Directing Styles Explained: How Paul Thomas Anderson Directs a Movie (Early Career)

We explore Paul Thomas Anderson's movies and the trademark style of his early films like Magnolia, Boogie Nights, Punch Drunk Love, and Hard Eight.
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01:39 - Chapter 1 - Story
03:56 - Chapter 2 - Production Design
05:52 - Chapter 3 - Color
08:12 - Chapter 4 - Cinematography
10:01 - Chapter 5 - Editing
13:36 - Chapter 6 - Sound Design
16:29 - Chapter 7 - Music
19:47 - Recap
Paul Thomas Anderson is a singular filmmaker with a voice that feels familiar and wholly original at the same time. His passion for film and filmmaking is visible on-screen and his constant evolution is something most of us are still trying to wrap our heads around. In this episode of our Directing Styles series, we turn to the first four features in Paul Thomas Anderson’s career. Naturally, we’ll cover his later work in Part Two.
Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love - if PT Anderson’s career had ended there, we would still have a lot to talk about. But what can we learn from the way Anderson directed these movies? This is our humble attempt to understand Paul Thomas Anderson movies by looking at them through the seven main elements of film directing.
If we look at the stories he’s telling, Paul Thomas Anderson is clearly interested in the family, in all shapes and forms. From broken homes to surrogate families, and from nagging sisters to finding true love. If we consider Anderson’s production design, we also find a pattern in how he uses domestic spaces (homes, apartments, motel rooms, etc.) as the natural environment for these stories and characters. Think about the interior of Eddie’s bedroom in Boogie Nights, how his walls are adorned with not just “typical teenager stuff,” but with very specific content that illustrates Eddie’s backstory without a single word of dialogue.
Nobody uses a moving camera quite like Paul Thomas Anderson, from the subtle adjustments to the extreme push-ins. But these aren’t flashy techniques for their own sake - they’re always in service of the character and their particular emotions. In Magnolia, on an extremely awkward date, Jim and Claudia kiss as the camera rushes in to match the adrenaline Jim must be feeling at that moment. PT Anderson certainly has his fair share of heavily-edited moments but it is his long takes that are truly special. Again, he’s not trying to show off, it’s just that to cut away from a character in a moment of emotional catharsis would be to deny them that release.
Music plays a huge role in Paul Thomas Anderson movies, both in their integration with the plot but in how entire sequences are presented. Look no further than the clicks, pops, scratches, and chaos on the soundtrack in Punch-Drunk Love. As Barry flails in his anxiety, Anderson puts us in the same exact and literal headspace as Barry. But then it smooths out completely when Barry finds love and we are transported into something like a classic musical.
So, what can we learn from Paul Thomas Anderson movies? Much more than we can cover in this video. When it comes to filmmaking and especially directing, we have in PT Anderson a wealth of inspiration that we can return to often and still find something new.
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