THE DIRECTOR’S PALETTE

On March 15, 2021, three of my former students — Mollye Asher, Shaka King, and Chloé Zhao — together received 12 nominations for the 93rd Academy Awards. That April, their films, Nomadland and Judas and the Black Messiah, won 5 Academy Awards combined.

Between 2008 and 2012, I led the Directing Actors Track at NYU’s Graduate School of Film, where I taught them and many other filmmakers how to work with actors.

Their accomplishments are unquestionably their own.

That day I reflected on my years teaching directors how to create a climate conducive to collaboration, and how to identify, find, and capture authentic human behavior.

I'd learned to do this the way my teachers — Sanford Meisner, Stella Adler, and Mira Rostova — once did it with me: by asking questions.

Over the years, making their approaches my own, I learned that rather than telling a directing student what a scene meant, what an actor should feel, or how a moment should be played, I’ve tried to help them discover those things on their own by asking increasingly specific questions.

The questions were not the answers.
The questions are a way of finding behavior.

On that day, March 15, 2021, I wondered, “Could I make this approach clearer, more systematic, and more useful to filmmakers beyond my classroom?”

That question has become The Director’s Palette.

— José Angel Santana