Film Courage: What are the four different levels of being a director?
Pete Chatmon, Director/Podcaster/Author: Again I’ll preface, there’s no higher level of importance per se, it’s just maybe not a totem pole, maybe it’s a hieroglyphic wall that goes left to right. I think you’ve got short films and web series and in that space you’re doing things that are narrative but they’re going to take less time, at least on the production end. You could do a film that takes a great deal of prep but typically just with the amount of money being spent and the nature of the content I think you’ve got short films and web series. I think then you’ve got commercials and music videos and branded content and those are maybe the distinguishing factor to consider is that you are outright selling a product, you’re selling this lotion, you’re selling this. Some of the stuff I did in my day was this kind of sponsored documentary profiles where a brand might want to interview a bunch of people about what they do but like that type of person is their direct customer. It’s much more of a clear intent to sell and then I think you’ve got television which is obvious and then you’ve got feature films which are obvious, but the distinction being it’s the medium for the director and features and it’s the medium for the writer in TV. I think I would offer that trying all of them and being able to direct in all of them is a great skill set to develop because you never know when one of them will be called upon. As an example, I did the fifth episode of the final season of Silicon Valley. It was inclusive of a Mad Max kind of opening with Russ Hanneman and he’s on a motorcycle and these women in these kind of Mad Max cars are chasing him and he’s blowing them up with this hand gesture or whatever. HBO being HBO was like Oh, let’s go shoot the thing. I was like Oh, we’re going to actually shoot that? So we took an extra day outside of our production window for the episode and shot that thing but then there was also the characters sold a tequila in the show called Tres Comas which the three commas for being a billionaire and so HBO and an ad agency partnered up to actually sell that tequila…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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BIO:
With a deft ability to balance both half-hour single camera comedies and one-hour dramas, Pete Chatmon has directed over 50 episodes of television including HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant, Insecure, Silicon Valley, and Love Life, Netflix’s You, ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy and Black-ish, Starz’ Blindspotting, FX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and the Apple TV+ series Mythic Quest. He is in development on The Education of Matt Barnes with Showtime, for which he will direct the pilot and serve as executive producer and is currently co-executive producer and producing director on Reasonable Doubt, the first project to be produced via Hulu’s Onyx Collective. His debut feature as writer/director, Premium, starred Dorian Missick, Zoe Saldana, and Hill Harper, and premiered on Showtime after a limited theatrical run. Chatmon also wrote, produced, and directed 761st, a documentary on the first Black tank battalion in WWII, narrated by Andre Braugher. Through TheDirector, his Digital Studio, he has directed, shot, and edited content for advertising agencies and Fortune 500 brands. Chatmon’s career began in 2001 with the Sundance selection of his NYU thesis film, 3D, starring Kerry Washington. His most recent short film, BlackCard, premiered on HBO, and his narrative podcast, Wednesday Morning, engaged voters around the 2020 election. His podcast, Let’s Shoot! with Pete Chatmon is available on YouTube, iTunes, and all podcast platforms. In January 2022 his book, Transitions: A Director’s Journey + Motivational Handbook was released by Michael Wiese Productions.
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