Showing titles in Direction & Production

Whether you run a video production studio or you’re an independent freelancer, a YouTuber, or an in-house content creator, this short, easy-to-listen-to and easy-to-apply book will give you the tools you need to assemble your videos quickly and powerfully. Apply these skills whether you’re editing videos for web, social media, corporate businesses, or nonprofits.

From such cult hits as Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski to major critical darlings Fargo, No Country for Old Men, and Inside Llewyn Davis, Ethan and Joel Coen have cultivated a bleakly comical, instantly recognizable voice in modern American cinema. Film critic Adam Nayman carefully sifts through their complex cinematic universe in an effort to plot, as he puts it, "some Grand Unified Theory of Coen-ness." The book combines critical text with a visual aesthetic that honors the Coens' singular mix of darkness and levity.

Making films about club kids, royalty, hustlers, and televangelists, and working with icons such as such as Britney Spears, Tammy Faye Bakker, and RuPaul, the book is packed with glorious insider gossip and amazing celebrity stories. These are the riotous tales behind the shows that would make screen-agers of us all.

Audience-ology takes you to one of the most unknown places in Hollywood - a place where famous directors are reduced to tears and multi-millionaire actors to fits of rage. A place where dreams are made and fortunes are lost. This book is the chronicle of how real people have written and rewritten America’s cinematic masterpieces by showing up, watching a rough cut of a new film, and giving their unfettered opinions so that directors and studios can salvage their blunders, or better yet, turn their movies into all-time classics.

David O. Selznick (1902–1965) was one of the most prominent film producers of the Hollywood studio era. However, film production was not his only domain. Starting in the late 1930s, he built an impressive stable of stars within his own independent company. In Starmaker: David O. Selznick and the Production of Stars in the Hollywood Studio System, author Milan Hain reveals the mechanisms by which Selznick and his collaborators discovered and promoted new stars and describes how these personalities were marketed, whether for financial gain or symbolic recognition and prestige.

Finally, a book that tells the truth about the pitching process in Hollywood. This highly detailed guide is intended for writers, producers and directors, or anyone who wants to work in the intensely competitive, creative side of the entertainment industry. Written is simple, direct language, it is intended for beginners or established Hollywood pros. 

In today's busy world, preventing audience boredom is more important than ever. Now screenwriters and directors have an easy guidebook for making their films more captivating, spine tingling, and suspenseful. "Hitchcock Whisperer" Jeffrey Michael Bays brings the secrets of suspense out of the shadows.

Eric Lax has been with Woody Allen almost every step of the way. He chronicled Allen's transformation from stand-up comedian to filmmaker in On Being Funny (1975). His international best seller, Woody Allen: A Biography (1991), was a portrait of a director hitting his stride. Conversations with Woody Allen comprised interviews that illustrated Allen's evolution from 1971 to 2008. Now, Lax invites us onto the set - and even further behind the scenes - of Allen's Irrational Man, which was released in 2015, and starred Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone.

On October 5, 2017, the New York Times published an article by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey that helped change the world. For months Kantor and Twohey had been having confidential discussions with top actresses, former Weinstein employees and other sources, learning of disturbing, long-buried allegations. The journalists meticulously picked their way through a web of decades-old secret payouts and nondisclosure agreements, pressed some of the most famous women in the world to risk going on the record.

Want to know how to write a script that people will remember, and can catch the attention of producers and other above-the-line talent? (Don't worry about agents; they don't want to talk to you). Nail your dialogue. Really. Now I know you've heard all the maxims: Film is a Visual Medium; You Can Either Write Dialogue or You Can't. And they both sound very logical. And esteemed writers, such as David Mamet, have been preaching them for years. But, in my not so humble opinion, they're both total bullcrap.

In a new edition of this popular guidebook, filmmakers Alan Rosenthal and Ned Eckhardt show listeners how to utilize the latest innovations in equipment, technologies, and production techniques for success in the digital, web-based world of documentary film.

With her singular voice, Nora Ephron flourished as a dominant force in the entertainment industry, focusing on the idiosyncrasies of romance that were universally relatable. The women in her stories paralleled reality—the veil was lifted, the glossy sheen removed. Her protagonists share an unwavering sense of humor about life’s mishaps, and they never take themselves too seriously.

In the days when Hollywood films were cranked out the way Detroit turned out automobiles, one man clung to the belief that a motion picture was like a painting created and signed by a single artist.

Award-Winning Finalist in the Narrative: Non-Fiction category of the 2020 Best Book Awards sponsored by American Book FestIn 1988, a young, mid-level employee named Art Bell pitched a novel concept - a television channel focused 100 percent on just one thing: Comedy - to the chairman of HBO. The station that would soon become Comedy Central, with celebrated programs like South Park, Chapelle’s Show, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report, was born.

Learning how to write a movie script is more than just figuring out the margins and hitting a few plot points along the way....

In this adventure, which would have played well in one of his own films, Schmuel Goldfisz left the Warsaw ghetto in 1895. He walked 300 miles to the Oder River, where he paid someone to row him across, smuggling him out of the Russian empire into Germany, past border patrols to another long walk to Hamburg. The gleam in his eye was America, "a far-away country, a vision of paradise." Schmuel Goldfisz became Samuel Goldwyn, one of the producers who created the Hollywood film industry.

Want to sell a screenplay, but figure there’s no chance it’ll ever happen? I mean, you don’t know a soul in Hollywood, right? You don’t have James Cameron on your speed dial. Christopher Nolan isn’t in your yoga class. Quentin Tarantino doesn’t shop at the same Whole Foods that you do. I mean, who’s going to take a chance on you? There’s no way you could ever sell a screenplay. Right? Well…

Directors operate behind the scenes managing actors, establishing a cohesive creative vision, at times literally guiding our eyes with the eye of the camera. But we are often so dazzled by the visions onscreen that it is easy to forget the individual who is off-screen orchestrating the entire production - to say nothing of their having marshaled a script, a studio, and other people's money. David Thomson, in his usual brilliantly insightful way, shines a light on the visionary directors who have shaped modern cinema and, through their work, studies the very nature of film direction.

Lessons from the Set is a comprehensive filmmaking guide that takes a cinephile’s do-it-yourself approach to low-budget indie film production and distribution. The book is peppered with filmmaking tips and tricks, as well as valuable, practical insight into the process of writing, directing, producing, and distributing commercial feature films on a low budget - whether you’re working with $1,000 or $1 million.

Women have been instrumental in the success of American cinema since its very beginning. One of the first people to ever pick up a motion picture camera was a woman, as was the first screenwriter to win two Academy Awards, the inventor of the boom microphone, and the first person to be credited with the title film editor. Throughout the entire history of Hollywood women have been revolutionizing, innovating, and shaping how we make movies. Yet their stories are rarely shared. This is what film reporter Alicia Malone wants to change. Backwards and in Heels tells the history of women in film in a different way.