The Bookshelf: Sidney Lumet's "Making Movies"
Sidney Lumet's "Making Movies" should be essential reading for anyone interesting in filmmaking. It goes over through the many steps of filmmaking and offers intriguing insights from one of America's best directors. I probably learned as much from reading this book as I did from my four years at Syracuse's Newhouse School. (Okay, I learned more at the 'Cuse but I'm not sure I learned more actually useful information).
Some of the lessons are very basic but for some reason they seemed to stick with me more while reading this book. Something like. "In drama, the characters should determind the story. In melodrama, the story determines the characters." A very basic line but a small tidbit that has always helped me from staying away from writing melodramatic moments into my script. The section on the camera was especially interesting to me but that might be because I never really had training on a film camera (Syracuse focused on the future of cinema DV, which is quickly becoming a thing of the past).
The book is only 11 bucks so it's a cheap and quick read. Some of the later chapters were a little too technical for my taste but overall, this book is a must-read and is one of the texts I recommend for people trying to learn filmmaking without spending the money to go to film school.
