Spike Gomes's Reviews > Film Art: An Introduction

Found this book in a pile of discarded books and picked it up because the cover was compelling, and I know nothing about the art and science of movie-making. I'm rather glad I did because this was an excellent introduction into the field, with a nice balance of both application and theory and wide range of content covered from mainstream Hollywood to obscure experimental films, and from silent classics to modern digitally recorded cinema.

Through reading this book I've discovered why modern movies leave me cold, compared to past ones; something I've never really really been able to put my finger on in a technical way. Now I know it's because the pace of cutting between cameras has doubled over the past few decades, leaving everything, even non-action movies, having something of a frenetic ADD sort of feel. Also, modern movies are made with television and DVD releases in mind, making camera work focus more on close-ups and a set form of easily partitioned scenes rather than grand-tableau long-shots and theatrically inspired middle shots. Now I know this, I have better idea of what in mind to look for when sorting out new releases to view.

While I'm not particularly interested in film criticism, either consuming it or producing it; and this book is geared towards a pedagogical inculcation of formalist principles of film criticism, there is much that everyone who is interested in watching movies, or making movies can glean from this textbook. Even if you're just making youtube videos for fun, reading this would give you a lot of technical aesthetic tools for making your videos seem a lot more polished with no extra time or money cost other than changing the way you handle your cameras and your lighting. If making an small indie movie is your goal, well, the chapter on the business end of movie making and production will likely put something of a reality check on your ambitions (take the time and money you think you will need and double it). Even I didn't know how many specialists skills it takes to make a movie to completion and then distribute it.