The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook

Rating:
Summary: A very good guide to film making
Review: Basically this book is a three part book. The start of the book goes into the film making process, what it is about, why bother and how to get started. It gives you a general air of what is going on before a film starts shooting.

The middle part of the book is extremely technically useful. Don't be put-off by the fact that it is a British book, most of the standards are the same and the writer covers both US systems and UK systems. Anyway the value of this book is in that the writer interviews very important people that work in the filming process - actors, special effects, film lab, cameramen, editors, sound editors, legal agencies, projectionists, marketing people, producers, directors... etc.... and they all give very profesional tips on what you should do and what you should NOT do.

The third part of the book deals with CASE STUDIES and various filmmakers talk about their projects and what went right and what went wrong (My copy of the book is actually missing pages here. It looks like the printer left out about 30 pages and replaced these with pages that where already printed a few pages back before).

Overall this is a very good book with lots of information from the people that matter in this industry. There is a lot of information on what NOT to do when shooting your first film. Anybody who wants to get into to film making should not miss out on this writer/director's account of his experiences with film making. It is worth every penny, even though my book did have misprints.

Rating:
Summary: Lots of Information but too UK centric for me.
Review: I'd have to agree with the previous reviewer that this is a PACKED volume of information. There is definitely a lot of information here.

Importantly, especially for the novice filmmaker, it is written in accessible language and with many photos/pictures to help illustrate points.

The format is not very "handbook"-like however. It's not set up with the ability to refer to a particular section and instantly find information. The format is actually INTERVIEWS with various people. That makes this an easy read but not really something I'd call a "handbook".

Also, where I tend to back off with my usefulness of this book - it is written with a very distinctive UK (Great Britian) slant. Most (though not all) of the interviews are with UK resident filmmakers, professionals and film business people. I found a lot of the information to be TOO MUCH about making films in the UK, and not generic enough for US application.

UK filmmakers or filmmaker hopefuls will find more in this book to relate to thier field than will a US filmmaker. BUT - again, even for those in the UK, the INTERVIEW format isn't very user-friendly. It's like reading a very long magazine interview with various film professionals.

Please note, also, that the featured CD contains .txt and .doc (MS Word) examples which are written for the UK (ie. they indicate "Engligh Court" and the money amounts are pounds). I'm not sure what it would take to make them US friendly, but thought I should mention this.

I wish everyone the best of luck in making their own film, that's a dream of mine and I encourage you to read as much information about filmmaking as you can, however - this would not be a book I'd suggest as your only reference, or for use as a "handbook".

I will note that, specifically, the charts and illustrations of various equipment were very helpful.

All The Best,
turtlex

Rating:
Summary: US Edition of this book on the way in July 2003!!
Review: In the light of the review by Turtlex below, you may be happy to know that we will be publishing a 100% Americanized edition of this book in the summer of 2003. So, if you're in North America and you're thinking of buying this book - don't. You're much better off waiting until the summer.

Rating:
Summary: OK but too UK oriented
Review: Though I found many aspects of this book helpful, I thought the book was too Oriented towards Filmmakers in the UK where much of their filmmaking industry is government subsidized. An aspring filmmaker in the US will not find many parts of this book useful (film lottery, and UK legal system). But the parts that are generic to all filmmakers are what makes the book worth buying.

I have discovered that the authors have recently published a US version of this book. For American filmmakers, I recommend that book instead of this UK version. Though there are some aspects that will be universal to all filmmakers, there are still huge chunks of the UK version that simply is not applicable to us Americans.