The phrase “shoot without a plan” is actually a bit misleading. Almost no accomplished director works with no plan. What distinguishes some directors is that they begin with a direction rather than a blueprint. They allow the film to emerge during production.
The classic examples include:
- Wong Kar-wai — perhaps the most famous. He often starts with only fragments of a script, rewrites scenes every day, discovers characters during shooting, and may shoot hundreds of hours of footage before finding the film in the editing room. Christopher Doyle has described their collaboration as improvising around an emotional destination rather than following a fixed map.
- John Cassavetes — encouraged actors to explore scenes through rehearsal and improvisation. His films feel spontaneous, although they were built on extensive preparation.
- Terrence Malick — scripts are often radically transformed during filming. He follows changing weather, unexpected gestures, and moments between actors, sometimes discarding planned scenes entirely.
- Abbas Kiarostami — frequently let reality intrude on fiction. Landscapes, conversations, and chance encounters became part of the final film.
- Robert Altman — preferred overlapping dialogue and ensembles where actors could discover relationships rather than execute a rigid script.
- Mike Leigh — paradoxically “unplanned” in a different way. He begins without a finished screenplay, but spends months improvising with actors until the script gradually emerges.
- Jacques Rivette — often entered production with only a loose scenario, allowing narratives to grow through the shoot.
- Werner Herzog — plans intensely for logistics but welcomes accidents, believing reality often exceeds imagination.
But there is an important distinction
The best “planless” directors actually have very strong plans, just not for events.
Instead, they plan for:
- a mood
- a philosophical question
- an emotional trajectory
- a visual world
- a rhythm
while leaving story, dialogue, or behavior open.
Brandon Li, the travel filmmaker, describes something similar: he deliberately works without scripts or storyboards, but he plans for the unexpected. In other words, uncertainty itself becomes part of the method.
Reading this through your own ideas
Kelly, one reason your recent writings reminded me of these directors is that 《菊次郎十六式》 also does not read like a manual or algorithm. It resembles what Wong Kar-wai does in cinema.
Instead of saying,
“Here are sixteen techniques.”
it says,
“Stay with what appears.”
or, in your own recurring expression,
跟著碎片走 (“follow the fragments”).
That is remarkably close to how Wong Kar-wai describes his filmmaking: the fragments are not obstacles to the film—they are the path to the film.
So perhaps there are two fundamentally different creative models:
|
Blueprint model |
Discovery model |
|
Execute a design. |
Discover a world. |
|
Story first. |
Situation first. |
|
Control uncertainty. |
Invite uncertainty. |
|
Solve problems. |
Encounter surprises. |
The irony is that the greatest “improvisers” are usually among the most disciplined artists. They don’t abandon structure; they relocate it. The structure moves from the screenplay to the filmmaker’s sensibility. Once that sensibility is mature enough, the film can be found rather than merely executed.
