Robert Zemeckis has risen to the forefront of American filmmaking with a string of successes: Romancing the Stone, Back to the Future I, II, & III, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Forrest Gump, and Castaway. Herein, Norman Kagan unlocks the mind behind the making of these diverse and groundbreaking hits-appraising each work's public and critical appeal while placing the films in the context of Zemeckis's career.
The tools for independent filmmaking are more accessible today than ever. Yet there is much more to successfully creating a film than access to equipment and software. Chronicling the making of his debut feature film, A Convenient Truth (2015), the author describes the practical preproduction steps needed to take a project from early concept to the first day of photography--details most filmmaking guides don't include. A scene-by-scene breakdown describes the transferrable lessons learned dur...
German director Frank Wisbar (1899-1967) had the misfortune of achieving success as a filmmaker just as Hitler came to power. While critics praised his work, Nazi cultural watchdogs were scornful of his attempts to chart ""the landscape of the soul"" in films like Ferryman Maria (1936) and Anna and Elisabeth (1933). Wisbar fled to America, where Hollywood saw him as no more than a technician, good for churning out low-budget horror like Strangler of the Swamp (1945) and Devil Bat's Daughter (194...
Roman Polanski: The Cinema of a Cultural Traveller
by Professor Ewa Mazierska
These in-depth profiles illuminate the careers of ten motion picture crew members who worked during Hollywood's Independent Age of film and television production--basically from 1945 to 1980. A celebratory insiders' look at the Tinseltown machine, the book utilizes individual interviews and rare crew photographs to provide the back story of production challenges and solutions for some of the world's most recognized movies, including such classics as The Searchers, Chinatown, The Hustler, and...
Andrei Tarkovsky's Poetics of Cinema
by Redwood Thomas and Thomas Redwood
"If you look for a meaning, you'll miss everything that happens."Almost twenty-five years after the death of Andrei Tarkovsky, the mystery of his films remains alive and well. Recent years have witnessed an ever-increasing number of film theorists, critics and philosophers taking up the challenge to decipher what these films actually mean. But what do these films actually show us?This study undertakes a close formal analysis of Tarkovsky's later films. Charting the stylistic and narrative innova...
Five Filmmakers
"Five Filmmakers" examines the aesthetic, sociocultural, and political forces that have shaped the careers and works of five of Eastern Europe's most distinguished filmmakers - Andrei Tarkovsky (former Soviet Union), Istv n Szab- (Hungary), Roman Polanski (Poland), Milos Forman (Czechoslovakia), and Dusan Makavejev (Yugoslavia). Each has challenged the cultural and ideological boundaries between East and West. All except Polanski have had an impact on the development of their national cinemas. V...
Barbara Hammer: Pushing Out of the Frame by Sarah Keller explores the career of experimental filmmaker and visual artist Barbara Hammer. Hammer first garnered attention in the early 1970s for a series of films representing lesbian subjects and subjectivity. Over the five decades that followed, she made almost a hundred films and solidified her position as a pioneer of queer experimental cinema and art. In the first chapter, Keller covers Hammer's late 1960s-1970s work and explores the tensions b...
Model, animate and render with a practical command of all the essential functions and tools in CINEMA 4D 10. Detailed tutorials, suitable for novices and experienced users alike, demonstrate how to navigate the redesigned UI and orient you to the workflow. Next, the author guides you through the creation of a more complex project in which you model, create, apply textures, light, and render a final showcase image of a sports car. Finally, you will model, texture and prepare a comic character for...
Headline: A peak behind the Hollywood mask by one of its foremost makeup artists In Hollywood's heyday, almost every major studio had a Westmore heading up the makeup department. Since 1917, there has never been a time when Westmores weren't shaping the visages of stardom. For their century-long dedication to the art of makeup, the Westmores were honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2008. In this lively memoir, Michael Westmore not only regales us with tales of Hollywood's golde...
His first personal project, Born in Concrete, was undertaken to dispel his biases towards expressive art, overcome his own perceived limitations and to rejuvenate his creative spirit. This collision of Soviet inspired retro sci-fi and Jewish mystical and qabalistic symbolism has evolved into a filter, or framework, that emotions, ideas and images are pushed through to be given shape and form.
Everything You Need to Know to Become a Film-Industry Insider Have you ever wondered what the difference is between a gaffer and a grip? Or what makes the best boy so great? In Strike the Baby and Kill the Blonde,* Dave Knox, a top camera operator and longtime veteran of the film industry, gives you the inside story on the lingo and slang heard on the set. This is an A-to-Z guide to making a movie: the equipment, the crew, and the sometimes hilarious terminology—everything you need to know to s...
