What matters in practice
In feature films, direction suggests working with actors. In corporate production there are no actors. In front of the camera stand a site manager, a product developer, a foreman. People who are very good at their work and have rarely practised talking about it. That is where most of the directing effort goes.
What direction actually does on the day
- Building trust before the camera rolls. The first few minutes of an interview are almost never usable. Skip them and you will not get the rest either.
- Asking questions that produce whole sentences. The question is not audible in the finished film, so the answer has to stand on its own. “Yes, exactly” is a perfectly good reply and a useless soundbite.
- Editing in advance. Continuity, cutaways, a margin of extra material. Whatever is not filmed on the day is gone for good.
- Cutting things when time runs short. This is the only genuinely hard decision of the day: which two of eight planned shots can go without the film losing its point.
Where it stops
Direction is neither camera nor production management. In small crews one person covers several of these roles. That shortens decision-making but has a price: nobody is then looking purely at content. Beyond a certain project size the split is worth paying for.
What clients can contribute
The smaller the audience on set, the better the interviews. If the managing director is listening, employees speak differently: more politely, more generally, less usefully. Feedback on content is welcome, but between takes and not in front of the person who has just spoken.