On Directing Film - Hardcover

Mamet, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067083033X ISBN 13: 9780670830336

Publisher: Viking Pr, 1991

Synopsis

Describes the basic principles of film making, argues that directing is an extension of screenwriting, and explains how films tell stories

About this title

Review:

According to David Mamet, a film director must, above all things, think visually. Most of this instructive and funny book is written in dialogue form and based on film classes Mamet taught at Columbia University. He encourages his students to tell their stories not with words, but through the juxtaposition of uninflected images. The best films, Mamet argues, are composed of simple shots. The great filmmaker understands that the burden of cinematic storytelling lies less in the individual shot than in the collective meaning that shots convey when they are edited together. Mamet borrows many of his ideas about directing, writing, and acting from Russian masters such as Konstantin Stanislavsky, Sergei M. Eisenstein, and Vsevelod Pudovkin, but he presents his material in so delightful and lively a fashion that he revitalizes it for the contemporary reader.

From the Back Cover:

Calling on this unique perspective as playwright, screenwriter, and director of his own critically acclaimed movies, House Of Games and Things Change, David Mamet illuminates how a film comes to be. He looks at every aspect of directing--from script to cutting room--to show the many tasks directors undertake in reaching their prime objective: presenting a story that will be understood by the audience and has the power to be both surprising and inevitable at the same time.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Pr
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 067083033X
• ISBN 13: 9780670830336
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 107