I’m still learning a lot. But considering the number of books I’ve read and researched, maybe I can save you some time. Here are a few of my favourites:
The Filmmaker's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for the Digital Age: Fifth Edition
Widely acknowledged as the bible of video and film production, and used in courses around the world, this book is a great book to start with, covering all of the fundamentals, in-depth, and it’s a book you’ll likely return to again and again. This one of the first books I purchased out of college.
Directing the Documentary 6th Edition
Before I embarked on production for Uncivilized, I read this book cover to cover. Full of insight, useful exercises, and everything you could hope to know regarding directing documentary. This book is one of my treasures. Rabiger also has a book called “Directing The Feature” which I also intend on reading.
“The authoritative guide to producing, directing, shooting, editing, and distributing your video or film. Whether you aspire to be a great filmmaker or are looking for a gift, this comprehensive guide is the first step in turning a hobby into a career.”
The Art of Dramatic Writing
I’ve had a complicated relationship with screenwriting. The best resource so far has been a workshop I did wit T Newallo with FilmCo of Trinidad (see on my Caribbean Film Resources Page). But this book and others below also shed some great insight in how to structure a screenplay.
“Among the many "how-to" playwriting books that have appeared over the years, there have been few that attempt to analyze the mysteries of play construction. Lajos Egri's classic, The Art of Dramatic Writing, does just that, with instruction that can be applied equally well to a short story, novel, or screenplay.
Examining a play from the inside out, Egri starts with the heart of any drama: its characters. All good dramatic writing hinges on people and their relationships, which serve to move the story forward and give it life, as well as an understanding of human motives - why people act the way that they do. Using examples from everything from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, Egri shows how it is essential for the author to have a basic premise - a thesis, demonstrated in terms of human behavior - and to develop the dramatic conflict on the basis of that behavior.
Using Egri's ABCs of premise, character, and conflict, The Art of Dramatic Writing is a direct, jargon-free approach to the problem of achieving truth in writing.”
Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach
A great book to start off with for aspiring screenwriters. Breaks down screenplays into three acts, made up of smaller sequences. Once you understand structure, you’re free to start getting creative!
“The great challenge in writing a feature-length screenplay is sustaining audience involvement from page one through 120. Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach expounds on an often-overlooked tool that can be key in solving this problem. A screenplay can be understood as being built of sequences of about fifteen pages each, and by focusing on solving the dramatic aspects of each of these sequences in detail, a writer can more easily conquer the challenges posed by the script as a whole. The sequence approach has its foundation in early Hollywood cinema (until the 1950s, most screenplays were formatted with sequences explicitly identified), and has been rediscovered and used effectively at such film schools as the University of Southern California, Columbia University and Chapman University. This book exposes a wide audience to the approach for the first time, introducing the concept then providing a sequence analysis of eleven significant feature films made between 1940 and 2000: The Shop Around The Corner / Double Indemnity / Nights of Cabiria / North By Northwest / Lawrence of Arabia / The Graduate / One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest / Toy Story / Air Force One / Being John Malkovich / The Fellowship of the Ring”
In the Blink of An Eye
The bible of video editing. I’ve only read excerpts of this book, but what I did read was invaluable.
“In the Blink of an Eye is celebrated film editor Walter Murch's vivid, multifaceted, thought -- provoking essay on film editing. Starting with what might be the most basic editing question -- Why do cuts work? -- Murch treats the reader to a wonderful ride through the aesthetics and practical concerns of cutting film. Along the way, he offers his unique insights on such subjects as continuity and discontinuity in editing, dreaming, and reality; criteria for a good cut; the blink of the eye as an emotional cue; digital editing; and much more. In this second edition, Murch reconsiders and completely revises his popular first edition's lengthy meditation on digital editing (which accounts for a third of the book's pages) in light of the technological changes that have taken place in the six years since its publication.”
Rebel without a Crew: Or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker With $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player
This was the book I needed to let me know it was possible to make your first film with next to no budget. A year after reading this, I’d started the filming of my debit documentary, Uncivilized. So many people go into film dreaming of being a film maker, but end up working behind the scenes. If you want to be a film maker, you have to make a film!
“Famed independent screenwriter and director Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Spy Kids, Machete) discloses all the unique strategies and original techniques he used to make his remarkable debut film El Mariachi on a shoestring budget.”
The Art Of Photography
While I get most of my photography information online, via articles and youtube tutorials, this book has served as an invaluable companion.
“This is an updated and newly revised edition of the classic book The Art of Photography: An Approach to Personal Expression. Originally published in 1994 and first revised in 2010, The Art of Photography has sold well over 100,000 copies and has firmly established itself as the most readable, understandable, and complete textbook on photography. Featuring nearly 200 beautiful photographs in both black-and-white and color, as well as numerous charts, graphs, and tables, this book presents the world of photography to beginner, intermediate, and advanced photographers who seek to make a personal statement through the medium of photography.”
Painting With Light
While “Cinematography: Theory and Practice” was a useful book, much of what was in it I’d previously read in “The Film Maker’s Handbook”. I haven’t yet purchase “Painting with Light”, but it’s on its way, and based on its reputation and reviews, I can’t wait for it to get here!
“…First published in 1949, and long out of print since then, Painting With Light remains one of the few truly canonical statements on the art of motion picture photography, an unrivalled historical document on the workings of the postwar, American cinema. In simple, non-technical language, Alton explains the job of the cinematographer and explores how lighting, camera techniques, and choice of locations determine the visual mood of film….”
Camera Lucida
Next to Susan Sontag’s “On Photography” (which I’ve started but need to finish) this book is considered as one of the most important books in the theory of photography
“Grieving for his mother, Roland Barthes looked for her in old photos – and wrote a curious, moving book that became one of the most influential studies of photography.”
On Photography
Winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award for Criticism.
One of the most highly regarded books of its kind, On Photography first appeared in 1977 and is described by its author as "a progress of essays about the meaning and career of photographs." It begins with the famous "In Plato's Cave"essay, then offers five other prose meditations on this topic, and concludes with a fascinating and far-reaching "Brief Anthology of Quotations."