Book picks similar to
Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film by Richard Barsam
film
non-fiction
nonfiction
reference
Film as Art
Rudolf Arnheim - 1932
Now nearly fifty years after that re-edition, the book continues to occupy an important place in the literature of film. Arnheim’s method, provocative in this age of technological wizardry, was to focus on the way art in film was derived from that medium’s early limitations: no sound, no color, no three-dimensional depth.
The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers
Christopher Vogler - 1992
Provides new insights and observations from Vogler's pioneering work in mythic structure for writers.
On Photography
Susan Sontag - 1973
Sontag develops further the concept of 'transparency'. When anything can be photographed and photography has destroyed the boundaries and definitions of art, a viewer can approach a photograph freely with no expectations of discovering what it means. This collection of six lucid and invigorating essays, the most famous being "In Plato's Cave", make up a deep exploration of how the image has affected society.
Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction
Jonathan D. Culler - 1997
Jonathan Culler, an extremely lucid commentator and much admired in the field of literary theory, offers discerning insights into such theories as the nature of language and meaning, and whether literature is a form of self-expression or a method of appeal to an audience. Concise yet thorough, Literary Theory also outlines the ideas behind a number of different schools: deconstruction, semiotics, postcolonial theory, and structuralism, among others. From topics such as literature and social identity to poetry, poetics, and rhetoric, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction is a welcome guide for anyone interested in the importance of literature and the debates surrounding it.About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.
The Art of Public Speaking
Stephen E. Lucas - 2008
Whether a novice or an experienced speaker, every student will learn how to be a better public speaker through Lucas' clear explanations of classical and contemporary theory and thorough coverage of practical applications. The new edition offers a revolutionary digital experience--McGraw-Hill Connect Lucas and Connect Lucas Plus. The Connect Lucas products allow students and instructors to access all course materials including a complete media and research library, study aids and speech preparation and assessment tools from a single place, connectlucas.com. With Connect Lucas, students use the traditional printed text. Specially marked icons in the text guide students to the media-rich, interactive features available at connectlucas.com. Connect Lucas Plus allows students and instructors to access the fully-integrated, media-rich textbook from connectlucas.com. As students read the book online, linked icons guide them to embedded media-rich, interactive features. Learn more and visit connectlucas.com.
Read This If You Want to Take Great Photographs
Henry Carroll - 2014
• A bestselling photography book with over 300,000 copies sold! • Learn top photography tips from 50 famous photographers • A must–have guide for amateur photographers and professional photographersRead This if You Want to Take Great Photographs contains no graphs, no techie diagrams and no camera–club jargon. Instead, it inspires readers through iconic images and playful copy, packed with hands–on tips.Split into five sections, the book covers composition, exposure, light, lenses and the art of seeing. Masterpieces by acclaimed photographers – including Henri Cartier–Bresson, Sebastião Salgado, Fay Godwin, Nadav Kander, Daido Moriyama and Martin Parr – serve to illustrate points and encourage readers to try out new ideas.Today's aspiring photographers want immediacy and see photography as an affordable way of expressing themselves quickly and creatively. This handbook meets their needs, teaching them how to take photographs using professional techniques.Read This If You Want to Take Great Photographs is part of the internationally–bestselling 'Read This' series, which has sold over half–a–million books worldwide and has been translated into over 20 languages.More titles in the 'Read This' series:Read This if You Want to Take Great Photographs of People by Henry Carroll (9781780676241)Read This if You Want to Take Great Photographs of Places by Henry Carroll (9781780679051)Use This if You Want to Take Great Photographs: A Photo Journal by Henry Carroll (9781780678887)Read This if You Want to Be Great at Drawing by Selwyn Leamy (9781786270542)Use This if You Want to Be Great at Drawing by Selwyn Leamy (9781786274052)Read This if You Want to Be Great at Drawing People by Selwyn Leamy (9781786275127)Read This if You Want to Be a Great Writer by Ross Raisin (9781786271976)Read This if You Want to Be Instagram Famous edited by Henry Carroll (9781780679679)Read This If You Want to Be YouTube Famous by Will Eagle (9781786275134)
Freeing the Natural Voice
Kristin Linklater - 1976
Describes the mechanics of the voice and obstacles of spontaneous, effective vocal expression and details exercises for developing and strengthening the voice as a human and actor's instrument.
The Short Screenplay: Your Short Film from Concept to Production
Daniel A. Gurskis - 2006
But before you can screen your short film, you need to shoot it. And before you can shoot it, you need to write it. The Short Screenplay provides both beginning and experienced screenwriters with all the guidance they need to write compelling, filmable short screenplays. Explore how to develop characters that an audience can identify with. How to create a narrative structure that fits a short time frame but still engages the audience. How to write dialogue that's concise and memorable. How to develop story ideas from concept through final draft. All this and much more is covered in a unique conversational style that reads more like a novel than a "how-to" book. The book wraps up with a discussion of the role of the screenplay in the production process and with some helpful (and entertaining) sample scripts. This is the only guide you'll ever need to make your short film a reality!
From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film
Siegfried Kracauer - 1947
Siegfried Kracauer--a prominent German film critic and member of Walter Benjamin's and Theodor Adorno's intellectual circle--broke new ground in exploring the connections between film aesthetics, the prevailing psychological state of Germans in the Weimar era, and the evolving social and political reality of the time. Kracauer's pioneering book, which examines German history from 1921 to 1933 in light of such movies as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, M, Metropolis, and The Blue Angel, has never gone out of print. Now, over half a century after its first appearance, this beautifully designed and entirely new edition reintroduces Kracauer for the twenty-first century. Film scholar Leonardo Quaresima places Kracauer in context in a critical introduction, and updates the book further with a new bibliography, index, and list of inaccuracies that crept into the first edition. This volume is a must-have for the film historian, film theorist, or cinema enthusiast.In From Caligari to Hitler, Siegfried Kracauer made a startling (and still controversial) claim: films as a popular art provide insight into the unconscious motivations and fantasies of a nation. In films of the 1920s, he traced recurring visual and narrative tropes that expressed, he argued, a fear of chaos and a desire for order, even at the price of authoritarian rule. The book has become an undisputed classic of film historiography, laying the foundations for the serious study of film.Kracauer was an important film critic in Weimar Germany. A Jew, he escaped the rise of Nazism, fleeing to Paris in 1933. Later, in anguish after Benjamin's suicide, he made his way to New York, where he remained until his death in 1966. He wrote From Caligari to Hitler while working as a "special assistant" to the curator of the Museum of Modern Art's film division. He was also on the editorial board of Bollingen Series. Despite many critiques of its attempt to link movies to historical outcomes, From Caligari to Hitler remains Kracauer's best-known and most influential book, and a seminal work in the study of film. Princeton published a revised edition of his Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality in 1997.
A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present
Andrew Gordon - 2002
He takes students from the days of the shogunate--the feudal overlordship of the Tokugawa family--through the modernizing revolution launched by midlevel samurai in the late nineteenth century; the adoption of Western hairstyles, clothing, and military organization; and the nation's first experiments with mass democracy after World War I. Gordon offers the finest synthesis to date of Japan's passage through militarism, World War II, the American occupation, and the subsequent economic rollercoaster. But the true ingenuity and value of Gordon's approach lies in his close attention to the non-elite layers of society. Here students will see the influence of outside ideas, products, and culture on home life, labor unions, political parties, gender relations, and popular entertainment. The book examines Japan's struggles to define the meaning of its modernization, from villages and urban neighborhoods, to factory floors and middle managers' offices, to the imperial court. Most importantly, it illuminates the interconnectedness of Japanese developments with world history, demonstrating how Japan's historical passage represents a variation of a process experienced by many nations and showing how the Japanese narrative forms one part of the interwoven fabric of modern history. With a sustained focus on setting modern Japan in a comparative and global context, The Modern History of Japan is ideal for undergraduate courses in modern Japanese history, Japanese politics, Japanese society, or Japanese culture.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems
T.S. Eliot - 1915
Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels.
Rebel Without a Crew, or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker with $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player
Robert Rodríguez - 1995
This is both one man's remarkable story and an essential guide for anyone who has a celluloid story to tell and the dreams and determination to see it through. Part production diary, part how-to manual, Rodriguez unveils how he was able to make his influential first film on only a $7,000 budget. Also included is the appendix, 'The Ten Minute Film Course,” a tell-all on how to save thousands of dollars on film school and teach yourself the ropes of film production, directing, and screenwriting.
Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology
Helen Vendler - 1996
Recognized internationally as one of America's greatest literary critics, Helen Vendler is a frequent reviewer of poetry for The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. Poems, Poets, Poetry reflects her teaching to thousands of undergraduates in the core poetry course that she has taught at Harvard since 1981.- An innovative approach to reading and writing about poetry. Part One begins with a unique demonstration: Vendler first reads a dozen poems to show how they represent life events, then rereads the same dozen poems to reveal how poets use language to transform those events into memorable art. The author devotes the rest of the text to unfolding poetry's layers: formal, thematic, linguistic, lyric, social, historical, and evaluative. To illustrate this, Vendler examines 65 poems, and provides prompts to help students read 106 others. Two new chapters in Part Two illuminate ways to think and write about both individual works and groups of poems.- An ample and diverse anthology of 268 poems by 128 poets. Spanning eight centuries of English-language poetry, the anthology in Part Three offers a broad choice of canonical and contemporary selections that includes one of the most extensive collections of multicultural American poetry available in an introductory text.
The Story of Art
E.H. Gombrich - 1950
Attracted by the simplicity and clarity of his writing, readers of all ages and backgrounds have found in Professor Gombrich a true master, and one who combines knowledge and wisdom with a unique gift for communicating his deep love of the subject. The Story of Art, one of the most famous and popular books on art ever written, has been a world bestseller for over four decades. Attracted by the simplicity and clarity of his writing, readers of all ages and backgrounds have found in Professor Gombrich a true master, and one who combines knowledge and wisdom with a unique gift for communicating his deep love of the subject.For the first time in many years the book has been completely redesigned. The illustrations, now in colour throughout, have all been improved and reoriginated, and include six fold-outs. The text has been revised and updated where appropriate, and a number of significant new artists have been incorporated. The bibliographies have been expanded and updated, and the maps and charts redrawn. The Story of Art has always been admired for two key qualities: it is a pleasure to read and a pleasure to handle. In these respects the new edition is true to its much-loved predecessors: the text runs as smoothly as ever and the improved illustrations are always on the page where the reader needs them. In its new edition, this classic work continues its triumphant progress tirelessly for yet another generation, to remain the title of first choice for any newcomer to art or the connoisseur. The Story of Art has always been admired for two key qualities: it is a pleasure to read and a pleasure to handle. In these respects the new edition is true to its much-loved predecessors: the text runs as smoothly as ever and the improved illustrations are always on the page where the reader needs them. In its new edition, this classic work continues its triumphant progress tirelessly for yet another generation, to remain the title of first choice for any newcomer to art or the connoisseur.
A Short History of the Movies
Gerald Mast - 1971
Offers students a panoramic overview of the worldwide development of film, from the first movements captured on celluloid, through the studio heyday of the 1930s and 1940s and the Hollywood renaissance of the 1960s and 1970s, to the technology appearing today.