What's the difference between a studio director and an independent film director?

What's the difference between a studio director and an independent film director?

Ben Lyons (Producer) gives expert video advice on: What is 'scale'?; What different unions will I work with?; How can I get actors, make-up artists and crew to work for little or no money? and more...

There's no real difference between the director of an independent film and a studio film other than the resources that they have at their disposal. A studio director has a lot more to play with in terms of budget and resources than an independent filmmaker does. And a lot of directors do both. They direct a studio film to make money, like Stephen Soderberg will direct the Oceans movies to make money, and then go off to make Bubble which is an experimental art-house film, and he'll do it as an indie. Some filmmakers stay in a specific world. Michael Bay has always worked with Jerry Bruckheimer, and those guys are making studio films forever. Michael Bay is never going to do a little two-million dollar movie with a camera on his shoulder, he makes studio films. While other filmmakers and other directors, such as a guy named Ryan Fleck who did Half Nelson, are probably going to stay in that independent film world and will continue to work there. Just because a film is independent doesn't mean it's cheap, it doesn't mean that people aren't making money, and doesn't mean that they can't be extremely lucrative. So a lot of directors like to go back and forth between the two genres and the two styles of film, so they can express every part of their creative vision.