Quentin Taran­ti­no has nev­er shied away from talk­ing, at length and at a rapid clip, about his process. “In anoth­er life,” Col­in Mar­shall writes in a pre­vi­ous post on the sub­ject, he might have become a “fore­most prac­ti­tion­er” of the video essay on cin­e­ma. His metic­u­lous analy­ses of not only his own films but also the hun­dreds he references–or out­right steals from–can be dizzy­ing, the rav­ings of an over­ac­tive cre­ative mind that seems impos­si­ble to rein in.

Taran­ti­no has also giv­en us sig­nif­i­cant insight into his screen­writ­ing process, say­ing “I was put on Earth to face the blank page” and claim­ing that he watch­es the entire film in his mind’s eye before putting pen to paper. He wrote Pulp Fic­tion “off and on,” Mark Seal notes at Van­i­ty Fair, “in a one-room apart­ment with no phone or fax” in Ams­ter­dam. Then he sought out vet­er­an Hol­ly­wood typ­ist Lin­da Chen, who agreed to type, and edit, the man­u­script for free.

“His hand­writ­ing is atro­cious,” says Chen. “He’s a func­tion­al illit­er­ate. I was aver­ag­ing about 9,000 gram­mat­i­cal errors per page. After I would cor­rect them, he would try to put back the errors, because he liked them.”

As a writer, Tarantino’s quirks don’t actu­al­ly seem out of place. As a direc­tor, his process would not seem to lend itself to the most dis­ci­plined pro­duc­tion. The final prod­uct of that error-rid­den script, how­ev­er, became what Roger Ebert called “the most influ­en­tial” movie of the 90s, “so well writ­ten in a scruffy, fanzine way that you want to rub noses in it—the noses of those zom­bie writ­ers who take ‘screen­writ­ing’ class­es that teach them the for­mu­las for ‘hit films.’” Of course, great writ­ing is an indis­pens­able part of mak­ing a great film, but so too is great film­mak­ing.…

How did Taran­ti­no go from fever­ish­ly hand-scrib­bled script to a “most influ­en­tial” film as a direc­tor? He has worked with­in strict lim­i­ta­tions, as on his direc­to­r­i­al debut, Reser­voir Dogs, with larg­er bud­gets and bet­ter sets, as on Pulp Fic­tion, and on his most recent film, the $95 mil­lion Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood. But he has always main­tained a con­sis­tent visu­al style eas­i­ly rec­og­niz­able across all nine of his films.

In the video essay above from In Depth Cine, you can learn more of the sto­ry of how Taran­ti­no accom­plished his direc­to­r­i­al visions, and how that style fol­lowed him from film to film. The video gets into tech­ni­cal details like the choice of 35mm cam­eras and the light­ing place­ment. It also tells the sto­ry of how three films—Reser­voir Dogs, Pulp Fic­tion, and Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood—used their vast­ly dif­fer­ent bud­get lev­els, while all remain­ing true to each oth­er and to their writer and direc­tor’s inten­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Analy­sis of Quentin Tarantino’s Films Nar­rat­ed (Most­ly) by Quentin Taran­ti­no

Quentin Tarantino’s Copy­cat Cin­e­ma: How the Post­mod­ern Film­mak­er Per­fect­ed the Art of the Steal

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains How to Write & Direct Movies

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

David Lynch is known for being per­snick­ety about deliv­er­ing the cor­rect view­ing expe­ri­ence to his audi­ence, as he con­sid­ers the cin­e­ma a sacred place. In a doc­u­men­tary short a few years back, he explained, “It’s so mag­i­cal, I don’t know why, to go into a the­ater and have the lights go down. It’s very qui­et and then the cur­tains start to open. And then you go into a world.”

How­ev­er, the cin­e­math­eque is also the space where direc­tors have the least con­trol. They can hope that each print that goes out has been print­ed cor­rect­ly (espe­cial­ly dur­ing the days of film), or that the sound is clear and/or loud enough, but, in a wide release, hope is all direc­tors can do most of the time. There are excep­tions: Stan­ley Kubrick over­saw the rere­lease prints of his films. And Alfred Hitch­cock demand­ed that there would be no late seat­ing for Psy­cho-—a tac­tic that worked to the film’s advan­tage.

This card (above) from David Lynch came with every print of Mul­hol­land Dri­ve that was sent out to the­aters. “I under­stand this is an unusu­al request yet I do need your help,” he writes. Lynch asks that the vol­ume be raised 3db and that the image be giv­en a tad more head­room.

John Neff, in a post on the Face­book Lynch­land group, explained the card: “The vol­ume request was because when we heard it in the Direc­tor’s Guild The­ater for the cast and crew screen­ing, David thought it was too qui­et. The pic­ture head­room request was because of the orig­i­nal TV aspect ratio. These con­cerns have been addressed in all for­mat releas­es since the orig­i­nal DVD release.”

Mul­hol­land Dri­ve was orig­i­nal­ly shot, or rather, the first half of the film was shot as a tele­vi­sion pilot for ABC, so a 16:9 (1.78:1) aspect ratio was expect­ed. But when the stu­dios passed on the pilot, Lynch fin­ished the film as a stand­alone fea­ture. Cin­e­mas matt pro­jec­tions at 1.85:1, cut­ting down on the head­room. (None of this effects the orig­i­nal neg­a­tive, which is stan­dard 35mm.)

Lynch sim­i­lar­ly cares about home view­ers. The first direc­tor-approved box set of his short films came with a sim­i­lar, Lynch-cre­at­ed cal­i­bra­tion video so you could con­trol the col­or and the white bal­ance. And one of the rea­sons fans keep wait­ing for a prop­er Blu-Ray release of Lost High­way is that Lynch has yet to over­see a prop­er trans­fer. When Kino Lor­ber released theirs in 2019, Lynch took to Twit­ter to tell fans to skip it: “Dear Twit­ter Friends, A Blu-ray of LOST HIGHWAY will be released very soon. It was made from old ele­ments and NOT from a restora­tion of the orig­i­nal neg­a­tive. I hope that a ver­sion from the restora­tion of the orig­i­nal neg­a­tive will hap­pen as soon as pos­si­ble.”

As far as I know, he has not weighed in on the cur­rent prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with HDTVs, but Tom Cruise has been tak­ing care of that. And what­ev­er you do, do not watch Mul­hol­land Dri­ve on your iPhone.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Epic, 4‑Hour Video Essay on the Mak­ing & Mythol­o­gy of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

David Lynch Explains How Sim­ple Dai­ly Habits Enhance His Cre­ativ­i­ty

David Lynch Being a Mad­man for a Relent­less 8 Min­utes and 30 Sec­onds

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.