Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10269 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 257 pages

Synopsis
How do directors use screen direction to suggest conflict? How do screenwriters exploit film space to show change? How does editing style determine emotional response? Many first-time writers and directors do not consider this. They forgo the huge creative resource of the film medium defaulting instead to dialog and narration to tell their screen story. Yet most movies are carried by sound and picture. What the industry's most successful writers and directors have in common is that they have mastered the cinematic conventions specific to the medium. They have harnessed non-dialog techniques to create some of the most cinematic moments in movie history. This book is intended to help writers and directors more fully exploit the medium's storytelling techniques. It contains 100 non-dialog techniques that have been used by the industry's top writers and directors. From "Metropolis" and "Citizen Kane" to "Dead Man" and "Kill Bill", the book illustrates - through 500 frame grabs and 75 script excerpts - how the inherent stortytelling devices specific to film were exploited. You can learn how non-dialogue film techniques can advance story.

You can discover how master screenwriters exploit cinematic conventions to create powerful scenarios. It is brilliantly illustrated throughout with 500 carefully chosen frame grabs from classic films of the past and present.

Customer Reviews

A very clear and helpful book
There is a huge amount of information in this book. It is very clearly and logically laid out with sections on, for example, space, framing, editing, locations, wardrobe, music, camera movement, editing, transitions. The key point is how all these elements can be used to support the story, and guide emotional responses.
I had already made two short films when I discovered this book, and it was a revelation to understand the logic behind many of the things I had done intuitively. It has also broadened my awareness of many other elements to consider in the cinematic storytelling process.
One of the great aspects of this comprehensive book is that it can be dipped into at will. There are a hundred different conventions, all illustrated with examples from real films, and often with the screenplay printed alongside. Every time I pick it up I learn something new. I recommend it to all directors who believe that a great story, cinematically told, is the end goal of all our filmmaking efforts.

Good written, bad images.
The written content of the book itself is very useful, however, the quality of the stills taken from the films they are describing is terrible.
This is a book about film and yet all of the reference pictures are black and white (even when they are talking about colour) hard to see, bad quality.

The book should be reprinted with better quality photos. No doubt about it.

Excellent!
If you've ever asked yourself, whilst planning your film, something like, "How would I represent the passage of time?" or "How can I enhance the emotion of the scene in post-production?" then you'll probably find this book very useful. It's clearly written and has stills from well-known films to illustrate the author's points. In addition to this, for many of the examples, the author has provided an extract from the script of the scene in discussion, so you can see what all of this is supposed to look like in writing as well as on screen.

This book covers almost all aspects of filmmaking which has to be taken into consideration individually to demostrate their effectiveness (eg. lighting, sound, camera angle, colour, pacing and so on). However, I found even as I was reading that I could see how diffent combinations of these techniques would have made the films I have worked on previously, more exciting or emotive.

I'm only halfway though and I feel that the knowledge I've gained from only reading half of the book will prove invaluable as I pursue a career in the film industry. The only thing that stopped me giving this book 5 stars was, as mentioned previously by other reviewers, the lack of colour in the illustrations. The images were not as poor as I was expecting, however, as another reviewer pointed out, poor image quality in a book that deals with a visual medium is weak.

Other than that, a great title and I would recommend it to film students, buffs and makers.