Alan Poul on directing "The Back-Up Plan"

(Alan Poul): I did rehearsals.  Before we even started I did a week of Rehearsals with just Jennifer and Alex.  So that we wouldn't have to...because you never shoot a movie in sequence...and so that we could all feel that we were on the same page about what the arcs of each of their characters, and of the relationship were.  So that when you show up on the day you don't have to say, 'Well now wait this scene comes after that scene and that scene and after this she's gonna go here, and so how angry would she be'...all that discussion and all that rehearsal took place before we even started and they both have tremendous sense memory, so I never had to worry that they would walk out on set and not have internalized where in the journey they were as we had pinpointed in the rehearsal. 

(AP): But then again from there if we say, 'Well you know, because that scene we did two weeks ago played a little hotter than we thought, maybe this one needs to go a little more towards comedy than we had talked about in the rehearsal,' but we shared the baseline from which we could improvise a little bit.

(AP) In television you have to be prepared within an inch of your life because your days are so heavily scheduled.  You're shooting average five, six pages of script per day.  So you have to really know every shot before you go in.  And not only know every shot, you have to know at each point in the day, 'Am I a half hour behind? Am I a half hour ahead?  If I'm a half hour ahead, can I add a shot?  If I'm a half hour behind can I drop a shot?'  So that kind of regimentation was burned into my brain, and that meant that...I'm pretty obsessive about preparing anyway...so I came in each day knowing exactly what I was going to do.  The great thing about features, and that you have to remember, is that because you have a little more time, that when inspiration strikes in the moment, or when you see something that gives you a new perspective on a scene that you actually have the time to switch horses and say 'Oh my god, no.  I'm not going to shoot this scene this way.  I'm going to go on the other side of the line and I'm going to use my cameras this way.'  Or 'I'm going to drop that steady cam idea I had...if we have a crane we're going to do a crane shot'...and you can actually, if you're prepared, the latitude you have in making a movie will allow you to be spontaneous where it's going to make the movie better.

(AP) The really fun part of post is when you're doing your director's cut.  When you have ten weeks to sit in a room with your editor and just hide, and just pour over every foot of the film, and put it together, and you become intimately acquainted with every cut, and what frame the cut should be on.  The hard part I think for any director is...you've basically made a baby that you have all the fierce, protective feelings towards, and lack of objectivity that you would have towards a child.  And then there comes the moment when you have to hand it over, and let the light of day in, and suddenly you have the studio, with the best of intentions, looking at the baby and saying 'Yes it's a very beautiful baby but I think we should chop the head off and move it over here, and what if it had three arms, and what if the butt was on top of the head,' and that's really hard.

(AP) Editing is a rewrite, because you shoot what's on paper very faithfully, but then when you string the pieces of film together they're never going to behave exactly the way you intended them to.  There's always a certain aspect where the film begins to take on a life of its own and begins to tell you what it wants to be.  And so the story is the same but we definitely re-shaped the narrative over the course of both productions.