I was listening to an interview with Louis CK earlier in the week. The interview itself is fairly mediocre, but there was a question and answer session at the end that was very good. The Q&A session is nearly half of the whole video linked below, and I highly recommend it.
I've been thinking about one thing he said in the Q&A session. First, a little background.
Louis CK has a television show on FX called Louie [wiki] [imdb] [official site]. It's a dark comedy, hard to describe, and there is nothing else like it on television. In part, this is because Louis CK is the writer, director, main actor, and editor (!) of the entire series. As such, he has incredible creative control over the whole series (he points out that FX has, legally, the ability to do anything they want to with the series, but he has a verbal agreement that they won't interfere with how the series is made.
In one of the questions, he described his writing process. One of the problems with the modern TV show, is that it is overwritten, for the most part. There is a rough draft, it gets sent over to a team of writers, and perfected, and perfected, and perfected. The issue with that, is that everything is perfected in the same direction. And it lends a sameness to all of the shows on TV these days.
So what he does is write everything, get it out in a rough draft format, and just leave it. He does very little re-writing or script revisions. (One of the things this helps with is keeping that initial spark of an idea intact.)
Then later, during the directing, he is very meticulous about how he deconstructs the script and splits it up into scenes, not just in terms of blocking out the scenes, but also working with the cinematographer to get exactly the right lens for the scene to get the optical effect he wants that scene to have.
It's almost as if the re-write is taking place during the production, but in a more principled, disciplined fashion, because he was the original writer! He's not just going in and rewriting (have you ever rewritten someone else's work? It's hard!), he's working with the script and bringing it to life.
And of course, he does the editing, which is absolutely critical. Editing is what gives a film a fine grained sense of emotional tone. Holding a cut a frame or two too long, or cutting something up a frame or two too short, can just destroy the emotional connection the viewer has with the movie.
Here's a great example of what I mean (although it focuses on physical comedy, which is only one small aspect of what I am talking about.)
To maintain that emotional connection with the viewer, it really is all about every single little detail. Everything matters, even the things you had no idea could possibly matter.