Director to Director

Sam Mendes:

I mean, I’ve directed bits of action and so I knew enough to know that it’s long and it’s very detailed. I’ll put it this way, editing action is a good deal more exciting than shooting action. Shooting action is very, very meticulous, it’s increments, tiny little pieces. To me, the challenge is to create parallel action so you’re never locked into a linear chase, which I think is something that Chris Nolan, for example, does very, very well. It’s never just A following B, there’s something else going on simultaneously and you’re following these things and often they overlap.

Christopher Nolan:

Well, generally with the projects I'm working on, the script is based on some form of parallel action or shifting points of view, even when the story is linear. If you look at the last couple of reels on the Batman films, for example, they're all crosscut parallel action. What that means is, even though you shoot very specifically and efficiently, you have unlimited choices in the editing suite because you don't have to shoot complete continuity for a particular action scene. You can jump timelines or locations, so you have an enormous number of variables anyway. I'm not looking to make that process even more complicated.