"I'm Never Going to Be a Master at This," According to One Director

Sarah T. Schwab has directed three features, so why does she say she doesn't know anything? When asked this in a recent video from Film Courage, she laughs and points out that she never went to film school.

And who needs it? It's kind of our ethos around here.

Schwab is a writer/director/producer and a member of the playwrights and directors unit at the Actors Studio. She talked with Film Courage about making three features in three years. Life After You is about the fentanyl crisis. A Stage of Twilight is about end-of-life decisions. It premiered at the Woods Hole Film Festival, starred Karen Allen and William Sadler, and won Schwab Best Emerging Director. Crybaby Bridge is a psychological thriller built on American folklore.

Dive into the full conversation below. Then check out what writers and directors can take from her about learning on the job, structure, and working with actors.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Stay a Beginner

If you ever meet someone who says they've got everything about filmmaking figured out, they're lying. This job is too hard and too changeable for anyone to know everything. Every shoot brings a new cast, new locations, and new needs, like stunts on one film and an intimacy coordinator on the next, as Schwab says.

I've never interviewed anyone who says they aren't always learning. That's part of the fun of the whole thing. A single scene can be a challenge, and it's fun to figure out, and it can take days to do so.

"So I guess it's not that I don't know anything," she says. "It's that I'm never going to be like a master at this because it's always a new challenge every time we shoot something."

That attitude helped her on her first film, when a problem on set forced a story change in the moment.

…