Kim Manners made fantastical television convincing by concentrating on the people caught up in it. We rate his contribution to The X-Files highly: tight close-ups, believable performances and suspense maintained across a long run.
Fi1m perspective
Manners liked a close-up so tight that the top of the actor's head disappeared from the frame. It is an effective way of keeping our attention on a person when the story has wandered into the improbable. The risk is that such framing starts to insist on a feeling, but his concern with believable performances gave it a purpose. His contribution to The X-Files (1993) matters: a programme built around unexplained events needs someone who can make the people confronting them convincing.
His route into that work ran through episodic television, beginning with his directing debut on Charlie's Angels in 1978. Seven episodes of The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (1993) gave him work he regarded as a creative stretch. He joined The X-Files in its second series in 1995 and went on to direct 52 episodes. That volume matters because maintaining suspense and strong performances across a long-running programme was central to his strength.
We enjoyed the company of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson in The X-Files enough to want another long evening of unexplained events. Manners's attention to believable performances suited a programme so dependent on its leads. Credit needs sharing with creator-producer Chris Carter, fellow director-producer Rob Bowman and writers James Wong and Glen Morgan. Our reservation is the series' fondness for secrecy, which sometimes tries our patience. There is only so much a director can do when a programme keeps withholding answers.
He took that experience to Supernatural (2005), directing 16 episodes and serving as executive producer. His strengths there were familiar: strong performances and the ability to build suspense. His work rewards attention to how television is made one episode at a time, rather than just to who devised the programme. Start with his episodes of The X-Files, and watch how much attention he gives the person faced with the impossible.
Biography
Kim Manners (13 January 1951 – 25 January 2009) was an American television director and producer. Raised in a show business family, his father Sam Manners had production credits on series including The Wild Wild West and Route 66. Manners began his career as an assistant director and unit production manager before making his directorial debut in 1978 on an episode of Charlie's Angels.
He directed episodes of numerous series including 21 Jump Street, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Baywatch, Mission: Impossible and The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. Manners joined The X-Files in its second season as a producer and director, ultimately directing 52 episodes and serving as co-executive producer. The production team received four Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Drama Series. After the series ended in 2002 he worked as executive producer and director on Supernatural until his death from lung cancer.
