Sitting behind three large monitors, Norman Buckley peers carefully into the screens. While everyone else on set seems ready to roll, Buckley seems to sense something amiss. As someone yells the scene and take number and gets ready with the clapper, Buckley finally speaks up.
“They’re wearing the same color shirt,” said Buckley, a UCLA film professor and the director on set for a new Josh Schwartz-created Web series called “Rockville, CA.” “Have him change shirts.”
Changing this seemingly insignificant detail makes all the difference. Others might have let it slip, seeing that the crew had been on set for about 10 hours at this point, but Buckley’s suggestion saved the scene, turning it from something that looked awkward and staged to something more natural and realistic. But it’s no surprise ““ Buckley’s attention to detail can be attributed to the fact that he began his film career as an editor.
“I went to the University of Southern California, but I was also a very middle-class kid,” Buckley said. “Since I was working three part-time jobs in order to go to school, the only thing I could do was edit because I could do it on my own time. I kind of fell into it, but I seemed to have a natural aptitude for it; I could understand it intuitively, so I pursued it.”
Currently teaching a film editing class, Buckley has been balancing his teaching career and his work on television. Starting out by assisting editing on Oscar-winning films such as “Tender Mercies” and “Places in the Heart,” he eventually moved into editing for horror films.
“The great thing about horror films is that by virtue of their desire to make you think you’ve seen more than you have, it teaches you a real editorial sleight of hand,” Buckley said. “I think that editing really helped me be an effective director because it has taught me to think efficiently. I’m only shooting pieces that I know I’ll need for coverage. A lot of directors will do a master, two mediums, close-ups and cover every which way ““ I try not to do that. I try to really design a plan so I can shoot what I need. That’s something I learned from Hitchcock ““ trying to design a scene to get the maximum emotional impact.”
After awhile, Buckley decided to work behind the camera as a director. With direction credits for shows such as “The O.C.,” “Chuck,” “Gossip Girl” and “90210” on his resume, Buckley has helped turn many scripts into pop culture hits.
“I think that editing was something that I mastered as a craft,” Buckley said. “I don’t find myself daunted at all by the challenges of editing. I think in order to grow as a human being one needs to push oneself in areas where one is challenged. Certainly, directing challenges me more than editing at this point. There are so many variables in directing that you can’t predict; it has made me a more open, flexible human being.”
Drawing inspiration from films of the past, Buckley modernizes universal themes to portray our lives in retrospect of human history.
He mentioned that a lot of “Gossip Girl” is influenced by old Warner Brothers films of the 1930s and 1940s, while the Douglas Sirk films from the 1950s are referenced in “The O.C.”
“On most shows there is a style that is established by the creators of the show,” Buckley said. “I try to mold my style to the template of the show. The reason why I like working on this Web series is that we are making the style up as we go along. It’s a lot of fun to spread my wings, so to speak. For the most part, I look at a show to see what has been established by the creators of the show, what the pilot was like, and what I think is interesting and beautiful.”
At the same time, Buckley tries to stay on top of pop culture to create a better relationship between his shows and their audiences. Part of that comes from working with people from the age demographic of the television shows.
“It is my particular fortune that I could work with people who are 20 to 25 years younger than me,” Buckley said. “I stay very much abreast of pop culture through my collaborators and through my students. The reason why I like to teach is because I can stay abreast of what interests my students in my classes.”
With a lot on his plate and more to come, Buckley has no grand master plan except to take his next project as it comes along.
“I’m happy working on television,” Buckley said. “I’m just happy that I get to come to work and do what I love to do. I enjoy teaching; I think eventually I would like to retire and just teach somewhere. But if someone presented me with a great script tomorrow and said, “˜Here’s a feature, I want you to direct it,’ I certainly would be open to that. But for now, I’m just thrilled to be working on the shows I work on.”