Artistic creation is often a turbulent, chaotic and all around messy process, but in her work at Sundance, Michelle Satter, Founding Director of the Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program, guides it with a time-tested aura of intelligence, patience and calm. She has developed the Feature Film Program into a year-round system of artist support that counts such filmmakers as Kimberly Peirce, Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Tony Bui, Miguel Arteta, Julie Taymor and Rodrigo Garcia as its alumni. She has also spearheaded the Institute’s international initiatives in Latin America and Europe as well as developed its NHK International Filmmakers Award. Satter is also one of the most ear-to-the-ground figures in the world of independent film, continually aware of new on-the-verge-of-breaking talent. Scott Macaulay spoke to Satter about, among other things, the rhythms, rituals and successes of the Sundance Filmmaker Labs.

You said something interesting to me earlier about the Sundance June Directors Lab, that they have a three-act structure. Can you elaborate on that? The Lab has a great and interesting rhythm to it. The first week of the Lab is an introduction to the filmmakers, their directing issues and needs, where they should focus their work at the Lab, and a sense of who they are as people and how they learn. In that first week much is revealed — we learn about the people we’re dealing with, and we begin to focus on how we can most help each of them as filmmakers. The second week becomes the week of interesting complications. Other issues and areas of need are revealed. The second week is full of surprise and subplots.

That’s the week you’re in right now? Yes. It’s a very intriguing week. The third week, because it’s the end of the Directors Lab, is, we hope, the week of resolution. I’m talking now about a very conventional narrative structure [laughs], and what’s wonderful is the work of the Lab has a flow that we can count on and sometimes be surprised by. And we’re always open to the fractured narrative as well! But the intent of the Lab is for the directors to leave with confidence in what they know and to have a clear sense about what they don’t know yet. The resolution often is simply about giving these filmmakers the confidence and inspiration to continue to grow, to know that directing and storytelling are life-long pursuits, really.

How self-aware do you think people are of their needs when they come in? Everyone’s different. I think people are often self-aware of their needs but sometimes they’re not aware of the depth of those needs, and the Lab reveals that.

What’s an area that people often aren’t aware that they need to develop? I don’t like to generalize, but most people come into the Directors Lab terrified of working with actors. They haven’t had the experience, they don’t yet know the language, and they don’t understand the physical and emotional experience of being an actor. You can’t in four weeks teach someone how to direct actors, but you can give them tools. Another thing: a lot of the Lab is focused on how the visual language of film emanates from the story you’re telling. What’s the story about? That’s a big piece of the learning process here — using that as your starting point. Knowing where to put the camera and finding a visual style for the film are also areas of great focus at the Lab. What you begin to see as the Lab evolves is a learning curve where the scenes become clearer and more focused as the weeks go by.

Do you think there’s something radical about this kind of focus on the writer/director in today’s world where so many independents want to go on and make studio films? When they make this jump, they have to learn that the creative process is a very different one when work is being developed within a studio. That’s absolutely true when making studio films, but we’re not preparing someone to make a studio film, we’re preparing someone to make what is often their first independent film. I like to think about it in terms of story. If you have a story that you are passionate to tell, where should that story live? Does that story work as a documentary film or as a short story? Is it an independent film, a studio film, or is it a play? You have to focus on finding the most compelling way to tell your story and then think about the realities of the marketplace, when you’re at the stage where the focus changes to getting the film made.

What was the idea behind creating the Feature Film Program in the first place? Well, it was launched in 1981 as the first initiative of Sundance Institute. The Directors Lab was established as a model for providing creative support to emerging filmmakers in their work to realize the most compelling possible version of their own unique stories in an environment removed from marketplace pressures.

People don’t know that we are a year-round program and that each year we support around 20 emerging filmmakers from the U.S. and abroad through our Screenwriters and Directors Labs in Sundance, Utah. Following the Labs, these filmmakers are offered ongoing creative and strategic advice, significant post-production resources — including rough cut screenings with advisors — and direct artist support through project-specific mini-grants and fellowships. Over the years we have supported nearly 200 independent films including Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s Half Nelson, Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know, Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now, Tamara Jenkins’ Slums of Beverly Hills,, John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Kimberly Peirce’s Boys Don’t Cry, Walter Salles’ Central Station, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight, and Chris Eyre’s Smoke Signals.

Has the structure of the June Lab changed over the years?It has always evolved ever since that first Lab in 1981. Originally, there was the Screenwriters Lab at the beginning of the month for a week, the Directors Lab for two weeks, and then a Producers Conference at the end. We found out very quickly that the screenplays weren’t really ready for the kind of testing and work that goes on in the Director’s Lab [so soon after the Screenwriters Lab]. The directors were less confident in their scripts because they had just so intensively re-examined them. It was hard for them to have the energy to work with actors when they knew that the scene didn’t work. So we moved the Screenwriters Lab to January, and, now, many of the projects that we support in January we support again in June. We also realized that starting with the Screenwriters Lab in June would be of less value than ending with the Screenwriters Lab, which sounds counter-intuitive but it’s not. A writer/director might be more open during the Screenwriters Lab [to script suggestions] if he or she went through the Directors Lab first. Filmmakers are then invited back in late July to participate in a Composers Lab focusing on music in film and the Producers Conference to learn about the business of getting films made.

What are the specific sorts of things directors learn about their scripts in the Directors Lab as opposed to the Screenwriters Lab? Most scripts are overwritten, and they realize that, when using visual images, all that dialogue isn’t necessary. It’s a very simple note: “Show me, don’t tell me.” They sometimes realize that they don’t really know who a character is or what the intent of a scene is, and how one scene relates to the next. Much of the learning goes on in the editing room where they see that images are very powerful. Additionally, each script is read by the company of actors giving the writers information about the flow of the whole script. The Screenwriters Lab becomes an incredible opportunity to take all that’s learned in the Directors Lab and further examine the script. By the end of the process, when filmmakers get to the Screenwriters Lab, they’re really in a different place and much more open to the hard work of rewriting.

What’s the structure of the Screenwriters Lab?Each writer who comes to the Lab has the opportunity to meet one-on-one with six advisors. They get six different points of view on the script, all individual meetings. They are not note sessions. They are engaged in dialogues about the script — often an interrogative approach to discussing a script. The meetings can last from one to five hours. And the advisors read the material very, very carefully. They are coming in not to impose their vision on the material but to help the writers more fully realize their visions. At night we show films by advisors who talk about the writing process and the specific challenges they faced in their work. And in the summer we have an extraordinary man named Stewart Stern (Rebel Without a Cause, The Ugly American) who engages the participants in an intensive writing workshop, which is all about bringing their unconscious forward, learning more about their characters and exploring who they are and the key relationships in their life. It’s also about learning more about their connection to the story. Many breakthroughs are experienced during this workshop which have made a difference in participants getting to the next level of writing.

Are people prepared when they come here for what they’re going to hear? I can understand people wanting to have that Sundance imprint on their project but maybe not fully processing what they have to do to get it. Sundance is hard work [laughs]. And I don’t think people really do know the depth of the experience of a Lab, and how much we are really about process and not result. I think we live in a world that is about result and self-promotion. If you’re a filmmaker, you’ve got to spend all this time saying, “I can do it, I have all the answers.” Sundance is a place where you are asked to take risks, learn from your mistakes, and allow yourself to hear criticism in a different way than you’ve probably heard it before.

How does the physical environment of the resort here play into it? How is the Lab different here than if you were doing the same program in New York or LA? It’s remote, and most cell phones don’t work [laughs], including mine. People are a little out of touch with their lives, which is great. It’s a beautiful environment and when days get really tough, you can walk around and see this extraordinary place. It’s an incredible community that’s really hard to create in New York and L.A. because people go home [at the end of the day there]. People here have meals together, and they realize they’re not the only person going through the experience of trying to find out how to get their stories out in the world.

Since you have a certain amount of industry clout, does that clout ever come into play as a mediator on projects that have come through the Labs? We did have an impact on the final version of Hard Eight. Paul [Thomas Anderson] had a cut of his film and the company that financed it did a cut of the film, and we looked at both cuts for the Festival. We’re obviously not going to show a film where the director doesn’t support the cut. Paul’s cut of the film was the cut that we screened and ultimately was the cut that got released. We often have these deep relationships with filmmakers and we’ll see a film and give really honest feedback. We’re a neutral voice in giving feedback on the work that we feel needs to be done. We’ve been in situations where we’ve helped lots of filmmakers who weren’t getting the support that they needed from their producers. Or, sometimes, the filmmaker was out of ideas and needed help. Or, the post-production budget was used up. It’s a role we like to play because we can really help the filmmaker get the film to the most fully realized version of their film. We worked with at least 10 films this year in post-production through a series of cuts providing staff and advisor feedback.

The politics of that must get very complicated. It’s complicated, but we don’t get into the politics of it. We’re about the work. For one of our projects that we supported this year, we said to the filmmaker, “You’re not done. This isn’t as good as it could be.” And the one thing I want to be clear about: they can take or leave our feedback. We’re not dictating anything. Our feedback may not be about solutions – it may be about a series of questions or identifying what doesn’t work yet. So, we went back to the company that had financed it and said, “Look, don’t force the filmmaker to lock picture. It’s not ready. It’s a disservice to the film. We’ll even put money into it. Through a grant we provided from our new Annenberg Film Fellowship Program, you’ll get three to four weeks more of editing time.” And you know what? They continued editing and the director worked hard to get to what I believe is a terrific film, and that felt great.

Since you’ve been doing this from the beginning, has your personal relationship to your work changed in terms of what you get out of it? I feel very lucky that I still love what I do. I love film, and I can’t think of anything that I would rather do than support unique voices at an early time in their careers. I also love being in a generous environment, and Sundance is one of the few places that creates what I feel is a culture of generosity. We live in a world that is more interconnected and smaller than it’s ever been, but also more disconnected than it’s ever been. On the deepest level, Sundance is to me about the power of being connected and being in an environment that encourages and honors process and creativity. Sundance can, through the selection of its projects, provide windows into other cultures and into challenges that we all face when finding our place in the world. At Sundance I feel I can have an impact on getting stories out into the world that not will not necessarily change the world but will illuminate the human condition.