“You can be more adventurous.”

From his debut feature Sex Lies & Videotape (1989) to commercial hits Magic Mike (2012) and the Oceans movies (2001-2007), Oscar-nominatees Traffic (2000) and Erin Brockovich (2000), acclaimed series Behind the Candelabra (2013) and The Knick (2014-2015), and his more experimental features The Limey (1999) and The Girlfriend Experience (2009), Steven Soderbergh‘s extensive filmography is an anthology of approaches. The director and producer, who is also often his own director of photography and editor (under different pseudonyms – his father’s name as DOP, his mother’s as editor), leaps from one genre to the next with each subsequent project. Oh, and his own website is full of interesting explorations, interviews with cinematic royalty, and re-edits of classic movies (“for educational purposes”).

“For a film-maker who regularly directs, shoots, and edits all his own movies, keeping an open mind every step of the way may just be the greatest skill he has,” posits CinemaStix, who demonstrates how Ocean’s Eleven‘s magic is powered by its character moments, comparing before and after versions of scenes by removing shots which were originally deleted and then reinstated in response to test screening feedback:

Declan Taaffe argues that Soderbergh assumes and capitalises on the televisual literacy of the average viewer, and examines the director’s unconventional approaches to storytelling:

Patrick H. Willems argues that Soderbergh’s heist movies are really about the film-making process itself, and takes lessons as a film-maker from Soderbergh’s own independent career path:

Joshua Jackson, who played himself in the celebrity poker school scenes in Ocean’s 11, describes how Soderbergh’s preparation and planning creates a “sandbox” for his actors to play in (via The Rich Eisen Show):

Further Reading

• Nathalie Sejean at Mentorless quotes “Steven Soderbergh on the Three Major Turning Points in His Career”…
• … which is, in turn, taken from Soderberg’s full-length interview with DGA Quarterly

Further Viewing

Soderbergh shares his thoughts on the film industry in his 2014 State of Cinema Address at the San Francisco International Film Festival (via Flying Moose Pictures):

And and AND: as a fan of film (see: his black & white, silent re-edit of Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981), please geek out with me, won’t you, over Soderberg’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) commentary – with no less than its director, Mike Nichols: