The Stanley Kubrick Archives
Christiane Kubrick - 2005
2001 is a nonverbal experience?. I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophic content.? The philosophy behind Part I borrows from this line of thinking: from the opening sequence of Killer's Kiss to the final frames of Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick's complete films will be presented chronologically and wordlessly via frame enlargements. A completely nonverbal experience. Part 2: The Creative Process Divided into chapters chronologically by film, Part 2 brings to life the creative process of Kubrick's filmmaking by presenting a remarkable collection of material from his archives, including photographs, props, posters, artwork, set designs, sketches, correspondence, documents, screenplays, drafts, notes, and shooting schedules. Accompanying the visual material are essays by noted Kubrick scholars, articles written by and about Kubrick, and a selection of Kubrick's best interviews. Special features ? Part 1 features 800 film stills scanned directly from the original prints and interpositives ? Part 2 presents about 800 items from the archives, most of which have never been published before ? essays by Kubrick scholars Gene D. Phillips, Michel Ciment, and Rodney Hill ? selected articles and essays, including interviews with and essays by Stanley Kubrick ? illustrated Kubrickchronology ? audio CD featuring a 70-minute 1966 interview of Stanley Kubrick by Jeremy Bernstein **BONUS** ? books in the first print run will each include a twelve-frame film strip from a 70mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey owned by Stanley Kubrick Made in cooperation with Jan Harlan, Christiane Kubrick, and the Stanley Kubrick Estate. The editor: Alison Castle received a BA in philosophy from Columbia University and an MA in photography and film from New York University (NYU/International Center of Photography masters program). Castle also edited TASCHEN's Some Like it Hot. She lives in Paris, home of the world's best cinemas.
Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies: The Screenwriter's Guide to Every Story Ever Told
Blake Snyder - 2007
In the perfect companion piece to his first book, Snyder delivers even more insider's information gleaned from a 20-year track record as ?one of Hollywood's most successful spec screenwriters, ? giving you the clues to write your movie. Designed for screenwriters, novelists, and movie fans, this book gives readers the key breakdowns of the 50 most instructional movies from the past 30 years. From M*A*S*H to Crash, from Alien to Saw, from 10 to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Snyder reveals how screenwriters who came before you tackled the same challenges you are facing with the film you want to write ? or the one you are currently working on.
Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye
Andrew Robinson - 1989
He also made comedies, musical fantasies, detective films, and documentaries. He was an exceptionally versatile artist who won almost every major prize in cinema, including a lifetime achievement Oscar in 1992. This is the best-known biography of the film giant, based on extensive interviews with Ray himself, his actors, collaborators, and a deep knowledge of Bengali culture. This second edition contains extensive new material covering Ray's final three films made in 1989-1991, a discussion of his artistic legacy, and the most comprehensive bibliography of Ray's own writings.
Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror
Jason Zinoman - 2011
Much has been written about the storied New Hollywood of the 1970s, but at the same time as Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola were making their first classic movies, a parallel universe of directors gave birth to the modern horror film-aggressive, raw, and utterly original. Based on unprecedented access to the genre's major players, The New York Times's critic Jason Zinoman's Shock Value delivers the first definitive account of horror's golden age. By the late 1960s, horror was stuck in the past, confined mostly to drive-in theaters and exploitation houses, and shunned by critics. Shock Value tells the unlikely story of how the much-disparaged horror film became an ambitious art form while also conquering the multiplex. Directors such as Wes Craven, Roman Polanski, John Carpenter, and Brian De Palma- counterculture types operating largely outside the confines of Hollywood-revolutionized the genre, exploding taboos and bringing a gritty aesthetic, confrontational style, and political edge to horror. Zinoman recounts how these directors produced such classics as Rosemary's Baby, Carrie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Halloween, creating a template for horror that has been imitated relentlessly but whose originality has rarely been matched. This new kind of film dispensed with the old vampires and werewolves and instead assaulted audiences with portraits of serial killers, the dark side of suburbia, and a brand of nihilistic violence that had never been seen before. Shock Value tells the improbable stories behind the making of these movies, which were often directed by obsessive and insecure young men working on shoestring budgets, were funded by sketchy investors, and starred porn stars. But once The Exorcist became the highest grossing film in America, Hollywood took notice. The classic horror films of the 1970s have now spawned a billion-dollar industry, but they have also penetrated deep into the American consciousness. Quite literally, Zinoman reveals, these movies have taught us what to be afraid of. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of the most important artists in horror, Shock Value is an enthralling and personality-driven account of an overlooked but hugely influential golden age in American film.
Something Like an Autobiography
Akira Kurosawa - 1982
"A first rate book and a joy to read...It's doubtful that a complete understanding of the director's artistry can be obtained without reading this book...Also indispensable for budding directors are the addenda, in which Kurosawa lays out his beliefs on the primacy of a good script, on scriptwriting as an essential tool for directors, on directing actors, on camera placement, and on the value of steeping oneself in literature, from great novels to detective fiction."—Variety"For the lover of Kurosawa's movies...this is nothing short of must reading...a fitting companion piece to his many dynamic and absorbing screen entertainments."—Washington Post Book World
The Films of Akira Kurosawa
Donald Richie - 1965
Through his long and distinguished career he managed, like very few others in the teeth of a huge and relentless industry, to elevate each of his films to a distinctive level of art. His Rashomon—one of the best-remembered and most talked-of films in any language—was a revelation when it appeared in 1950 and did much to bring Japanese cinema to the world's attention. Kurosawa's films display an extraordinary breadth and an astonishing strength, from the philosophic and sexual complexity of Rashomon to the moral dedication of Ikiru, from the naked violence of Seven Samurai to the savage comedy of Yojimbo, from the terror-filled feudalism of Throne of Blood to the piercing wit of Sanjuro.
Godard on Godard: Critical Writings
Jean-Luc Godard - 1985
This collection of essays and interviews, ranging from his early efforts for La Gazette du Cinéma to his later writings for Cahiers du Cinéma, reflects his dazzling intelligence, biting wit, maddening judgments, and complete unpredictability. In writing about Hitchcock, Welles, Bergman, Truffaut, Bresson, and Renoir, Godard is also writing about himself—his own experiments, obsessions, and discoveries. This book offers evidence that he may be even more original as a thinker about film than as a director. Covering the period of 1950–1967, the years of Breathless, A Woman Is a Woman, My Life to Live, Alphaville, La Chinoise, and Weekend, this book of writings is an important document and a fascinating study of a vital stage in Godard’s career. With commentary by Tom Milne and Richard Roud, and an extensive new foreword by Annette Michelson that reassesses Godard in light of his later films, here is an outrageous self-portrait by a director who, even now, continues to amaze and bedevil, and to chart new directions for cinema and for critical thought about its history.
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...
A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies
Martin Scorsese - 1997
Hundreds of film stills, many in color, plus dialogue, quotations, and other sources add to and illustrate each chapter's overriding theme.
The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film
W.K. Stratton - 2019
Stratton’s definitive history of the making of The Wild Bunch, named one of the greatest Westerns of all time by the American Film Institute.Sam Peckinpah’s film The Wild Bunch is the story of a gang of outlaws who are one big steal from retirement. When their attempted train robbery goes awry, the gang flees to Mexico and falls in with a brutal general of the Mexican Revolution, who offers them the job of a lifetime. Conceived by a stuntman, directed by a blacklisted director, and shot in the sand and heat of the Mexican desert, the movie seemed doomed. Instead, it became an instant classic with a dark, violent take on the Western movie tradition. In The Wild Bunch, W.K. Stratton tells the fascinating history of the making of the movie and documents for the first time the extraordinary contribution of Mexican and Mexican-American actors and crew members to the movie’s success. Shaped by infamous director Sam Peckinpah, and starring such visionary actors as William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Edmond O’Brien, and Robert Ryan, the movie was also the product of an industry and a nation in transition. By 1968, when the movie was filmed, the studio system that had perpetuated the myth of the valiant cowboy in movies like The Searchers had collapsed, and America was riled by Vietnam, race riots, and assassinations. The Wild Bunch spoke to America in its moment, when war and senseless violence seemed to define both domestic and international life. The Wild Bunch is an authoritative history of the making of a movie and the era behind it.
Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
Robert McKee - 1997
Quincy Jones, Diane Keaton, Gloria Steinem, Julia Roberts, John Cleese and David Bowie are just a few of his celebrity alumni. Writers, producers, development executives and agents all flock to his lecture series, praising it as a mesmerizing and intense learning experience. In Story, McKee expands on the concepts he teaches in his $450 seminars (considered a must by industry insiders), providing readers with the most comprehensive, integrated explanation of the craft of writing for the screen. No one better understands how all the elements of a screenplay fit together, and no one is better qualified to explain the "magic" of story construction and the relationship between structure and character than Robert McKee.
Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer
Paul Schrader - 1972
Unlike the style of psychological realism, which dominates film, the transcendental style expresses a spiritual state with austere camerawork, acting devoid of self-consciousness, and editing that avoids editorial comment. This important book is an original contribution to film analysis and a key work by one of our most searching directors and writers.
How Not to Make a Short Film: Secrets from a Sundance Programmer
Roberta Marie Munroe - 2009
Roberta Munroe screened short film submissions at Sundance for five years, and is an award-winning short filmmaker in her own right. So she knows a thing or two about how not to make a short film. From the first draft of your script to casting, production, editing, and distribution, this is your one-stop primer for breaking into the business. Featuring interviews with many of today's most talented writers, producers, and directors, as well as revealing stories (e.g., what to do when the skinhead crack addict next door begins screaming obscenities as soon as you call "action") from the sets of her own short films, Roberta walks you through the minefield of mistakes that an aspiring filmmaker can make--so that you don't have to make them yourself.
Stanley Kubrick: A Biography
Vincent Lobrutto - 1997
Strangelove, 2001: Space Odyssey. A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket, is arguably one of the greatest American filmmakers. Yet, despite being hailed as “a giant” by Orson Welles, little is known about the reclusive director. Stanley Kubrick—the first full-length study of his life—is based on assiduous archival research as well as new interviews with friends, family, and colleagues.Film scholar Vincent LoBRutto provides a comprehensive portrait of the director, from his high school days, in the Bronx and his stint as a photographer for Look magazine, through the creation of his wide-ranging movies, including the long-awaited Eyes Wide Shut. The author provides behind-the-scenes details about writing, filming, financing, and reception of the director’s entire output, paying close attention to the technical innovations and to his often contentious relationships with actors. This fascinating biography exposes the enigma that is Stanley Kubrick while placing him in context of film history.
So You Want to Be a Producer
Lawrence Turman - 2005
What does it take to be a producer, how does one get started, and what on earth does one actually do? In So You Want to Be a Producer Lawrence Turman, the producer of more than forty films, including The Graduate, The River Wild, Short Circuit, and American History X, and Endowed Chair of the famed Peter Stark Producing Program at the University of Southern California, answers these questions and many more.Examining all the nuts and bolts of production, such as raising money and securing permissions, finding a story and developing a script, choosing a director, hiring actors, and marketing your project, So You Want to Be a Producer is a must-have resource packed with insider information and first-hand advice from top Hollywood producers, writers, and directors, offering invaluable help for beginners and professionals alike. Including a comprehensive case study of Turman’s film The Graduate, this complete guide to the movie industry’s most influential movers and shakers brims with useful tips and contains all the information you need to take your project from idea to the big screen.