Michael Slovis spoke at Montclair State’s film forum on Sept. 13.
Photo courtesy of wikipedia.org
Michael Slovis, resident of Montclair and director of many famous shows such as “Breaking Bad,” “Game of Thrones,” “The Walking Dead,” “The Affair,” “Preacher,” gave a presentation at the weekly film forum on Tuesday, Sept. 13 regarding his past work.
Not only is Slovis an executive producer and a director of photography, he was nominated seven times for an Emmy and won once. He shared with the class his experiences in his career and how he originally worked on films and later went to television.
The presentation started with Slovis showing the class Episode 9 of “Preacher.” Slovis directed this particular episode, and after watching the episode, he talked about the filming process. The most impressive aspect of the episode was that he had to film it in nine days, and that episode was really well done. While talking about the episode, he explained how he had it planned out weeks in advance. The episode intrigued so many of the classmates, that it made people who have never seen the show want to watch it.
Upon discussing the episode and other television shows, Slovis said that every show takes weeks to plan and no show is easier to do than another one. For example, it would be easy for anyone to assume that writing and directing a show such as “Game of Thrones” or “The Walking Dead” would be easier than doing a show such as “30 Rock” or “Elementary.” However, Slovis explained that every show takes a lot of planning, and shows that do not have a lot of Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) or visual effects can be just as difficult to plan.
After talking about his experiences with his career and how he made a very successful career in television, he showed a clip of the Season 5 Premiere of “Game of Thrones.”
After the clip, he surprised the audience by sharing that the whole scene used absolutely no CGI. It was all practical effects, and his explanation of how they pulled it off was quite fascinating. He also showed a clip of “The Walking Dead,” and it was absolutely impressive to see what Slovis accomplished in the scene.
The film forum concluded with some questions regarding Slovis’ plans for the future. Slovis will be returning to “The Walking Dead” set in a couple of weeks, and he will be working on a project in Italy. The film forum was quite excellent on Tuesday, and as someone who is a huge fan of shows such as “Breaking Bad” and “Game of Thrones,” I can honestly say that it was a great privilege to be at this particular film forum.
