streamline the filmmaking process and help you catch errors early, if used properly. But, as Alexander Payne aptly puts it, ‘maybe we don’t need them’.
