Without tension in your story, your audience will doom scroll while your film plays in the background.
Arthur Anderson – Second Unit Director and Producer for Mission Impossible, Paycheck, and Windtalkers – shares how the films he’s worked on carry tension from the opening scene to the credits.
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Key Points:
1:17 – How did you get started
3:40 – What do you remember about the first set
5:26 – Advice for starting out
8:44 – Transition from feature films to TV
11:09- What it’s like being an action writer
16:02 – Keep a positive focus
16:49 – Second unit directing, what’s involved
20:08 – How much creative leeway do you get
23:04 – Windtalkers production
29:09 – How does your philosophy of life impact your filmmaking
31:55 – Leaving Hollywood
33:58 – What’s your current project
35:14 – Have an intention when you wake up
Full Transcript:
Arthur Anderson: (00:00)
Like on Mission III, J.J. was first unit, Vic Armstrong did all the giant action stuff. Vic would go in. He would do all the giant stunts and stuff, and in the second unit I directed, I was kind of the clean-up guy. So anything the first unit didn’t get, the action unit didn’t get, like there was a car chase on the East Coast I had to go shoot on a bridge … So I went and did the East Coast stuff, and then I would come back to stage, and any inserts or stunts that’d get left over, I was the clean up, second-unit director for that.
Tanya Musgrave: (00:27)
Welcome to season two and the first episode of The Practical Filmmaker, an educational podcast brought to you by the Filmmaker Institute and Sunscreen Film Festival, where industry professionals talk nuts and bolts and the steps they took to find their success today.
Tanya Musgrave: (00:41)
On today’s show, producer-director Arthur Anderson takes us into second-unit directing for action sequences, action writing, and favorite tools of his trade. Find full transcripts and more at thepracticalfilmmaker.com. I’m your host, Tanya Musgrave, and today we have Arthur Anderson, industry multi-tasker, producer, director, AD, in the DGA, and action writer with involvement in films such as Windtalkers, M:i-2 and 3, and televisions’s Pretty Little Liars. Welcome to the show.
Arthur Anderson: (01:10)
Hey. How are you, Tanya?
Tanya Musgrave: (01:12)
Doing great. So how did you get here? What steps did you take to end up being part of so many great projects?
Arthur Anderson: (01:21)
Well, I started off back in Charleston, South Carolina, and when I was in college, the guy who lived next to me worked at a radio station, and he used to do commercials for night clubs. He says “Hey. They want to do some comedy spots. I know you do stand-up comedy. Would you be interested?” So we started doing comedy spots, and ad agencies started coming to us, “Hey. Can you do it for us? Hey. Can you do TV commercials?” We knew nothing about commercials. So we learned the hard way. We did that.
Arthur Anderson: (01:44)
Then my senior year, unfortunately, he was killed on an auto accident, and by the providence of God, my mother called me and said “Hey. There’s a film coming to our home town here. I always know you wanted to do film.” So I called them. I cast a bunch of my actors in the film. The second week that the film was going, both ADs get sick, and they go “Who knows how to run a set?” and I raised my hand. So my second week in the business, I was running a film set-
Tanya Musgrave: (02:07)
Get out.
Arthur Anderson: (02:08)
… and the assistant director on that film took me to New York, and I worked on The Brink’s Job, Willie & Phil. So I got to work with some really top ADs and directors, and then I came out to LA on John Travolta’s film Urban Cowboy. I was a PA all this time. So I came out. I got my days in quickly. I got into the Directors Guild, second AD. Worked my way up through second AD. First AD. The Lassie TV series they brought back in the late ’80s, early ’90s. I ended up writing and directing on that series. I would always get the episodes where we need to save money, “You need to do this fast,” and I knew how to do it fast and quick. Did that.
Arthur Anderson: (02:47)
Then I hooked up with John Woo in ’96 on Face/Off. Did Face/Off. Then did Mission: Impossible 2 with him. I did the uncredited rewrite on that, and I was his AD on that. Then we did Windtalkers because I was doing the uncredited rewrites. So I produced on that, uncredited rewrite, AD’d. Then Paycheck, same deal with that, and then in between that, I worked with other directors like J.J. Abrams on Mission: Impossible III. I co-produced that and directed the East Coast second unit on that. So I’m very fortunate that I’ve worked with really good people that I’ve learned from that have helped me along, and that’s what this business is all about. It’s all about the people you know and the people who help you up the ladder, you know?
Tanya Musgrave: (03:29)
Yeah. Absolutely. What do you remember about that first set where you realized that maybe you had made it to the big leagues, like on Face/Off or Mission: Impossible?
Arthur Anderson: (03:41)
I don’t know if you’d call it making it to big league. They’re really hard work. Action pictures are … There’s a lot of elements, a lot of planning that goes into them, and you’re always surprised when you finished and everything went well, and then you actually go get to sit in the theater and watch it and go “Wow. How did we do that?” because there’s so many elements tied together, so much stuff you shot that gets left on the editing room floor, and there’s crises that happen every day, and so that’s when you appreciate it, when you finally sit in a theater and you’re able to watch and enjoy the movie and you go “Wow. That was really hard work, but this is really a good movie.”
Tanya Musgrave: (04:22)
So that’s kind of when you realized? It was just actually sitting in the theater and watching it?
Arthur Anderson: (04:26)
Right. Yeah.
Tanya Musgrave: (04:26)
Just like “Oh, okay.” So what-
Arthur Anderson: (04:28)
That’s when it kind of hit you. This is real. There’s a lot of movies that get shot that never get screened, you know?
Tanya Musgrave: (04:32)
Yeah. Yeah, because I was talking to a buddy the other day, up-and-coming indie, more of a director kind of thing, where for the first time, he was looking at a distribution option, and he’s just like “How did I get here? How was it that I got here?” and I’m reading this contract, because this is something that we’ve literally only dreamed of, and I’m just like “Man, what is it for the people who …” What is it? What are they thinking on the first day that they’re on set and they’re like “Oh, my word. That’s John Woo over there”? Or is it just like “Oh, yeah. That’s John”? I don’t know. I’ve always been curious about if there was ever a kind of moment where you felt like “Oh. This is where I’ve arrived on a different level.”
Arthur Anderson: (05:14)
You know, I was always so busy working. I really never sat back to think about that. There’s so much to do, and listen, it’s really about … Particularly for people starting off, it’s all about your intention, you know?
Tanya Musgrave: (05:27)
Of course.
Arthur Anderson: (05:27)
You have to have a vision of what you want to end up doing. So if you want to be a producer, a writer, director … So if you want to be a writer, you try to get in to be a PA for writers, like on a TV series or writers room. So it’s all about making your connections. If you want to be a director, there’s a number of ways to do that. You go out, and the great thing now with the 4K cameras and stuff, you can shoot your own short films. Doesn’t cost you a lot of money. You get them into-
Tanya Musgrave: (05:55)
4K phones.
Arthur Anderson: (05:56)
Yeah. You get them into film festivals, and that’s how you get … Then behind that, you want to have something you’ve written or you partner with somebody who has a project that you can then go … When it gets some notoriety, you can go to a studio and you can pitch a project, you know?
Tanya Musgrave: (06:09)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Arthur Anderson: (06:10)
So it’s patience and persistence. You have to be persistent, because listen, my career hasn’t been all just going from one project to the other. It’s been long periods of time where you don’t work. The actors go on strike. The writers go on strike. You’re still having to make mortgage payments. The bills are still coming in. So what I also encourage people starting in the business is have a second stream of income so this isn’t just your only form of income, you know?
Tanya Musgrave: (06:34)
Yeah. Yeah.
Arthur Anderson: (06:35)
I mean, and the great thing about YouTube now, all of us have some special talent, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (06:38)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Arthur Anderson: (06:39)
So any time now I need to know something about how to do anything, I got to YouTube. Somebody’s done it, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (06:44)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Arthur Anderson: (06:44)
They’ve monetized that channel, and there’s people, I mean, who are just doing a homestead channel, “Here’s what we do on the homestead,” and they’re making five grand a day because they’ve got 250,000 viewers. So everybody has a skillset and a talent outside of filmmaking. Particularly when you’re initially starting out, look at having an alternative source of income, because you finish a nine-month show, there might be three months where you’re not going to work. Unless you’ve been saved up money and stuff, you’ve got to still pay bills for three months.
Arthur Anderson: (07:14)
So if you’ve got other skillsets you can do … You can write books on Amazon for free. So if you’re an expert on anything, you can write a book for free. You can publish it as an ebook, get it printed out. You know, I taught my daughter how to do that years ago, and she blew it up into a whole business. So have your intention of what you want to do in the business. Know “I want to be a writer, producer, director,” and sometimes those goals change as you go on, but it’s really about the people you know who help you up.
Arthur Anderson: (07:41)
So I had people who … Terry Donnelly, who was the assistant director who first took me up to work on The Brink’s Job with Billy Friedkin, worked with Paul Mazursky on Willie & Phil, and that’s how I got contacts for other jobs. But you also have to be good at what you do, and I’ve seen so many people on television shows and writers rooms who start off as just the PA. They might have been in college as a writer, gone through the writing courses. They might not have, but they learn from skilled writers, and then they take that, and they learn that, and then they give them a shot. A lot of times it’d be “Okay. You’re going to co-write with this writer. You co-write. All right. Now, here’s your shot. You’re going to write an episode.” Then they get an agent, and they go. So it’s really about being there, being good at what you do, being helpful, and learning, taking instruction, and then capitalizing on that.
Tanya Musgrave: (08:30)
Yeah. Yeah. In doing these podcasts, everyone, writers, directors, ADs, producers … They all seem to have very much a specific lane. So one-hour television dram, feature film, three camera, and I noticed that you kind of made this transition from feature films to television.
Arthur Anderson: (08:50)
Right.
Tanya Musgrave: (08:51)
Talk to me about that pivot point for you.
Arthur Anderson: (08:53)
I wanted to direct. So it’s really hard to get a studio to give you a shot at directing $25 million, $50 million, even a $10 million feature. So I knew my best shot at that was to go into television and to do episodic, and then second-unit … I did second-unit directing, episodic, because I’m an action background, second-unit directing, and then episodes. Then they give me a shot to direct, and because I knew the show and I know how to direct and I’m good at it, I could always get the episode. I could get it done under schedule, and I would usually come near the end of the series, because in the finale, you’re always going to have a big ending. Well, with my skillset, I knew how to get it done under schedule usually every day, and it would save up money for the end, and that was fine by me.
Tanya Musgrave: (09:43)
Nice.
Arthur Anderson: (09:43)
I also became a supervising director. Warner Horizon has a great program for diversity candidates to come through, and Bethany Rooney teaches that, and so they take the people. They take them through all the aspects. They give them scenes. They have to block it. They have to direct it, and then after they’ve gone through … I think it’s an eight-week course. Then they put them on a series. So they came on a series I was working on, and then I would take them through prep, shooting, and post, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (10:14)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Arthur Anderson: (10:15)
Bethany does a great job. I mean, she’s written a book on directing that’s really excellent. I recommend everybody read. Bethany takes her time, and she’s teaching people how to come up through the ranks, and then they’d turn over to me on the set and I would be in prep with them, and it’s great because to take somebody and just throw them into an episodic directing environment with no background is like taking somebody and throwing them in a Cuisinart.
Arthur Anderson: (10:38)
I mean, it’s a machine. You’ve got a schedule. You’ve got to go. You’ve got actors who are trained in the series. They want to come in, get their work done, do a good job, and go home, and it’s a lot of pressure. So Warner Horizon’s done a great job in just setting up that system and training diversity candidates to come through so they can they then go out on other episodic series and they can be successful, and they have. They’ve gone through this program. They get booked all the time on shows.
Tanya Musgrave: (11:07)
Tell me more about being an action writer. What is that exactly, and is it part of a writers room? Or is it at a certain part of the writing process?
Arthur Anderson: (11:15)
The action write has mainly been with John Woo. So what happens is in John’s pictures, action is a character in the movie. It’s the unseen character. So we’ll take a script. We’ll tear all the action out of it, and then we’ll sit down and go through and decide “Okay. We’re going to do a car chase. We’re going to do a car chase like nobody’s ever seen before.” In Mission: Impossible 2, it’s Tom and Thandie on a mountain road and the … So it’s lovemaking with the car going around, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (11:41)
Yeah. Yeah.
Arthur Anderson: (11:42)
So we tear it apart, and then we determine “Okay. What’s the meaning of this action?” because it’s not just … I mean, you’ve seen a lot of movies where it’s just action for action’s sake. It’s just blowing stuff up. John’s a storyteller. So he says “Okay. We’re going to tell a love story with these cars,” and so then you write that action in there. So then over the arc of the film, the characters … You’re going to use action as a barrier to stop them. You’re going to use it to make a transformational arc for their character so they have some achilles heel, that they’re afraid to get into some type of situation, afraid to act, and the action forces their character to change. You’ve got to make a decision. You’ve got to act, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (12:24)
Interesting.
Arthur Anderson: (12:24)
So that’s the part of their transformational arc that changes their character over the course of the film. So when we go through, I break it down on a big board. I use Chris Soth’s method where I break the script down into eight segments, because it’s more manageable than thinking “Oh, act one’s 30 pages. Act two’s this 60-page desert of … Oh, we got to fill out a …” and then there’s act three, “Oh, well, we know what we’ll do at the end of that.” So I break it up into eight sections, and then I go through the story points and the characters, and then I track their arcs of what’s going on, and “Oh, here’s a good place for some action, because this’ll help them change,” or “This’ll stop them. This’ll create a barrier,” right?
Tanya Musgrave: (13:02)
Yeah.
Arthur Anderson: (13:03)
So it’s more manageable to me when you can put it in eight equal chunks of action, and writing is like directing, because if you think about directing, you go from scene to scene. You want to link those scenes together. You want just a seamlessly transition. When I was directing episodic TV, I would sit down. I’d go through the script. I would shot list the whole script, and then I would sit down with the writer, and I just want to make sure that their intention is what that I was going to execute.
Arthur Anderson: (13:33)
So I’d sit down, I’d go through the intent of what I was going to do in those scenes, and then if they say “Oh, well, here’s what I really mean,” I would change that scene. So working with John, we’d do the same thing. I’d say “What’s the intent of this scene? What are the characters doing? Is there something we can do to improve the story to move it forward?” because here’s the secret to any storytelling. If you’re sitting around a campfire telling a story, secret to storytelling is tension, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (13:56)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Arthur Anderson: (13:58)
So it’s hope versus fear. You hope the best thing’s going to happen for the character, that they’re going to overcome these obstacles, but you fear that the obstacles are going to come over like a shark and eat the person and take them away, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (14:10)
Yeah. Yeah.
Arthur Anderson: (14:11)
So over the course of a film or episodic television, you’re building that hope versus fear. You’re keeping tension until the very end when you resolve it and everybody goes “Woo, man,” and you have your little resolution scene there where everybody comes up and high-fives. Okay. That’s great, but that’s it. You want to keep tension. If you’re watching a movie and all of a sudden you’re focused … or TV show, you start looking at your phone and stuff, they’ve lost you because they didn’t keep the tension moving. They didn’t move it scene to scene, and those links between the scenes are so important to keep that momentum going. As a director, you’re moving the person through the story. You’re directing to their attention is what it is, as opposed to a stage play where the actor’s action is directing your attention on the stage, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (14:55)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Arthur Anderson: (14:55)
You’re directing the audience’s attention on where they need to go and what they need to focus on. Listen, the blueprint, the script, is the biggest thing to start with, because I don’t care how good a director you is, you go on an episodic television and you get a bad script, you’re going to be blamed for it. Okay? They’re going to say “Oh, wow.” You read the script, you go “Oh, my god. This is terrible.” When it’s all over and it screens, they’ll say “Oh, this is terrible. I tell you, that was the wrong director for that episode.”
Tanya Musgrave: (15:20)
Oh, no, no.
Arthur Anderson: (15:21)
Directing episode television’s like they give you a really expensive Rolls-Royce, and then they put you on a NASCAR racetrack and they say “Don’t dent our car. Okay? Don’t dent it.” It’s like “Wait a minute. The nature of this game is the bump and grind [inaudible 00:15:36] push all the people out of the way.”
Tanya Musgrave: (15:36)
That’s amazing.
Arthur Anderson: (15:40)
It’s a challenge, but that’s the great thing about it is no two days are every alike in this business. I don’t care what you do. If you’re doing a directed web series, television, AD, big movies and stuff, that’s the great thing about this business. Every day is different, and you’re going to face a challenge, and you can’t let it overcome you. You always have to keep a positive focus, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (16:03)
Yeah.
Arthur Anderson: (16:03)
You have to wake up in the morning, and this applies to life too. You got to wake up with an intention of what your day is going to be like, because if you don’t, you’re going to get steamrolled by somebody else’s pile of garbage that’s going to … You have to look at that and go “Okay. I recognize that, and what am I going to do about it? Okay. How are we going to fix that? Okay. Great.”
Tanya Musgrave: (16:20)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s a good thing that you have a fix-it attitude. Because of the roles that you are in, you are literally the on-set fixer. So that’s great.
Arthur Anderson: (16:28)
Yeah. Sometimes I have to switch my hats around from producer to AD and slap myself and be like “What? What were you thinking when you brought up that idea? It’s going to cost so much money,” and it’s like “Yeah, but it’s going to be really cool.”
Tanya Musgrave: (16:39)
But I mean, that’s really cool though, being able to be involved with so many different aspects of a certain thing, for instance, being able to action write and then actually have a handle in how that is executed and accomplished. You were a second-unit director then on M:i:III and Star Trek, and so for second-unit directing, I get the impression that it can be anywhere from getting pickups to shooting all of the action sequences or specialty type shots.
Arthur Anderson: (17:08)
Yeah. On Mission III, Vic Armstrong … He was the director of the action unit, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (17:12)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Arthur Anderson: (17:12)
So J.J. was first unit. Vic Armstrong did all the giant action stuff. So he would go in, and the bridge sequence and stuff, blow up … Vic would go in. He would do all the giant stunts and stuff, and then we would come back and take the actors and do the same action with them but just insert them in the big sequences that have already been shot.
Tanya Musgrave: (17:33)
The big stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
Arthur Anderson: (17:33)
In the second unit I directed, I was kind of the clean-up guy. So anything the first unit didn’t get, the action unit didn’t get, like there was a car chase on the East Coast I had to go shoot on a bridge … So I went and did the East Coast stuff, and then I would come back to stage, and any inserts or stunts that’d get left over, I was the clean up, second-unit director for that.
Tanya Musgrave: (17:53)
So with the actors? When you say on the bridge, is it like “Okay. We need a shot-“
Arthur Anderson: (17:58)
No. I’m all-
Tanya Musgrave: (17:58)
… like tracking around from back to front, that kind of thing, or what?
Arthur Anderson: (18:03)
When I’m doing second unit, it’s all stunt guys and extras. So it’s the big wide shots of … Well, one of them was the caravan going in with the armored car. It goes into the bridge. I’m doing the helicopter shot of that whole thing going on, and then in Virginia … I don’t know if you’re familiar in Richmond where the railroad bridge is. Tom’s got this car, and he’s going through all the traffic. He goes underneath the bridge, has a near miss with a truck. So I did all the second unit with that part, and then first unit did the part where he was actually in the car driving and swerving and the close-ups and things like that.
Tanya Musgrave: (18:37)
Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha.
Arthur Anderson: (18:38)
On a lot of pictures, it’s just, because you have a release date, and particularly like on Mission III, they wanted to be done by Christmas … I came in since I had done 2. There was a lot of elements had to go on, because we were in three different countries. We were in the US. We’re in China. We’re in Italy, and so there was a visual plates unit that had to go to China to shoot the plates for the Bank of China. It was huge, you know?
Tanya Musgrave: (19:00)
Yeah.
Arthur Anderson: (19:01)
So I had all these on a spreadsheet. There were units all over the place, and to get that done within a hundred days, that’s where you send units out to do stuff in advance. So the actors come in for small … We got done, and I’ll tell you it was one of the few movies I’ve ever done … We came in like a million dollars under budget, and the studio was so happy, but J.J.’s a great director. He knows what he wants. He previs’d all the sequences so then we could chop them up. It all starts with the director, you know?
Tanya Musgrave: (19:26)
Yeah. Yeah.
Arthur Anderson: (19:27)
He had a vision. He previs’d all that so we could chop up, “Okay. This is going to be the plates unit. Vic’s going to do this. Then J.J. will come in and do this,” and he’s just a master at that, because he’s the ultimate multi-tasker. So I’d be over on a stage doing some insert or something I’d bring over, and I’d show him the playback of what I’d do, and we just had a great team, and we went fast, you know?
Tanya Musgrave: (19:47)
Yeah. Yeah.
Arthur Anderson: (19:48)
But we did a great story, and that’s what makes it fun. When you all know you got a big job to do, you just all pitch in, and nobody complains. You just go “Okay. Well, how are we going to do this? Here we go. Let’s go.”
Tanya Musgrave: (20:01)
This is actually one of the listener questions on the subject. Directors, they have to have very specific visions, obviously. So how much creative leeway do you actually get? So I suppose it depends on who the director is, but when you’re in this role, how much do you engage with the director before you’re able to go off on your own?
Arthur Anderson: (20:19)
Films are the director’s medium, and television are the writer’s medium, you know?
Tanya Musgrave: (20:22)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Arthur Anderson: (20:23)
I mean, when you come in as a episodic director, unless you come as a producer-director on the show, you’re coming in and you taking over somebody else’s vision and arc of that series. So you need to stay within the bounds of how they’ve set up the characters, the style they shoot the show, and the DP is really important in that because he knows how the show is shot, and he helps directors who come and don’t know that much about the show. They keep that vision.
Arthur Anderson: (20:49)
A feature is a director-driven medium. It’s his vision of what the picture is, and I’ll just say that the great thing about J.J. is he came from a television background writing, directing. So he knew he had a giant project to do. Done so much television that he could just pull it together like that, and that’s why the picture had such a good focus, and you notice that picture has tension all the way through it, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (21:18)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Arthur Anderson: (21:19)
He kept that tension balance going the whole way. So you start at the ending. You don’t know what’s going on. You resolve it at the end. Well, you go “Wow. Oh, so that was it. It was the other person,” right?
Tanya Musgrave: (21:30)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Arthur Anderson: (21:30)
But he kept that tension going the whole way. So that’s a case where a writer-director came from television and it really served him well, because you got to be a good storyteller, and you have to have the vision and know how to execute that vision when you get on the set. He was really great at that, because all that television training he got translated easily for him into features.
Tanya Musgrave: (21:53)
Your talent would be specifically using, within your own creativity, being able to capture those shots that captured the director’s vision as well, right?
Arthur Anderson: (22:03)
Yeah. Well, it’s really easy when the director’s previs’d the episode. I mean, it’s like watching a cartoon, and now the previses are so good. So you know exactly what he wants. So you’re just taking that section of the previs that doesn’t involve the actors and-
Tanya Musgrave: (22:18)
Executing.
Arthur Anderson: (22:19)
… and taking that and executing, and Vic Armstrong … He’s been doing this for a long time, and he’s one of the top second-unit directors ever. So many elements going on, cars, I mean, stunts. You got people 80 feet on descender rigs coming off of rigs and things, explosions blowing up, and Vic … He’s the master at that. It’s a lot of hard work.
Tanya Musgrave: (22:42)
I cannot imagine a set that huge where you have so many units that have to meld into one. I mean, that’s actually kind of exciting to me because I love collaboration, but having it to fit all under one … Yeah. The previs would have to be-
Arthur Anderson: (22:57)
Well, and keep everybody safe, because that’s the other thing with John. He doesn’t like to do a lot of visual effects. He likes everything to be live action.
Tanya Musgrave: (23:03)
Which is very cool.
Arthur Anderson: (23:04)
On Windtalkers, our first day of photography, it was in the big cave valley in Oahu, and it was a two and a half mile long helicopter shot with 500 marines attacking 250 Japanese up on a hill. So there are 280 bombs going off. We had cannon fire. Everybody had rifles and machine guns firing, and that’s just … We had 300 crew members, 65 40-foot trucks. We had to create a model 30 feet long and 15 feet wide just so that in the morning we could get everybody around so everybody will know where … “We have 14 cameras, helicopter. Where’s everybody going to be? Here’s the toy helicopter on the stick. Here’s where it’s going to come,” just so everybody could get an overview of what was going on, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (23:45)
Yeah. Yeah.
Arthur Anderson: (23:46)
It was a massive undertaking, but you hire the best people at all their crafts, and then you trust them to do their job, you know?
Tanya Musgrave: (23:55)
Absolutely.
Arthur Anderson: (23:56)
But I’m telling you. When you’re standing up on a hill top and you’ve got these big sized binoculars and you’re looking over the battlefield and you’re praying the all this is going to go off and everybody’s going to be safe-
Tanya Musgrave: (24:06)
Safe. Yeah.
Arthur Anderson: (24:06)
… it’s a big responsibility, because first assistant director is responsible for safety, and if … I always tell everybody “If you see something wrong, we’ll stop what we’re doing, because nobody’s life is worth getting injured,” you know?
Tanya Musgrave: (24:19)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Arthur Anderson: (24:20)
We’re telling stories. We’re not curing cancer. Okay?
Tanya Musgrave: (24:23)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We always post up at our stories who our next guest is, and we ask them if they have any listener questions. So we have a few here. This one is “I’m not a filmmaker, but I’m really interested in war movies. How would you describe the tension behind the camera of these kinds of dramatic productions as opposed to in front of it in those situations?”
Arthur Anderson: (24:43)
Listen, 90 percent of the tension you want to happen is in pre-production. You want to have a plan for how this is going to happen, because number one, it’s a period film. It’s period wardrobe. A lot of times, you’re recreating something that happened in history. You want to be authentic to that. You’re going to have to find stunt men, extras, actors. You’re going to have to put actors through … If they’ve never been in the military, put them through a military training shoot. How do you shoot a rifle? How do you go out on combat patrol? How do you set up an L-shaped ambush? How do you assault a machine gun, you know?
Tanya Musgrave: (25:17)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Arthur Anderson: (25:17)
So you have to put them through a boot camp and train them for this. So it’s a lot of preparatory work. Then you go up. You have to set up the battlefield. So that’s why we do models, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (25:27)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Arthur Anderson: (25:28)
We storyboard. We storyboard these action sequences. “Here’s what we want to happen, and here’s what’s going to be second unit, first unit.” So once you get on the set, you’re hoping that 90 percent of your plan has evolved into an actionable plan of what you’re going to do, and the other 10 percent is improvisation, because ultimately any set you get to … The script is a blueprint, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (25:51)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Arthur Anderson: (25:52)
You’re going to rehearse with the actors. You usually do a table read beforehand. So if there’s any script problems, you can find out, work that out, but then when you get there and you say “Hey. Wouldn’t it be cool if we did this?” … Since you’ve done 90 percent of your preparation, that leaves you the flexibility to go “Hey. Well, let’s change this a little bit. Let’s do a crane shot over here. We’ll come over here. We can still make the time on the schedule, but it’s going to look so much better.”
Arthur Anderson: (26:14)
So when you get the director or the stunt coordinator or the actors, you start going through this sequence, “Oh, here. This is going to be a cooler shot,” and then you get the camera operators get involved, and you’ve got four cameras, and you just tell D camera “Hey. Here’s a sequence. Go find a cool shot.” So he’ll be on a 180mm lens. “Oh, this is great,” and then so when you get in the editing room, you have options for stuff you haven’t even storyboarded, depending on an operator’s creativity. Of course, you’ve got all the monitors. You can see what’s going on, and a lot of times, you’ll look and say “Wow. That was good. All right. Let’s back up. Now let’s shoot it from this angle.”
Arthur Anderson: (26:49)
So it’s a lot of hard work once you get on the set, because these people are coming in early. It’s taking two hours to get them just in wardrobe. Then they got to go to the armorer. They got to get armed. Then they have to get ammo. They got to get on the battlefield. Everybody’s got to get in position, and then you have to go around in a truck with speakers, do safety meetings, because there’s so many people involved, so they can hear you.
Arthur Anderson: (27:12)
So to the director, the crew are his paintbrushes. The cast are his paint, and he’s painting on a moving canvas, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (27:21)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Arthur Anderson: (27:21)
[inaudible 00:27:21] be one of the hardest things in the world, but hopefully you’ve done 90 percent of your work upfront in preparation so that then when you get on the set, there’s not a lot of tension, “Oh, how are we going to do this?” because you’ve already talked about this. You’ve walked the battlefield.
Arthur Anderson: (27:38)
A lot of times, what we would do with John is, on the weekends, we’d take the stunt guys … We were doing Paycheck. We had this whole sequence in the bio lab where guys are getting blown up and all over this, and so we’d go into the bio lab over the weekend, and we would shoot video with the stunt doubles going through. We’d shoot it from different angles, and then the stunt coordinator would then … He would edit that together, or I would edit together, and then we would look at it and say “Okay. This is good, and we need to change this here,” and then John would say “No. Let’s do this.”
Arthur Anderson: (28:09)
So when we got there on the day, we weren’t going “Wow. Well, we got this mechanical arm that takes the gun out of his hand give it to him.” We’d already figured all that out. So the actors go … They would watch the stunt doubles do it, “Take the gun from you, give it to him, gun comes back, you hit him in the head with it,” and so literally the actor … You could show them the video tape too, and you’d show them the whole sequence, “Wow. This is so cool.” So then you would shoot those little segments, show them how to do it, and so your time is minimal for sitting there trying to figure … In action sequences, you got figure all that stuff out in advance, or you’re just going to grind into 16-hour days, and now, wearing masks, you’re not going to do that.
Tanya Musgrave: (28:53)
Oh, my stars. Yeah. No. That quote that you said about the paintbrushes … That actually is [inaudible 00:28:58] into one of our other listener questions where that your favorite part of your job is managing those paintbrushes of the artist. So how does your philosophy of life impact your art in film and the use of those tools at your disposal, how you diffuse the situation?
Arthur Anderson: (29:16)
That’s a great question because there’s two management philosophies in this business. Okay? One is to yell and scream at people so they’re afraid of making a mistake so they’ll give a hundred percent all the time, “I don’t want to make a mistake. I don’t want to get yelled at for this,” right?
Tanya Musgrave: (29:32)
Yeah. Yeah.
Arthur Anderson: (29:33)
Then the second philosophy is to encourage people to bring forth their creativity’s highest potential and contribute to the project so you’re all working together as a team, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (29:45)
Yeah.
Arthur Anderson: (29:45)
So I’m a man of faith. I’m a believer, and I always believed treat other people like you want to be treated, you know?
Tanya Musgrave: (29:50)
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Arthur Anderson: (29:52)
Listen, I have bad days too, and bad things happen. You get out of sorts and stuff, but in general, I like to treat people like I like to be treated. Not to say that somebody’s not doing their job … I’m going to tell them they’re not doing their job, because listen, it could affect the safety of other people.
Tanya Musgrave: (30:10)
Absolutely.
Arthur Anderson: (30:10)
It’s affecting what we’re trying to do on the set, but so I’m not a yeller and screamer, and the directors I choose to work with aren’t either. They’re collaborative filmmakers, and listen, I’ve worked with people who aren’t, who are the first generation, the first iteration of yelling and screaming and stuff, and I just made a decision after that point. You know, life’s too short to work with people like that, and I just won’t work with them again. So I’ve become suddenly unavailable. So that’s my philosophy. Treat people like you want to be treated.
Arthur Anderson: (30:40)
Listen, everybody wants to show up. They want to make a good film. They want to contribute to the film, but then they want to go home at night and have time with their family, and the hardest thing about this business is, particularly on giant features and stuff, you’re working long hours. A lot of times, you’re on location away from your family and your family comes out to visit, and my wife can testify. On Mission: Impossible 2, they came out for three weeks, and I probably saw them for … Yeah. I was working seven days a week. It’s very tough. So God bless. I just celebrated my 39th wedding anniversary. She-
Tanya Musgrave: (31:09)
Oh, congratulations.
Arthur Anderson: (31:11)
She deserves a medal for putting up with me for 39 years, because listen, sometimes I can be a real donkey, you know?
Tanya Musgrave: (31:15)
Yeah.
Arthur Anderson: (31:19)
But I married better than I deserve. So God was looking out for me.
Tanya Musgrave: (31:23)
Well, okay. So you’re in Idaho now.
Arthur Anderson: (31:26)
Yeah.
Tanya Musgrave: (31:27)
Okay, because everybody is always just like “Oh, yeah. Well, you have to be near a big city.” I mean, if you’re in Idaho, at least you’re in Boise, right? No.
Arthur Anderson: (31:36)
No.
Tanya Musgrave: (31:36)
You are-
Arthur Anderson: (31:37)
I’m in Northern Idaho where it really snows.
Tanya Musgrave: (31:40)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, you’ve obviously found that balance-
Arthur Anderson: (31:44)
Yeah.
Tanya Musgrave: (31:44)
… of just kind of life and work and that kind of thing. In that respect, if the old you could see you now, what would the old you say?
Arthur Anderson: (31:54)
I’d have moved up here a long time ago. Listen, in my work now, a lot of my work’s international. It’s all over the country. So I’m just at a position now where if I work back in LA, I’ve got a motor home and a tow-behind car. I’ve got a place down there to stay. Or if I’m just going for a short period of time, I do Extended Stay or something.
Tanya Musgrave: (32:15)
Nice.
Arthur Anderson: (32:16)
It’s just there were a series of things, like had an attempted home invasion, robbery, fire tried to burn my house within three months from one side and then the other, and confrontations with people trying to steal my mail. We just made the decision. It’s like “I’m not going to live like this anymore,” and we lived in a really good neighborhood too. So we just made the decision. We had this place up here for quite some time. I said “You know, I got my motor home. I got my tow-behind car. I can work anywhere.” So we moved up here, and man, I tell you. What a difference it’s made. There’s so many things to do up here. There’s snow skiing. My lake is frozen. There’s guys out there ice fishing, ice skating. There’s always something to do up here, you know?
Tanya Musgrave: (32:50)
Yeah. I know.
Arthur Anderson: (32:51)
Yeah.
Tanya Musgrave: (32:51)
I love it.
Arthur Anderson: (32:51)
So I just made the decision. When I have to work in town, I drive my motor home down, or I’ve got a place to stay down there, and we just decided it was really worth the move to do that. You’re working long hours. You get exhausted, and sometimes you just need to get out of the environment and go some place else, like rural American, and just hang out in that environment.
Tanya Musgrave: (33:15)
I always give props to the people who have been able to find balance in their life, because it’s a crazy business. I mean, it’s a crazy life. It’s just kind of one of those things. I mean, people who aren’t in this business having that kind of work-life balance … I give major props to the people who have-
Arthur Anderson: (33:30)
Well, you and your mate-
Tanya Musgrave: (33:31)
… been able to figure that out.
Arthur Anderson: (33:33)
… have to be on the same page with that too, understanding, and if you want a normal life, nine to five, become a novel writer, because this business … You’re not going to find that. You’re going to work long hours. It’s going to be stressful on your relationship. You’re going to have kids, and the kids are going to get sick, you know?
Tanya Musgrave: (33:50)
Yeah.
Arthur Anderson: (33:51)
It’s hard. So it’s a sacrifice. It’s hard on both of you.
Tanya Musgrave: (33:56)
So what current project are you excited about?
Arthur Anderson: (33:58)
We’re doing with John that’s in development. He’s doing a remake of one of his Hong Kong classics. I can’t five out any information on that.
Tanya Musgrave: (34:08)
Oh, no worries.
Arthur Anderson: (34:09)
But it’s awesome. I mean, we’ve done some scouting overseas and stuff for it. It’s really going to be a great film. I’m really looking forward to that. There’s another television project I’m up for that I may do before that in LA. So there’s a lot of things in the offing here. John actually has two projects in development. So he’s pretty busy.
Tanya Musgrave: (34:30)
So how do people find you or follow your work? Time for your shameless plugs.
Arthur Anderson: (34:35)
Two ways. Of course, you can find me on IMDb. I have a website that deals with spiritual issues called myprayerwarrior.com.
Tanya Musgrave: (34:44)
Nice.
Arthur Anderson: (34:45)
If they need to reach out to me on email, I’m on awarforsouls@gmail.com.
Tanya Musgrave: (34:52)
warforsouls@gmail.
Arthur Anderson: (34:54)
Right.
Tanya Musgrave: (34:54)
All right. We are going to put all of those in the show notes, and the last question that I ask every single guest … What question should I have asked you? What did I miss?
Arthur Anderson: (35:03)
I think you covered pretty much the whole broad spectrum of it. I mean, I think we hit everything out there. The one thing I would say to people is, every morning you wake up, have an intention about what you want to accomplish in your life, and don’t let the bad things, particularly with this COVID … A lot of the people that I talk to that I help are dealing with a lot of depression and stuff. Listen, we’re not powerless in this situation. We have a mind that … 40 percent of the front of our mind is our creative entity, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (35:35)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Arthur Anderson: (35:35)
What’s happening tries to put you in the back kind of reptilian brain about survival and fear. We’re not made to operate that way. We’re made to operate out of our front creative mind. We are manifestors, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (35:47)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Arthur Anderson: (35:47)
So every morning when you get up, you make an intention for what you want to accomplish to that day and what your goal is for the long term, and you’ll be surprise how things will come to you that will help you achieve that, and when bad things start happening to you, acknowledge them, but don’t let them get inside you, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (36:06)
Yeah.
Arthur Anderson: (36:07)
You’ve got to keep your intention, your focus strong on what you want every day. You have to make your day before you get out of bed every morning.
Tanya Musgrave: (36:14)
Yeah. Thank you so much. We really appreciate your time that you’ve spent with us.
Arthur Anderson: (36:20)
Hey, listen, I’m always glad to hear the new generation coming up. I’m in the third act of my life. So I’m looking forward to those new creators who are in the first act are coming along, right?
Tanya Musgrave: (36:29)
Yeah.
Arthur Anderson: (36:29)
Keep that tension going, guys.
Tanya Musgrave: (36:31)
Man, thank you so much.
Arthur Anderson: (36:33)
Thanks, Tanya. It was great to meet you, and good luck to all you guys out there starting your careers.
Tanya Musgrave: (36:38)
If you enjoyed this interview, follow us right here and check out more episodes at thepracticalfilmmaker.com. If you have comments or know someone who would be a great guest on our show, send in your suggestions to tanya@thepracticalfilmmaker.com.
Tanya Musgrave: (36:50)
Thanks for joining us. Be well, and God bless. We’ll see you next time on The Practical Filmmaker.