Jack Bender - TV Director

Jack Bender

Best known for his work on Lost, The Sopranos and Game of Thrones, Jack Bender was born in 1949 and in his career has accrued over 70 credits as a Director, this is a massive achievement as many Directors only gaining a dozen or more (J.J Abrams has 12 credits as Director)

Bender started out his career as an actor and then in his twenties when he became a theatre director, He wrote and directed a short film called "A Real Naked Lady" that won some awards. He then caught the attention of John Hausman who was a big name back then, he gave Jack a job as dialogue coach and eventually got him his first directing job and his career started from there.

After a while he moved onto directing films along with TV shows, he co-produced lost and directed numerous episodes including the finale, Bender states in his AMA that his attitude to directing is if he is compelled by the story and the characters, then he is interested in the project.

Bender prefers to spend his time directing focusing on powerful imagery rather than pretty visuals or clever use of camera movement, one of his favourite shots is in the Tv show Lost he was asked to direct the episode Exodus Part 1, in one of the episodes one of the characters is leaving the island, he had the idea of having Vincent the dog swimming after the raft, knowing it would be a heart breaking scene, He had the dog trainer guide the dog to swim after the raft.

Jack Bender also likes to film things in threes, he states that it comes from a time before digital footage became the common medium and if you wanted to increase the size you would see all the grain, because of this he would film three different close ups. I like this idea as it gives you more freedom in the final edit.

What becomes more apparent about Jack Bender’s style is he doesn’t always focus on visuals, he does not focus on camera movements, colour contrasts or visual effects, Bender focuses on the story and the act of telling that story on a television medium, he states at a keynote speech in Rio that he see’s Television as “Telling A Vision”.

Bender also likes to work with Mise-En-Scene, such as in the series lost he wanted the flashbacks of a character to be a dull beige, he instructed the prop department to have no plants or anything green or blue in the shot, since these were the main colours of the island, this way there was a bigger contrast between the past and the present.

Jack feels that a good show or film doesn’t believe in style over content, he believes that they should merge together rather than have a film with really cool and interesting shots but nothing  happening within the scene.

When asked about stress Bender talks about his way of working is to just put one foot infront of the other and if you make a mistake or screw something up, do better the next day, I like this way of thinking as I realise a problem for me is getting over setbacks.

What I would like to take from Bender is his attention to detail and story, rather than focus on cool shots or clever uses of camera movement to also spend some time working on the story and making what’s happening in the scene important instead of spending all my time and energy on the camera.