Sit down all you like. Just don't chug a water bottle.
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00:00 Making even the worst movie is nothing short of an absolute slug, because no matter how bad or good a script might be,
00:07 the sheer feat of assembling a cast and crew to shoot a film is a tireless exercise in dogged perseverance.
00:13 And due to the high-stress nature of filmmaking, it's not at all surprising that most successful directors
00:18 have at least a couple of concrete rules for how their sets are operated.
00:22 While these rules can be as simple and reasonable as the crew turning off their phones while shooting is taking place,
00:28 sometimes directors insist upon slightly more peculiar, and yes, sometimes even weird, regulations.
00:35 So with that in mind, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 Bizarre Filmmaker Rules You Never Knew.
00:41 10. Steven Spielberg isn't present when the final scene is being shot
00:46 Though you'd certainly expect the director of Steven Spielberg's repute to be an entirely hands-on filmmaker,
00:51 that's apparently not quite the case, albeit for an amusing reason.
00:55 Now it's no secret that the shoot for his iconic blockbuster Jaws was a near disaster,
01:00 filled with malfunctioning props, overlong shooting days, and an increasingly seasick and frustrated crew.
01:06 Tensions were significant enough that Spielberg actually decided to not be present
01:11 when the film's climactic scene, where the shark is finally blown up, was being shot.
01:16 In fact, the director believed that the crew, who were bordering on mutinous by this point,
01:20 were planning to throw him into the water when the scene was completed.
01:24 And so he decided instead to take leave early.
01:27 In the 45 years since, it's reportedly been a tradition for Spielberg to be absent
01:31 when the final scene for any of his movies were being shot,
01:34 presumably being left instead in the capable hands of his first assistant director.
01:39 Still considering that Spielberg's reputation as a professional filmmaker quickly improved post-Jaws,
01:44 he's probably safe from the wrath of his crew nowadays.
01:48 9. Martin Scorsese bans wristwatches to heighten immersion
01:52 You don't get to be a director of Martin Scorsese's impeccable calibre
01:55 without having a few hard and fast rules about how your set is run.
01:59 Though by most accounts, Scorsese's sets are relatively harmonious places to be,
02:03 he does nevertheless insist on one fascinating rule.
02:07 Don't bring your wristwatch to set.
02:09 Basically, Scorsese wants to cultivate his sets as a bubble of sorts,
02:14 separated from the time and space of real life, whereby he can get the best out of his cast and crew.
02:19 The idea is that people who aren't able to check their watches whenever they want,
02:23 are more likely to give themselves over to the vision Scorsese is trying to create.
02:28 Still, you'll definitely want to wear a watch while sitting through The Irishman, wouldn't you?
02:32 8. Stanley Kubrick edited his movies with an army of cats
02:36 In addition to being one of the greatest filmmakers of all time,
02:39 Stanley Kubrick was also unquestionably one of the most eccentric.
02:43 An infamous perfectionist, he'd routinely put actors through dozens of takes,
02:47 and occasionally more than 100, to basically beat the artifice out of them.
02:52 He also insisted on shooting all of his movies in England to be free from Hollywood meddling,
02:56 and reportedly never even watched his own movies once they were completed.
03:00 But perhaps the strangest of the director's professional rituals involved allowing his
03:05 many cats into the editing room to lay around while he cut his movies.
03:09 A noted feline lover, Kubrick at one point owned as many as 16 cats,
03:14 and in order to compensate for the time spent away from them while shooting,
03:18 he'd routinely let them into the editing room, allowing him to enjoy quality time with his pets
03:23 while also getting work done. And you know what? This should be standard across the board.
03:28 Everyone should be allowed to bring their cats into the workplace.
03:31 7. Alfred Hitchcock's cameos were superstition
03:35 Though it's no secret at all that Alfred Hitchcock made sneaky cameo appearances in
03:40 most of his movies, it was ultimately far more than a playful directorial signature
03:44 for attentive viewers to look out for. Hitchcock himself stated that his cameos were initially
03:50 strictly utilitarian, in order to ensure the screen was filled up during a given scene.
03:54 But after audiences began to catch on, it became something of a compulsive
03:58 superstition for the director. He said in a period interview quote,
04:02 "Later on it became a superstition and eventually a gag. By now it's a rather troublesome gag,
04:07 and I'm very careful to show up in the first five minutes or so as to let the people look
04:11 at the rest of the movie with no further distraction." End quote. While he never
04:15 outright declared his cameos to be good luck charms, the fact that he included them in 40
04:20 of his 52 produced movies, no matter how familiar audiences became with them,
04:25 near enough confirms that he felt compelled to make a cameo no matter what.
04:29 6. Quentin Tarantino insisted the cast say "hello" to editor Sally Menke at the end of takes
04:36 While you might get the impression that a Quentin Tarantino set must be a high stress
04:39 environment at the best of times, the filmmaker nevertheless devised a sweet yet peculiar ritual
04:45 for all of his productions until the release of 2012's Django Unchained. Tarantino would
04:49 encourage his cast to say hello to his long-time editor Sally Menke at the end of a take,
04:54 ensuring that some cute surprises were waiting for her when she was later shaping the movie
04:59 in the editing suite. Sadly, this all came to an end with Menke's untimely passing in 2010,
05:04 yet while cutting Django Unchained with his new editing collaborator Fred Raskin,
05:08 Tarantino reportedly put up a sign reading WWSD or "What Would Sally Do?"
05:14 5. Charlie Chaplin always had a violin on set
05:17 It's noted that Charlie Chaplin played a bunch of instruments, but he loved the violin in particular,
05:23 even featuring himself playing it in several of his films such as 1916's The Vagabond and 1952's
05:30 Limelight, while also keeping one on set to establish the mood before shooting. Chaplin
05:35 also famously played the violin for young Jackie Coogan on the set of his 1921 directorial debut
05:41 The Kid, and apparently that wasn't a one-off. In the decades before film sets had massive stereo
05:47 speaker systems which could pump sound throughout a set to get the cast in the zone, this was seen
05:52 as a more personal touch. 4. Terrence Malick has a contractual stipulation
05:57 that he can't be photographed Terrence Malick is one of the most enigmatic
06:01 filmmakers in the history of Hollywood. A famously reclusive director who not only avoids press
06:07 interviews and awards shows, but spent an entire 20 years away from the industry between 1978's
06:13 Days of Heaven and 1998's The Thin Red Line. There are also curiously few images of Malick
06:19 available online, a result of him literally having it written into his directing contracts
06:24 that on-set photos of him cannot be published anywhere. Only in recent years with the advent
06:29 of smartphones have set spies managed to snap pictures of Malick at work, and it wasn't until
06:34 2017 that a recording of the director's voice even made its way online, save for a quick vocal
06:39 cameo he made in his directorial debut Badlands. It's this fiercely protective approach to his
06:45 own privacy which has helped Malick cultivate such a fascinating aura of mystery over the last
06:50 five decades. Quite the stink has been made about Christopher Nolan's on-set rules in recent times,
07:00 after Anne Hathaway claimed that he didn't allow chairs on his sets, the reasoning being "If you
07:05 have chairs, people will sit, and if they're sitting, they're not working." This understandably
07:11 caused quite the storm online, before one of Nolan's spokespersons confirmed that his sets
07:16 did indeed have chairs for the cast and crew, but that Nolan himself opted not to use one.
07:21 The PR statement did however confirm two more things which are indeed banned from his sets.
07:26 "For the record, the only things banned from Nolan's sets are cell phones, not always successfully,
07:32 and smoking, very successfully." According to his Dunkirk stars Mark Rylance and Barry Keoghan,
07:38 Nolan also bans the use of water bottles. Keoghan said "They're distractions. The noise,
07:44 they're like toys almost, playing around with toys."
07:47 Sergio Leone had the musical score recorded before shooting. One of the greatest filmmaker-composer
07:54 relationships in history is unquestionably that of Sergio Leone and his recently departed
07:58 collaborator Ennio Morricone. The two paired together for all of the director's movies,
08:03 from A Fistful of Dollars onward, and developed a unique working relationship which operated
08:08 entirely counter to the way most movies are shot and scored. See, typically film scores are created
08:14 only after shooting has been completed, when the composer can see a rough cut of the film and tailor
08:18 their music to the images they're seeing. But this pair did things quite differently, with the
08:24 director typically having Morricone complete the score before he'd even shot a foot of film,
08:29 and sometimes even before he'd actually written the script. This allowed the filmmaker to play
08:33 Morricone's score during shooting and set an appropriate mood for the cast, and this certainly
08:38 paid off dividends on the good, the bad and the ugly in particular, with the film's iconic Mexican
08:42 standoff being perfectly timed and edited to the existing musical piece, The Trio.
08:47 1. Steven Soderbergh doesn't allow open-toed shoes on set
08:52 Several years ago now, some of the world's most acclaimed A-list filmmakers answered an Empire
08:57 Magazine survey about their directorial habits. And upon being asked about their specific on-set
09:03 rules, Steven Soderbergh piped up with a surprising, if curt answer. Without elaborating,
09:09 he simply quipped "No open-toed shoes." While it's easy enough to appreciate the health and safety
09:14 aspect of not allowing crew members handling heavy equipment to wear open-toed shoes,
09:19 the bluntness of his answer suggests his order extends to every single person on set,
09:24 from catering through to the cast themselves. Again though, he provided no further explanation
09:29 beyond that, so who knows what he really meant. Or why. So that's our list, I want to know what
09:34 you guys think down in the comments below. Do you know of any other strange filmmaker rules that
09:38 they employ on set? And did you know any of these? Let me know and while you're down there,
09:43 if you could please give us a like, share, subscribe and head over to whatculture.com
09:46 for more lists and news like this every single day. Even if you don't though,
09:49 I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching and I'll see you soon.