Make Your Story Really Stinkin’ Big (Book Review)

Posted by on Nov 1, 2013 in Books, Featured, Reviews, Reviews (Books) | 1 comment

Houston Howard's book challenges screenwriters/authors to take their simple story and turn it into a complex world. The focus of Mr. Howard's book is to incorporate a concept entitled “360 Degree StoryWeaving,” where the author of said story looks not only at the core story they want to write but looks far beyond it. These concepts not only include the past/present/future of the story being told, but to the entire universe it exists inside of. (As such, this framework can easily help you bridge into other platforms such as computer games...

Read More

John Badham on Directing (Book Review)

Posted by on Sep 16, 2013 in Books, Featured, Reviews, Reviews (Books) | 0 comments

In my experience, the mantra that states “you can’t teach directing” is true. Directing can be a painful process of learning by trial and error. While nobody can “teach you” how to have a unique vision, there are people that can give you valuable information that can help you execute it. There are plenty of books written by accomplished and very respectable directors that serve this purpose. Iʼve read several of them and among the ones that have helped me the most as a beginner director have been written by John...

Read More

The Location Sound Bible (Review)

Posted by on Sep 28, 2012 in Books, Reviews, Reviews (Books) | 0 comments

Going one step further – you should only hire the sound guy. Sound is more important than the image. Repeating: SOUND IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN IMAGE. Why? There are many, many films out there that could be deemed “artsy” – from the closing scenes of 2001 a Space Odyssey to the long one-take shots from the film Children of Men. Bad acting, bad directing, bad set direction pale in comparison to bad sound. If the sounds in the above mentioned films were terrible – people would have been running for the exits.

Read More

Something Startling Happens (Review)

Posted by on Jan 27, 2012 in Books, Reviews, Reviews (Books) | 1 comment

Using films as diverse as “Juno” and “The Godfather” (and pretty much everything in between) Mr. Klick shows how each film – in their own way – has the same beats. Even if the genre is completely different, or the director is George Lucas or Woody Allen, there are similarities in place here that you may not see (and probably DON’T see). But they are there.

Read More