Dan Attias, Emmy-nominated director and author of Directing Great Television: Inside TV’s New Golden Age

Dan Attias has directed dozens of episodes of critically acclaimed
television shows such as The Wire, The Sopranos, Homeland, The
Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Americans, Billions, and many more. His
years of experience led him to write the book, Directing Great
Television: Inside TV's New Golden Age. The book is not only for
those who want to direct, but also for fans who want to know how
these shows are made. In college, Dan studied acting and had to
make a short film as part of his film studies. He found he enjoyed
being behind the camera as a director, and continued to study film
with an eye to directing. Dan started working on several big movies
as an assistant director, such as E.T., One From the Heart,
Airplane! and Twilight Zone: The Movie. His first directing job was
on Stephen King's Silver Bullet, a werewolf horror movie produced
by Dino De Laurentiis. Dan finds the best way to approach directing
a television show is to get invested in the story by finding what
interests you in the script. In series television, directors often
don't even get the script until a few days before they're going to
direct it. If the show already exists, Dan likes to immerse himself
in the show, watching several episodes and asking the production to
send over past scripts. Directing one episode of a long-running
show is like writing just one chapter of a novel- it needs to fit
in seamlessly to the entire story, while still feeling compelling
and propelling the story forward. A director of episodic TV has to
balance making it their story while still executing the
showrunner's vision and honoring the intention of the writers. Dan
also likes to explore every scene of the episode he's directing
with the writers during a tone meeting. He often asks, what is the
story being told? The story isn't simply what happens, but the
meaning that you give to what happens- where you're directing the
audience's focus. Make sure you keep asking yourself, how does it
make me feel? The director must be able to dig down with the actors
and come up with an interesting subtext to the story if the scene
needs a boost. Find Dan Attias: www.danattias.com Directing Great
Television: Inside TV's New Golden Age is available on Amazon. WIN
an autographed copy of Directing Great Television! Follow us on
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