Seminar with Rob Schmidt Barracano, Horror Movie Director

by Kaytlyn Young

Directing movies can be an exciting career. The action, the leadership it takes, the people: everything in a movie falls into the hands of the director. When I grow up I want to be a director of horror movies.  Therefore for my first Shader Croft trip Nathan, Peter and I went and met a director named Rob Schmidt Barracano. He directs horror movies. Some of his movies are Alphabet Killer, Wrong Turn and The Right to Die. Overall , I learned about the precaution and attention to detail that directors have to keep, as well as their many  responsibilities.

I met Rob at a seminar he was doing at Champlain College.  From the audience, I asked Rob “What do you know now that you wished you knew when you first thought of becoming a director?” His answer was that he wished that he knew that there is a lot of fear of failure when making a movie. You have many responsibilities as a director. For instance, you have to be very good at working with people. A director always has to be on guard with everything, including cast and crew and be nice to even the most horrible people.  This is because you don’t want them to leave.   If people leave the project then the movie would stall and you would have to do a lot more work on getting everything set for the date of the showing.  Movie directors also have to make sure that all of the equipment is set and ready.  Say you don’t have a certain type of camera that you need for a close up shot. Then a director would have to hold everything and send someone out to get the camera. Then when they get back you would have to get it working, figure out how to take the close up shots, and only later finish making the scene.  Also directors have to worry about things like movie scripts.  If you have a date set and ready for the movie to be done, it is coming up soon and the script isn’t finalized, then that can cause problems.  Sometimes when a director is making a movie there isn’t any script for their actors.  They just ask the actors to  go along with the scene the way they would in an actual setting. I think that would be hard for the actors. Therefore a director should make sure that the script is done and that actors understand it.

In conclusion, a director has to be in “tip-top-shape” while directing a movie.  A director has to make sure everything is ready, lead the cast and crew, solve problems and make sure the script is set.  If a director is not in charge of these things then the movie will end up wrong and the director will have to do a lot more work than needed.  Overall, on my trip to meet Rob Schmidt I learned a lot about the excitement and challenges of being a movie director.