Arts / Film & Video

Designing for Screen: Production and Art Direction Explained

by Georgina Shorter

Design is at the essence of storytelling, but how does a production find its style and identity? This book explains how to approach design, whether for film, television, video promo or commercial making, and...

The Screenwriter's Problem Solver: How to Recognize, Identify, and Define Screenwriting Problems

by Syd Field

All writing is rewriting. But what do you change, and how do you change it? All screenplays have problems. They happened to Die Hard: With a Vengeance and Broken Arrow-and didn't get fixed, leaving the films...

Post Cinematic Affect

by Steven Shaviro

Post-Cinematic Affect is about what it feels like to live in the affluent West in the early 21st century. Specifically, it explores the structure of feeling that is emerging today in tandem with new digital...

The Hollywood Book of Extravagance: The Totally Infamous, Mostly Disastrous, and Always Compelling Excesses of America's Film and TV Idols

by James Robert Parish

Savor the inside scoop on over-the-top superstars

"I'm not a paranoid, deranged millionaire. . . . I'm a billionaire!"

"Acting is an empty and useless profession."

"Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go everywhere...

Wes Craven: The Man and His Nightmares

by John Wooley

The life and film genius of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream director Wes Craven

Wes Craven is one of the most successful and iconic horror movie directors in Hollywood. His masterful examination of the nightmarish...

The Hollywood Book of Breakups

by James Robert Parish

"Half of all marriages end in divorce--and then there are the really unhappy ones."

--Joan Rivers

Do you suppose that the person who first said "Life is stranger than fiction" might have had Hollywood marriages...

The Village Voice Film Guide: 50 Years of Movies from Classics to Cult Hits

by Village Voice & Dennis Lim

For decades the Village Voice set the benchmark for passionate, critical, and unique film coverage. Including reviews by some of America's most respected critics, The Village Voice Film Guide compiles spirited...

Great Movie Lines

by Dale Thomajan

"You must remember this . . ."

A kiss is just a kiss, but famous movie lines last forever, and many have become permanently part of American culture. For silver-screen fanatics and current blockbuster buffs,...

The Cinema of Takeshi Kitano: Flowering Blood

by Sean Redmond

The Cinema of Takeshi Kitano: Flowering Blood is a detailed aesthetic, Deleuzian, and phenomenological exploration of Japan’s finest currently-working film director, performer, and celebrity. The volume uniquely...

The Cinema of the Dardenne Brothers: Responsible Realism

by Philip Mosley

The brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have established an international reputation for their emotionally powerful realist cinema. Inspired by their home turf of Liège-Seraing, a former industrial hub of...

The Screenwriter's Sourcebook: A Comprehensive Marketing Guide for Screen and Television Writers

by Michael Haddad

Written for both new and experienced writers, this comprehensive marketing guide offers advice and tips needed by writers to succeed in the film and television industries. Focusing on the business of writing,...

Tough Without a Gun

by Stefan Kanfer

Humphrey Bogart: it’s hard to think of anyone who’s had the same lasting impact on the culture of movies. Though he died at the young age of fifty-seven more than half a century ago, his influence among...

Instant Filmmaker: Secrets, Tips, Tools, Truths, and A-Hah's

by Chris Nolan

A power-packed toolbox for both filmmaker rookies and veterans of ultra-crucial "how-to's" and shortcuts-to-success that blows the lid off uncertainty, weed-whacks through confusion, jacks-up inspiration, and...

So You Wanna Be a Producer?: Adventures of a Migrant Film Worker

by Steve Ecclesine

Producer Steve Ecclesine has boiled down more than 30 years and over 700 shows as an independent Hollywood producer into one book. So You Wanna Be A Producer? features 130 essays on a wide variety of subjects,...

Gone with the Glory: The Civil War in Cinema

by Brian Steel Wills

From Birth of a Nation to Cold Mountain, Hollywood has used the Civil War to create compelling cinema with each generation resolving the tug of war between entertainment value and historical accuracy differently....

Death by Chilli Sauce: The Remarkable Truth and Surprising Science behind 101 Memorable Movie Moments

by Richard Germain

In FORREST GUMP, Gump runs for 3 years and 2 months. In WITHNAIL AND I, Withnail drinks lighter fuel and survives apparently unharmed. In TWISTER, a tornado picks up a petrol tanker. In KEYSTONE HOTEL, a custard...

Jackie Chan: Inside the Dragon

by Clyde, III Gentry

Jackie Chan: Inside the Dragon is the first biography of this international star. Drawn from one-on-one interviews with Chan himself and the actors, actresses, directors, and other stuntmen who've worked with...

The Little Blue Book for Filmmakers: A Primer for Directors, Writers, Actors, and Producers

by Carl Gottlieb & Toni Attell

(Limelight). Originally conceived as a workbook for young directors, The Little Blue Book for Filmmakers has become a handbook for easy reference, with all the information a student director/actor/producer needs...

Writing Screenplays That Sell, New Twentieth Anniversary Edition

by Michael Hauge

For more than twenty years, Writing Screenplays That Sell has been hailed as the most complete guide available on the art, craft, and business of writing for movies and television. Now fully revised and updated...

Knowing the Score

by David Morgan

This collection of interviews with Hollywood composers offers the most intimate look ever at the process of writing music for the movies.  From getting started in the business to recording the soundtrack, from...