An enthusiastic and encouraging how-to for aspiring filmmakers.
An insider’s guide to shepherding a movie project through every stage of its development.
In this book, Morgan, the writer and director of such independent feature films as the 2018 crime drama Pickings, details the experience of being an independent moviemaker. It’s aimed at readers who are determined to live the dream of making, distributing, and marketing their own cinematic works—shepherding the process from beginning to end and, in the best of circumstances, getting the lion’s share of the credit and profits. As he notes, he’s “someone who’s been there and done that: made a movie and got it in theaters, did his own marketing, sold it, got reviews and earned enough money back to get to work on his next film.” Morgan draws on his experience to provide step-by-step advice for every part of the process, starting with the initial idea and moving steadily through the multifaceted writing process: “write a treatment, follow up with a 90-page script, then rewrite it, perfect it, register it, copyright it, and put it in front of people who can make it, or make it yourself.” Many major figures doing valuable work started out mastering the DIY skills Morgan relates here, and, as he rightly notes, they still make use of what they learned then: “anyone from [Quentin] Tarantino to [Martin] Scorsese…utilize[s] DIY, low-budget filmmaking techniques in their current work,” he writes, “despite the humongous budgets they appear to be working under.” Throughout, Morgan is a sharp mentor, using clear, energetic prose to clarify every possibly mysterious part of the industry, from the intricacies of casting to an executive producer’s navigation “through the lonely land of fundraising” to tips on photography—especially if there’s no budget for a director of photography. Morgan spends a good deal of time on the various aspects of writing, but he also covers development and marketing processes for the uninitiated, stressing that the skills and techniques that he outlines apply to all levels of the industry. Beginners, however, are sure to find it especially valuable.
An enthusiastic and encouraging how-to for aspiring filmmakers.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73-288881-4
Page Count: 301
Publisher: Library Tales Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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