“As many know, I didn’t formally go to any film school. Instead, I went the route of learning by doing things first-hand. But before diving in head first into making movies, I did some heavy research with many books on the craft of filmmaking and screenwriting.
To this day, many of my favorites still serve as reference books as there’s always still so much to learn, absorb and practice. After all, making films is not something that can’t be done on a frequent basis to hone the craft. It’s nice sometimes to study it in other ways, such as watching films you love and reading books about various approaches and techniques.
So I thought it’d been fun to create a list of books as if I were giving a course on filmmaking. Admittedly, I do not hold any of them as the Bible on how to make a film. But in each one of them there’s a golden nugget or two of lessons that I try keep in mind as I approach a project.”
“Occasionally, when meandering around New York with time to kill, I’ll wander into one of the few remaining capitalistic literary temples, commonly referred to by the elderly and otherwise archaically – minded as “Barnes & Noble stores.” I almost never actually buy a tangible book while there; who would want those cumbersome things cluttering up their janitor’s closet-sized New York apartment? Instead, I use their inventory as a means of analog googling – I root around through their film shelves for industry-related titles I have never read, and add anything of interest I find to the list in the open- ended task I always have going in my phone/Outlook for eBook download at a later time. Nine times out of ten, I find nothing of merit that I haven’t read. I have many industry-centered sicknesses, and consuming every single book pertaining to it is a close second to my addiction to the actual films the industry churns out. In my perpetual sifting through the mostly useless piles of ones and zeroes that I’ve mainlined over the six years I’ve been working in this industry, I’m going to bat here for the titles in the following list. I’ve categorized them because I have an organization fetish (the producer in me), and tacked on an aloof quote to each category because I find that literary practice amusing (the writer in me). “
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