{"id":48687,"date":"2018-07-09T17:06:37","date_gmt":"2018-07-10T00:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/?p=48687"},"modified":"2018-07-09T17:06:37","modified_gmt":"2018-07-10T00:06:37","slug":"mcneill-to-berman-i-want-to-direct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/2018\/07\/mcneill-to-berman-i-want-to-direct\/","title":{"rendered":"McNeill To Berman, I Want To Direct!"},"content":{"rendered":"

For Robert Duncan McNeill<\/strong>, being persistent led to his first directing project.<\/p>\n

By the time he was finished with Star Trek<\/em>, McNeill had directed four episodes of Voyager <\/em>and four episodes of Enterprise<\/em>. He then went on to direct other TV shows after Star Trek: Enterprise<\/em> concluded.<\/p>\n

On the first day of the Voyager pilot<\/em>, he went after Rick Berman<\/strong> in hopes of getting to direct an episode of the new show. “I said to Rick, ‘You know, Rick, I’ve been observing directors for a few years now, on different shows, but every show I get on seems to get canceled before we even complete a full season. So, I haven’t had a chance to direct on anything up until now. I’ve been shadowing and observing, and you guys have had a history of letting actors direct. So, I’m just letting you know…'”<\/p>\n

Berman was noncommittal. “Yeah, we’ll see,” he told McNeill. “In a couple of years. Let’s get the show going, and we’ll see.”<\/p>\n

But McNeill was not having that. “I was like, ‘No, no, I want to direct first season, because I’ve been on shows that got canceled,” he said. “As much as I believe this will run a long time, whatever it takes, I want try to direct as soon as possible. Will you let me know what I need to do?’ I think that first day he thought it was just a lot of talk. But I kept speaking to him. I talked to [Jonathan<\/strong>] Frakes<\/strong> and other people who’d done it. I started spending time in editing and screenings, particularly screenings when Rick was in the room. I wanted to hear what he liked, what he didn’t, how he thought, how things could’ve been directed better… All of that.”<\/p>\n

Even though McNeill had been learning how to direct, he increased his efforts, hoping to meet up to Berman’s unofficial requirements. He shadowed Les Landau<\/strong>, Frakes, and Rick Kolbe<\/strong>. “Because I’d been shadowing directors and I’d been on the set a long time, I felt like where I was learning the most was in the editing room, going to post, sitting in production meetings, listening to how all the department budgets worked,” he said. “Things like that.”<\/p>\n

McNeill was “excited…ready…[and] terrified when his turn came with the episode Sacred Ground<\/em>. “You run on adrenaline that first time or two, or twelve,” he said. “You don’t know what you don’t know when you start out directing. That’s good, in a way, because, you’re not locked into tricks and things you’ve done before.”<\/p>\n

Which show was he satisfied with his work the most? “Someone to Watch Over Me<\/em>,” he said. “I think that was my best episode. It had comedy. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to do not just one-hour dramas, but comedy, over the years, as a director. Though my background as an actor wasn’t heavy in comedy, I just feel comfortable in that genre. I like working on lighthearted scenes with actors and characters. I find it satisfying. I feel like I have a good radar for comedy.”<\/p>\n

Would McNeill direct Star Trek: Discovery<\/em> if the opportunity arose? “I wanted to direct Discovery<\/em>,” he said. Changing times though, might get in his way. “Discovery<\/em> does a limited number of episodes and a priority there is to get female and diverse directors, so there are fewer opportunities for people like me, which is a great thing. But, yeah, if the opportunity arose to direct Discovery<\/em> and I fit what they needed and it fit my schedule, I’d love to do it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Robert Duncan McNeill, being persistent led to his first directing project. By the time…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48688,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2413],"tags":[2463,3176],"class_list":["post-48687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cast-crew","tag-berman","tag-mcneill"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/RDMFBPageCBSGoogle070918.jpg",580,225,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/RDMFBPageCBSGoogle070918-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/RDMFBPageCBSGoogle070918.jpg",580,225,false],"medium_large":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/RDMFBPageCBSGoogle070918.jpg",580,225,false],"large":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/RDMFBPageCBSGoogle070918.jpg",580,225,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/RDMFBPageCBSGoogle070918.jpg",580,225,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/RDMFBPageCBSGoogle070918.jpg",580,225,false],"newsphere-slider-full":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/RDMFBPageCBSGoogle070918.jpg",580,225,false],"newsphere-featured":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/RDMFBPageCBSGoogle070918.jpg",580,225,false],"newsphere-medium":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/RDMFBPageCBSGoogle070918.jpg",580,225,false]},"author_info":{"display_name":"T'Bonz","author_link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/author\/tbonz\/"},"category_info":"Cast & Crew<\/a>","tag_info":"Cast & Crew","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48689,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48687\/revisions\/48689"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}