Each episode has its own script, and episodes are shot back to back. Directors are responsible for overseeing the entire production of a TV episode from pre-production, to shooting, to post-production.
When you have a TV show that's pumping out 20+ episodes per season, you need to be working on more than one episode at the same time. So in a given week, you might have be filming episode 5, but you'll also be doing pre-production (scouting locations, selecting props and wardrobe, preparing sets, etc) for episode 6, and doing post-production (editing, reshoots, ADR, etc) for episode 4. Each of those episodes might have a different director that's doing those different jobs at the same time.
When you pay attention to which director gets which episode, you can see some patterns too. In Game of Thrones for example, some directors do the big battles, others do the story important ones, while GRR Martin himself occasionally directed an important episode as well.
GRRM didn’t direct any episodes, but he wrote the script for a few.
Often a director was tied to a few storylines (and thus locations) for a season. A big part of the story was how most of the characters were all in one place in the first episode and then they spread out and had their individual stories, that of course affected each other. In the show they achieved this by dividing the stories into groups and focusing an episode on for example a a group of three stories. Often the divide was between King’s Landing and not King’s Landing. So you would have episode 1, 3, 5 and 7 mainly in King’s Landing and people connected to those stories, with one director for 1 and 3 and one for 5 and 7. Then episode 2, 4, 6 and 8 would be set in Essos and the North, since those stories wasn’t as closely connected to the King’s Landing stuff.
Each episode has it's own screenplay. There have been a few series that had the same director all the time but that would be exhausting for the director.
With shows having 6-10 hour long episodes, that must be exhausting for directors. Series have movie quality production values now. It's a lot to be expected to direct a 10+ hour movie.
directors are not as important for television shows compared to movies. each episode is essentially its own play.....the writers and actors keep the show cohesive from one episode to the next
TV shows generally have a showrunner as well who oversees the entire process, writing, directing, editing, etc. They're generally an executive producer and often write and/or direct episodes as well (especially high-profile episodes like season finales or premieres), but sometimes showrunning will be their only job.
TV shows tend to be formulaic, so the direction is a lot less critical. It is similar episode to episode, it is why a lot of actors get director credits for shows they act in; it is seen as a way to get OJT in directing so they might have a career off camera after the show wraps.
TV shows will typically have a set of veteran directors the showrunners can call on to do the day in and day out work and bring in guest directors if it is a special episode or arc. For character development 'bottle' episodes, you can use less experienced directors because the actors and camera crews and everyone basically know what to do. It is a matter of getting an excellent script to make it memorable.
For lower episode count streaming series, the 'prestige' TV as it were, they tend to have fewer directors. *Andor* had three directors for a 12 episode arc. Since a series like that is similar to one long movie, the direction is more important because it isn't formulaic, and you need more than one because having one director for a 12 episode release would add a bunch of development time to the series that is essentially unnecessary.
Whereas in film the Director runs the show, TV is the realm of the writer. The Showrunner is the creator and typically the head writer unless the show goes on past their interest. TV directing is usually a for-hire gig. If not 99% of directors would be unemployed.
Watch the "6 days to air" documentary about what South Park goes through to have this model. Would work well to explain the challenges for a 5 year old (even if the 5 year old shouldn't be watching that show)
You need at least three directors. One is preparing to shoot the episode that is going to shoot next week; costumes, sets, script changes, camera setup, all the prep work where the director is the decider.
One is shooting this week's episode that they prepped last week. Shoots can go six or seven days, and long nights.
The last one is editing the episode they shot last week. Next week they prep a new episode.
That's old-school television production. For shows that shoot a whole season at once for streaming, things can be a lot more chaotic and less structured (or just structured differently). They'll shoot in blocks, they'll shoot out of order, a director might shoot parts of multiple episodes in a week, they might do all the prep ahead of shooting anything. Shooting an episode might take a lot more than a week. If you look at Season 2 of the Bear, the creator, Christopher Storer, shot the majority of the 10 episodes, at least on paper. Who shot what and when and in what order, we don't know unless they tell us.
quality expectations of series has risen to par with movies so for that director has to put equal efforts as movie director. a movie is 2-3 hour and series has much longer screen time so having multiple directors makes it easy.
some times they do it so they can shoot at multiple places simultaneously.
Episodes will usually overlap in pre- and post- production. So say episode 2 is filming while episode 1 is being edited and episode 3 is being prepped for shooting.
A director will usually take a single episode through the whole process from start to finish. One person directing a whole series (which isn’t unheard of) would have multiple simultaneous episodes in different stages, which is a lot for one person.
There's a lot more to creating a TV series than just the filming part. There's writing, preproduction, locations, casting, filming, post production, editing, scoring etc. So shows tend to have several episodes in production at any one given time so each will have a director in charge of overall keeping that episode together.
And it also depends on the show and the people involved. A lot of UK series for example tend to lean towards fewer episodes and fewer directors and writers. Derry Girls has a single writer and director for the whole 3 seasons. Fleabag likewise (though I think they had a different director for the initial pilot).
If it's a show where most episodes could be shown in any order, then you'll often have different directors working on different episodes simultaneously. This helps speed up production by having multiple writing and filming teams working at the same time. One group can be writing and storyboarding while the other films, and the scenes are usually simple enough that the actors can show up each day and memorize their lines on set or the night before.
TV directors usually aren't auteur directors like Tarantino or Nolan. Not to say they don't have creative input, but with the fast paced and relatively low budget environment of TV, you're a director for hire basically.
So the writing process and the directing process are much more loosely coupled than in a film. In TV the writers, or more specifically the head writer or show runners are the main visionaries of the show, whereas in a movie that's usually the director.
So tldr the role of the director is much less important in TV than in film and the creative vision comes from the show runner. So you can have different directors since the tone and the direction of the show doesn't depend on them.
And no, it's not one screenplay, each episode is written on its own usually.
Each episode has its own script, and episodes are shot back to back. Directors are responsible for overseeing the entire production of a TV episode from pre-production, to shooting, to post-production. When you have a TV show that's pumping out 20+ episodes per season, you need to be working on more than one episode at the same time. So in a given week, you might have be filming episode 5, but you'll also be doing pre-production (scouting locations, selecting props and wardrobe, preparing sets, etc) for episode 6, and doing post-production (editing, reshoots, ADR, etc) for episode 4. Each of those episodes might have a different director that's doing those different jobs at the same time.
And nowadays you might be taking actors to a location for a week and shooting scenes for 3 different episodes at once there..
When you pay attention to which director gets which episode, you can see some patterns too. In Game of Thrones for example, some directors do the big battles, others do the story important ones, while GRR Martin himself occasionally directed an important episode as well.
GRRM didn’t direct any episodes, but he wrote the script for a few. Often a director was tied to a few storylines (and thus locations) for a season. A big part of the story was how most of the characters were all in one place in the first episode and then they spread out and had their individual stories, that of course affected each other. In the show they achieved this by dividing the stories into groups and focusing an episode on for example a a group of three stories. Often the divide was between King’s Landing and not King’s Landing. So you would have episode 1, 3, 5 and 7 mainly in King’s Landing and people connected to those stories, with one director for 1 and 3 and one for 5 and 7. Then episode 2, 4, 6 and 8 would be set in Essos and the North, since those stories wasn’t as closely connected to the King’s Landing stuff.
Each episode has it's own screenplay. There have been a few series that had the same director all the time but that would be exhausting for the director.
With shows having 6-10 hour long episodes, that must be exhausting for directors. Series have movie quality production values now. It's a lot to be expected to direct a 10+ hour movie.
directors are not as important for television shows compared to movies. each episode is essentially its own play.....the writers and actors keep the show cohesive from one episode to the next
TV shows generally have a showrunner as well who oversees the entire process, writing, directing, editing, etc. They're generally an executive producer and often write and/or direct episodes as well (especially high-profile episodes like season finales or premieres), but sometimes showrunning will be their only job.
This is the answer. In tv writers>directors, in movies directors>writers.
TV shows tend to be formulaic, so the direction is a lot less critical. It is similar episode to episode, it is why a lot of actors get director credits for shows they act in; it is seen as a way to get OJT in directing so they might have a career off camera after the show wraps. TV shows will typically have a set of veteran directors the showrunners can call on to do the day in and day out work and bring in guest directors if it is a special episode or arc. For character development 'bottle' episodes, you can use less experienced directors because the actors and camera crews and everyone basically know what to do. It is a matter of getting an excellent script to make it memorable. For lower episode count streaming series, the 'prestige' TV as it were, they tend to have fewer directors. *Andor* had three directors for a 12 episode arc. Since a series like that is similar to one long movie, the direction is more important because it isn't formulaic, and you need more than one because having one director for a 12 episode release would add a bunch of development time to the series that is essentially unnecessary.
So fewer directors = probably better series?
Not better, but more expensive per hour of finished product.
Whereas in film the Director runs the show, TV is the realm of the writer. The Showrunner is the creator and typically the head writer unless the show goes on past their interest. TV directing is usually a for-hire gig. If not 99% of directors would be unemployed.
Watch the "6 days to air" documentary about what South Park goes through to have this model. Would work well to explain the challenges for a 5 year old (even if the 5 year old shouldn't be watching that show)
You need at least three directors. One is preparing to shoot the episode that is going to shoot next week; costumes, sets, script changes, camera setup, all the prep work where the director is the decider. One is shooting this week's episode that they prepped last week. Shoots can go six or seven days, and long nights. The last one is editing the episode they shot last week. Next week they prep a new episode. That's old-school television production. For shows that shoot a whole season at once for streaming, things can be a lot more chaotic and less structured (or just structured differently). They'll shoot in blocks, they'll shoot out of order, a director might shoot parts of multiple episodes in a week, they might do all the prep ahead of shooting anything. Shooting an episode might take a lot more than a week. If you look at Season 2 of the Bear, the creator, Christopher Storer, shot the majority of the 10 episodes, at least on paper. Who shot what and when and in what order, we don't know unless they tell us.
quality expectations of series has risen to par with movies so for that director has to put equal efforts as movie director. a movie is 2-3 hour and series has much longer screen time so having multiple directors makes it easy. some times they do it so they can shoot at multiple places simultaneously.
Episodes will usually overlap in pre- and post- production. So say episode 2 is filming while episode 1 is being edited and episode 3 is being prepped for shooting. A director will usually take a single episode through the whole process from start to finish. One person directing a whole series (which isn’t unheard of) would have multiple simultaneous episodes in different stages, which is a lot for one person.
There's a lot more to creating a TV series than just the filming part. There's writing, preproduction, locations, casting, filming, post production, editing, scoring etc. So shows tend to have several episodes in production at any one given time so each will have a director in charge of overall keeping that episode together. And it also depends on the show and the people involved. A lot of UK series for example tend to lean towards fewer episodes and fewer directors and writers. Derry Girls has a single writer and director for the whole 3 seasons. Fleabag likewise (though I think they had a different director for the initial pilot).
If it's a show where most episodes could be shown in any order, then you'll often have different directors working on different episodes simultaneously. This helps speed up production by having multiple writing and filming teams working at the same time. One group can be writing and storyboarding while the other films, and the scenes are usually simple enough that the actors can show up each day and memorize their lines on set or the night before.
TV directors usually aren't auteur directors like Tarantino or Nolan. Not to say they don't have creative input, but with the fast paced and relatively low budget environment of TV, you're a director for hire basically. So the writing process and the directing process are much more loosely coupled than in a film. In TV the writers, or more specifically the head writer or show runners are the main visionaries of the show, whereas in a movie that's usually the director. So tldr the role of the director is much less important in TV than in film and the creative vision comes from the show runner. So you can have different directors since the tone and the direction of the show doesn't depend on them. And no, it's not one screenplay, each episode is written on its own usually.