Directors who are blinded into thinking their work is a failure...

[Daniel Porto]

Why is it that some of the most successful films of our time are perceived half way through production to be "shitty" by the Directors who make them? Most of the time it seems that in pre-production they are confident but somewhere along the way they lose all hope... the most notable example being Francis Ford Coppola and Apocalypse Now...

To quote:

• Francis Ford Coppola: My greatest fear is to make a really shitty, embarrasing, pompous film on an important subject and I am doing it. I confront it. I acknowledge. I will tell you right straight from the most sincere depths of my heart, the film will not be good.
• Eleanor Coppola: It's like going to school. You finish your term paper and maybe you get a B instead of an A+ that you wanted, so you got a B -
• Francis Ford Coppola: But I'm gonna get an F! This film is a $20-million dollar disaster. Why won't anyone believe me? I am thinking of shooting myself!

[Scott Crawley]

Have you ever exposed yourself, taken a huge risk and put your heart and soul out there for the world to see? Have you ever completed a project and known that is it... All of it... There is no denying that the result is the absolute best you can do. You know that you can make no excuses for it. At some point it dawns on you that you may come to realize that the best you can do simply sucks. It can be terrifying.

[Kristin Stewart]

Really interesting subject. All the directors don't feel the same though. I live with a film director, and I agree with Scott. In my opinion, the director's job is the most terrifying one. They put so much of them into their work (well, the best ones) that they seem to live on another planet which goes more and more away from the real world during the filmmaking process... By the way, the success of a movie isn't necessary related to its quality...

[Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock]

Because in your imagination the film is perfect - and during the shoot you realise it isnt.
The genius italian conductor Toscanini once said to his musicians: "I hate you. You are killing my dreams."

[Erik Franzén]

Ever told a friend how 'awesome' this thing you're working on is only to get close to release and realize you might have oversold it? That you didn't quite get it that good? That's the feeling. Sometimes you'll be right, sometimes you'll be wrong, and the most important thing to remember is always get a second opinion. There's gotta be someone to screw your head on straight, otherwise you might start believing whatever crap your spouting and actually quit...

[Rob Gardner]

Because the greater the emotional and creative investment you put into your work (which must be done to make it excellent) the greater the fear that it will all come to ashes and humiliation. And the insecurity that often goes with talent frequently causes doubts and fears to emerge at the delicate point in a film' genesis before its strengths emerge. Who among us has not reached a point in a project where we thought "Fuck! This really sucks. I am totally screwed.". And, sadly, sometimes it's true.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Jochen put it perfectly: when you're imagining it, it's a masterpiece. When you're watching it come together you've seen the sausage making, you're watching with a critical eye and seeing everything that's wrong. The artist, but the director mentality in particularly is the ability to really break something down and see all the details while focusing on the big picture--part of that is being aware of every tiny mistake so you can determine whether it's important to fix or not. You see every plot hole, you hear every off-delivered line and it's hard to put yourself in the position of a 'naive' viewer. "Oh I just shamelessly ripped off______ there." "Wow, a rack focus, nobody has ever done one of those before."

Movies are emotion delivery vehicles. It's really hard to watch something that started in your head as raw pure emotion, translate it through an expressive medium and then view it and hope to get the same experience--so you assume it's not carrying any emotion at all.

[DCC Erickson]

Having shot enough film to understand that things change, I think the trick is to allow the film to become what it can be. Forcing circumstances and resources to create your "vision" practically guarantees "failure". Even if Apocalypse now isn't what he wanted it to be, it's still a masterpiece. THE SHINING is a masterpiece, Stephen King thought it was a failure - because he wanted to see his book onscreen, and that's impossible. BLADE RUNNER started out as a script that adhered to a lot of the tone of the book, evolved into something else that barely reflected Philip Dick's novel. Creativity is fluid, the results are essentially unknowable until the process has played itself out. Especially in film where you have to use collaborators from various disciplines, whether you want to or not.

[Elsie N]

Because in your imagination the film is perfect - and during the shoot you realise it isnt.
The genius italian conductor Toscanini once said to his musicians: "I hate you. You are killing my dreams."

+1

Jochen put it perfectly: when you're imagining it, it's a masterpiece. When you're watching it come together you've seen the sausage making, you're watching with a critical eye and seeing everything that's wrong. The artist, but the director mentality in particularly is the ability to really break something down and see all the details while focusing on the big picture--part of that is being aware of every tiny mistake so you can determine whether it's important to fix or not. You see every plot hole, you hear every off-delivered line and it's hard to put yourself in the position of a 'naive' viewer. "Oh I just shamelessly ripped off______ there." "Wow, a rack focus, nobody has ever done one of those before."

Movies are emotion delivery vehicles. It's really hard to watch something that started in your head as raw pure emotion, translate it through an expressive medium and then view it and hope to get the same experience--so you assume it's not carrying any emotion at all.

+1a

[Felix K.]

I think the "perfect" director is a mixture of a talented, sensitive artist and a robust crisis-counselor/manager. (Perfect here means that he won't have many problems during production because of his diverse talents). In reality, some director are more sensitive artist than robust manager. They are bound to have doubts like any artist does. Picasso probably destroyed lots of possible-to-become masterpieces because halfway through he thought they were crap. He would have felt the same panic Coppola did if destroying an unfinished piece of work meant that he had to pay 20 mio to some producers :)