By Ola Martin Fjeld
Director & Founder of Antfarm
I love getting contracted as a director on other people’s productions, stepping into a new team, a new dynamic, and a new set of creative challenges. It forces me to listen first, observe, and then figure out how I best serve the project.
My experience gives me confidence to use my talents to the fullest. Fortunately, my skills peak when I meet a new team and start to explore how to bring their goals to the screen.
When I’m hired as a director, I feel it is important to understand that I’m building on someone else’s foundation. I don’t come in to bulldoze the vision. I come to bring what is already there to life.
The Fastest Director In the West
Sometimes, I arrive to a ready script, and I focus on casting, mood, rhythm, and performances. Other times, I arrive early in the production and can help shape the concept.
One time, a project hired me one week before shooting and two weeks before we needed to air on TV. Yep, it was a fun production.
Figuring It Out As I Go
There was a lot to wrap my head around and no time to plan it. We needed drone shots from Mexico City, but the entire crew and myself were shooting in Tijuana.
And on top of that, there were a lot of special effects to plan.
How To Direct In CDMX From Tijuana
So I remember this moment when I’m location scouting with a VR headset in Google Earth, sitting in my house, just virtually flying around Mexico City, trying to find buildings where giants (yes, super tall humans) could walk the streets.
I’m dropping pins, marking angles, and then sending everything to the operator in Mexico City. And he’s there on the ground, physically walking around and getting the drone shots I’m seeing through the VR headset. It felt like sci-fi filmmaking.
Then, back in my body in Tijuana, we started shooting at a café, next, we rushed the crew to the studio to shoot the “giants”; it must have been an 18-hour day.
There, we were using green screen for the giants, and we had made all these human-sized buildings. We built all the buildings the giants were passing, and moved the lights around to imitate the way shadows creep through the streets.
But since we didn’t really know which shots we would use, we just made modular blocks so that we could create whatever structure type we wanted based on what was in the clean plate the client decided on while shooting. Kind of like Lego.
When the giants walked, the imitation buildings would cast the correct shadows, so the sun direction would match when we composited the drone footage with the green screen shots. It worked great.
We delivered the commercial. The producers loved it, and it aired two weeks after I started.
Why I Excel As A Hired Director
In the end, what I always come back to is this: my brain is wired with an attitude that every problem can be solved. Every setback is just an opportunity in disguise.
Being 2,300 km away from the location shots I needed and no time to travel wasn’t a problem. It was a chance for me to try new techniques and do my part to make everything look good.
I work with focus, intensity, and the kind of pace that lets things actually get done. Big productions, small productions, I know how to step in, stabilize, and push forward.
Skills Beyond The Set
But directing isn’t just about creativity or calling the shots during filming. There’s a delicate relationship at the core of every production.
It relies on trust, on how we communicate with clients, on how we guide them while helping them achieve their vision. And that’s where producers sometimes feel cautious about bringing in a new director.
Directing is as much about communication as it is about craft. It’s about taking a client’s needs seriously, listening closely, and then shaping all that into something better than they imagined, while keeping the producer, the crew, and the whole machine in sync.
My job is to protect the creative intent, protect the client’s interests, and still move fast enough to hit impossible deadlines. That balance between speed, trust, clarity, and creativity is what I bring every time I’m hired.
