How Steven Soderbergh Directs a Scene & Makes It Great

Steven Soder­bergh was one of the ear­li­est film­mak­ers to break out in what’s now called the “Indiewood” move­ment of the nine­teen-nineties. He was ear­ly enough, in fact, to have done so in the eight­ies, with the Palme d’Or-win­ning Sex, Lies, and Video­tape. His sub­se­quent films have been many and var­ied, even more so than those of his Indiewood peers Spike Lee, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Taran­ti­no. Some, like Schizopo­lis, Bub­ble, The Girl­friend Expe­ri­ence, and Let Them All Talk, have been more “indie”; oth­ers, like, Out of Sight, Erin Brock­ovich, and the Ocean’s and Mag­ic Mike series, have been more “Hol­ly­wood.” But wher­ev­er on the one-for-them-and-one-for-me spec­trum he’s worked, nev­er has he com­pro­mised on his craft.

To illu­mi­nate this ded­i­ca­tion, Evan Puschak, known on YouTube as the Nerd­writer, breaks down a scene from Soder­bergh’s lat­est pic­ture in the video above. Black Bag, which came out this past March, is a mid-bud­get thriller, a form that has proven fruit­ful for the direc­tor in recent decades.

It’s proven cre­ative­ly fruit­ful, at any rate, if not always finan­cial­ly; already, Soder­bergh him­self has pub­licly expressed his dis­ap­point­ment with the movie’s box-office per­for­mance. But if audi­ences have over­looked Black Bag, they haven’t done so due to its shod­dy work. In even one minor, tran­si­tion­al scene under two min­utes long, Puschak explains, we can iden­ti­fy numer­ous direc­to­r­i­al choic­es that make every­thing work effec­tive­ly.

Exam­in­ing each of the scene’s eleven shots (a bless­ed­ly patient edit­ing rhythm, by today’s stan­dards), Puschak points out Soder­bergh’s cuts, fram­ings, cam­era place­ments, move­ments, and focal lengths, explain­ing the rel­e­vance of each to the sto­ry play­ing out. This isn’t just a fan­boy’s auteurism: Soder­bergh always oper­ates his own cam­era and edits his own footage, cred­it­ing the jobs to pseu­do­nyms. That this prac­tice leaves his movies with a deep autho­r­i­al stamp, what­ev­er their sub­ject mat­ter or tar­get audi­ence, is obvi­ous; what’s less clear is how he’s man­aged to keep it up while mak­ing a fea­ture every year, on aver­age, since Sex, Lies, and Video­tape. If, after all this, you’re some­how not sold on watch­ing Black Bag, just wait for Soder­bergh’s next movie — which that most “effi­cient and cre­ative cin­e­mat­ic prob­lem solver” already fin­ished shoot­ing three months ago.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steven Soder­bergh Cre­ates Silent, Black & White Recut of Raiders of the Lost Ark to Explain the Art of “Stag­ing”

Why the Tav­ern Scene in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds Is a Mas­ter Class in Film­mak­ing

Two Ways To Shoot The Same Scene: A Com­par­i­son of The Shop Around the Cor­ner (1940) and You’ve Got Mail (1998) Shows How Film­mak­ing Changed Over the Decades

The Scene That Reveals the Beau­ty of Clas­sic Hol­ly­wood Cin­e­ma

Anato­my of a Scene: 100+ Film­mak­ers Like Wes Ander­son, Tim Bur­ton & Rid­ley Scott Break Down a Scene from Each of Their Films

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.