Book picks similar to
Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye by Andrew Robinson
cinema
biography
film
india
Film Directing Shot by Shot: Visualizing from Concept to Screen
Steven D. Katz - 1991
Aspiring directors, cinematographers, editors, and producers, many of whom are now working professionals, learned the craft of visual storytelling from Shot by Shot, the most com-plete source for preplanning the look of a movie.The book contains over 800 photos and illustrations, and is by far the most comprehensive look at shot design in print, containing storyboards from movies such as Citizen Kane, Blade Runner, Dead-pool, and Moonrise Kingdom. Also introduced is the concept of A, I, and L patterns as a way to sim-plify the hundreds of staging choices facing a director in every scene.Shot by Shot uniquely blends story analysis with compositional strategies, citing examples then il-lustrated with the storyboards used for the actual films. Throughout the book, various visual ap-proaches to short scenes are shown, exposing the directing processes of our most celebrated au-teurs — including a meticulous, lavishly illustrated analysis of Steven Spielberg’s scene design for Empire of the Sun.
Hope for Film: From the Frontline of the Independent Cinema Revolutions
Ted Hope - 2014
Ted Hope, whose films have garnered 12 Oscar nominations, draws from his own personal experiences working on the early films of Ang Lee, Eddie Burns, Hal Hartley, Michel Gondry, Nicole Holofcener, Todd Solondz and other indie mavericks, relating those decisions that brought him success as well as the occasional failure.Whether navigating negotiations with Harvey Weinstein over final cuts or clashing with high-powered CAA agents over their clients, Hope offers behind-the-scenes stories from the wild and often heated world of low-budget cinema—where art and commerce collide. As mediator between these two opposing interests, Hope offers his unique perspective on how to make movies while keeping your integrity intact and how to create a sustainable business enterprise out of that art while staying true to yourself. Against a backdrop of seismic changes in the indie-film industry, from corporate co-option to the rise of social media, Hope for Film provides not only an entertaining and intimate ride through the ups and downs of the business of art-house movies over the last 25 years, but also hope for its future.
Masters of Light: Conversations with Contemporary Cinematographers
Dennis Schaefer - 1984
Through conversations held with fifteen of the most accomplished contemporary cinematographers, the authors explore the working world of the person who controls the visual look and style of a film.
Film History: An Introduction
Kristin Thompson - 1994
As in the authors' bestselling "Film Art", concepts and events are illustrated with actual frame enlargements, giving students more realistic points of reference than competing books that use publicity stills.
You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, and Their Impact on a Generation
Susannah Gora - 2010
You’re a bonafide Brat Pack devotee—and you’re not alone.The films of the Brat Pack—from Sixteen Candles to Say Anything—are some of the most watched, bestselling DVDs of all time. The landscape that the Brat Packmemorialized—where outcasts and prom queens fall in love, preppies and burn-outs become buds, and frosted lip gloss, skinny ties, and exuberant optimism made us feel invincible—is rich with cultural themes and significance, and has influenced an entire generation who still believe that life always turns out the way it is supposed to.You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried takes us back to that era, interviewing key players, such as Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Andrew McCarthy, and John Cusack, and mines all the material from the movies to the music to the way the films were made to show how they helped shape our visions for romance, friendship, society, and success.
If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor
Bruce Campbell - 2001
I think you and I are going to get along just fine.Life is full of choices. Right now, yours is whether or not to buy the autobiography of a mid-grade, kind of hammy actor.Am I supposed to know this guy? you think to yourself.No, and that's exactly the point. Bookstores are chock full of household name actors and their high stakes shenanigans. I don't want to be a spoilsport, but we've all been down that road before.Case in point: look to your left - see that Judy Garland book? You don't need that, you know plenty about her already - great voice, crappy life. Now look to your right at the Charlton Heston book. You don't need to cough up hard-earned dough for that either. You know his story too - great voice, crappy toupee.The truth is that though you might not have a clue who I am, there are countless working stiffs like me out there, grinding away every day at the wheel of fortune.If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor is my first book, and I invite you to ride with me through the choppy waters of blue collar Hollywood.Okay, so buy the damned book already and read like the wind!Best, Bruce CampbellP.S. If the book sucks, at least there are gobs of pictures, and they're not crammed in the middle like all those other actor books.
Hitchcock's Notebooks:: An Authorized And Illustrated Look Inside The Creative Mind Of Alfred Hitchcook
Dan Auiler - 1999
Now you can share in the Master of Suspense's inspiration and development -- his entire creative process -- in Hitchcock's Notebooks.With the complete cooperation of the Hitchcock estate and access to the director's notebooks, journals, and archives, Dan Auiler takes you from the very beginnings of story creation to the master's final touches during post-production and publicity. Actual production notes from Hitchcock's masterpieces join detailed interviews with key production personnel, including writers, actors and actresses, and Hitchcock's personal assistant of more than thirty years.Mirroring the director's working methods to give you the actual feel of his process, and highlighted by nearly nearly one hundred photographs and illustrations, this is the definitive guide into the mind of a cinematic legend.
Mr. Strangelove: A Biography of Peter Sellers
Ed Sikov - 2002
With his darkly comic performances in Dr. Strangelove and Lolita and his outrageously funny appearances as Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther films, he became one of the most popular movie stars of his time. Sellers himself identified most personally with the character he played in Being There -- an utterly empty man on whom others projected what they wanted, or needed, to see. In this lively and exhaustively researched biography, Ed Sikov offers unique insight into Sellers's comedy style. Beginning with Sellers' lonely childhood with a mother who wouldn't let go of him, through his service in the Royal Air Force and his success on BBC Radio's The Goon Show, Sikov goes on to detail his relationships with co-stars such as Alec Guinness, Sophia Loren, and Shirley MacLaine; his work with such directors as Stanley Kubrick, Billy Wilder, and Blake Edwards; his four failed marriages; his ridiculously short engagement to Liza Minnelli; and all the other peculiarities of this eccentric man's unpredictable life. The most insightful biography ever written of this endlessly fascinating star, Mr. Strangelove is as comic and tragic as Peter Sellers was himself.
Kieslowski on Kieslowski
Krzysztof Kieślowski - 1993
Kieslowski was notoriously reticent, and even dismissive of his work and talent, but these frank and detailed discussions show a passion for film-making and a career which was often threatened by political and economic change within Poland. In the book he talks at length about his life: his childhood, disrupted by Hitler and Stalin; his four attempts to get into film school; and what Poland and its future meant to him at the time of writing, before his death in 1996.
Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud
Shaun Considine - 1989
They worked together once, in the film Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, but their real-life dislike of one another transcended even the antagonism depicted in the film.
If They Move . . . Kill 'Em!: The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah
David Weddle - 1994
Born into a clan of lumberjacks, ranchers, and frontier lawyers, David Samuel Peckinpah served in the Marines and then made his way to Hollywood, where he worked on a string of low-budget features before being hired as a writer for Gunsmoke in 1955. Quickly becoming the hottest writer in television, Peckinpah went on to direct a phenomenal series of features, including Ride the High Country, Straw Dogs, The Getaway, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and The Wild Bunch. The life he led -- glamorous, wild, and beset by personal demons -- is as vivid as his films. A hopeless romantic and a grim nihilist, inspiration to such luminaries as DePalma, Scorsese, and Tarantino, Sam Peckinpah was an audacious American original. If They Move...Kill 'Em! is his wild and woolly story.
The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968
Andrew Sarris - 1968
Sarris's The American Cinema, the bible of auteur studies, is a history of American film in the form of a lively guide to the work of two hundred film directors, from Griffith, Chaplin, and von Sternberg to Mike Nichols, Stanley Kubrick, and Jerry Lewis. In addition, the book includes a chronology of the most important American films, an alphabetical list of over 6000 films with their directors and years of release, and the seminal essays "Toward a Theory of Film History" and "The Auteur Theory Revisited." Over twenty-five years after its initial publication, The American Cinema remains perhaps the most influential book ever written on the subject.
Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide
Glenn Kay - 2008
Romero's 2008 release Diary of the Dead this thorough, uproarious guide traces the evolution of one of horror cinema's most popular and terrifying creations. Fans will learn exactly what makes a zombie a zombie, go behind the scenes with a chilling production diary from Land of the Dead, peruse a bizarre list of the oddest things ever seen in undead cinema, and immerse themselves in a detailed rundown of the 25 greatest zombie films ever made. Containing an illustrated zombie rating system, ranging from "Highly Recommended" to "Avoid at All Costs" and "So Bad It's Good," the book also features lengthy interviews with numerous talents from in front of and behind the camera.Features chronological reviews of more than 300 zombie films.
A-Z Great Film Directors
Andy Tuohy - 2015
A striking, design-led reference book, A-Z Great Film Directors features Andy Tuohy's portraits of 52 directors significant for their contribution to cinema including kings of world cinema Wong Kar-Wai and Akira Kurosawa, arthouse pioneers Fritz Lang and David Lynch as well as the often under-appreciated female directors Kathryn Bigelow and Jane Campion.With text by film journalist Matt Glasby, each director's entry will also have a summary of the essential things you need to know about them, why they're important, a list of their must-see films, and a surprising fact or two about them, as well as images of their key films throughout.So whether you're already a film afficionado, or looking for a helpful cheat to pass convincingly as an arthouse fan, you'll love this guide to international directors, past and present.
Film Technique and Film Acting
Vsevolod Pudovkin - 1960
I. PUDOVKIN Translated by IVOR MONTAGU Introduction by LEWIS JACOBS BONANZA BOOKS NEW YORK CONTENTS PAGE CONTENTS FILM TECHNIQUE A separate table of contents for FILM ACTING appears at the beginning of that volume. INTRODUCTION BY LEWIS JACOBS iii INTRODUCTION TO THE GERMAN EDITION . . xiii I. THE FILM SCENARIO AND ITS THEORY FOREWORD 1 PART I. THE SCENARIO .... 3 The meaning of the shooting-script The construction of the scenarioThe theme The action-treatment of the theme Conclusion. PART H. THE PLASTIC MATERIAL . . 26 The simplest specific methods of shooting-Method of treatment of the material struc tural-editing Editing of the scene Editing of the sequence Editing of the Scenario-Editing as an instrument of impression rela tional editing. II. FILM DIRECTOR AND FILM MATERIAL PART I. THE PECULIARITIES OF FILM MATERIAL 51 The film and the theatre The methods of the film Film and reality Filmic space and time The material of films Analysis Editing the logic of filmic analysis The necessity to interfere with movement Organisation of the material to be shot Arranging setups The organisation of chance material Filmic form The technique of directorial work. PART H. THE DIRECTOR AND THE SCENARIO 93 The director and the scenarist The environ ment of the film-The characters in the envir iv uUC aiY MO. 7158987 PAGE onment The establishment of the rhythm of the film. PABT III. THE DIRECTOR AND THE ACTOR 105 Two kinds of production The film actor and the film type Planning the acting of the film type The ensemble Expressive movement-Expressive objects The director as creator of the ensemble. PART IV. THE ACTOR IN THE FRAME . 118 The actor and the filmic image The actor and light. PART V. THE DIRECTOR AND THE CAMERA MAN 120 The cameraman and the camera The camera and its viewpoint The shooting of movement The camera compels the spectator to see as the director wishes The shaping of the com position-The laboratory-Collectivism the basis of film-work. III. TYPES INSTEAD OF ACTORS . 137 IV. CLOSE-UPS IN TIME 146 V. ASYNCHRONISM AS A PRINCIPLE OF SOUND FILM 155 VL RHYTHMIC PROBLEMS IN MY FIRST SOUND FILM 166 VII. NOTES AND APPENDICES A. GLOSSARIAL NOTES . 175 B. SPECIAL NOTES 180 C. ICONOGRAPHY OF PUDOVKINs WORKS . 192 D. INDEX OF NAMES .... 196 The numerals in the text refer to Appendix B. INTRODUCTION THERE are few experiences more important in the education of a newcomer to motion pic tures than the discovery of V. I. Pudovkins Film Technique and Film Acting. No more valuable manuals of the practice and theory of film making have been written than these two handbooks by the notable Soviet director. So sound are their points of view, so valid their tenets, so revelatory their analyses, that they remain today, twenty years after their initial appear ance, the foremost books of their kind. First published abroad in 1929 and 1933 respectively, Film Technique and Film Acting brought to the art of film making a code of principles and a rationale that marked the mediums analytic coming of age. Until their publication, the motion picture maker had to eke out on his own any intellectual or artistic considera tions of film craft. No explicit body of principles existed upon which the film maker could draw with confidence. Film technique was a more or less hit or miss affair that existed in a kind of fragmentary state which, in the main, leaned heavily upon theatrical methods. These pioneering books made clear at once that movie making need no longer flounder for a methodol ogy or for its own standards. They elucidated what iv FILM TECHNIQUE AND FILM ACTING were the fundamentals of film art and defined the singular process of expression that distinguished it from all other media. Now film theory and practice could be attacked with greater assurance and efficiency...