Making Movies Work Thinking Like a Filmmaker

Extremely well written book providing interesting insights into how to make and watch movies, and what makes great movies work.

If you are looking for theory or for technical analysis of film, this is not the place. If your interest, instead, is insight into the thinking that goes into making (mostly mainstream) films this is an excellent starting point. Boorstin doesn't write like a movie critic or a professor of film; he writes like a very knowledgable and reflective craftsman who has insider experience on filmmaking and has been able to capture that experience into a series of analytic perspectives on the nature of "movies that work." He breaks his analysis of the "working of movies" down into three perspectives that amount to the various levels at which the film needs to operate on or captivate its audience. A movie that "works" has to work on all three levels, though it may emphasize one over the others. First, it should appeal to the "voyeur" in the audience. We watch movies because we want to see, and a movie works at a voyeuristic level when it shows us something that we can both believe and be interested in. That sounds straightforward enough, but the voyeuristic perspective allows him to go into the "why" behind a wide range of cinematic techniques, and to introduce quite a bit of the vocabulary you'd find in another introduction to film but might not see why it was so important. Secondly, the film has to work at a "vicarious" level: we have to care about the characters in the film, and what they do has to be emotionally true. Under this heading Boorstin is able to discuss a range of topics, from Kuleshov's psychology experiments with film montage to what makes a film soundtrack work. The third level is the "visceral": films can work, not only because they are intriguing or make us feel something for the characters, but also because they make us feel something period. The rise of horror cinema is directly connected to this longing for a visceral experience: we don't just want to care about someone who is potentially being harmed but we want to feel their fear along with them. The book goes on to discuss combinations between these, the differences between narratives and films of other forms, and the difference between mainstream Hollywood cinema and avant garde or foreign cinema. My only quibble with the book is that he doesn't address a fourth level at which films work -- maybe because it's hard to come up with a "V" word for what might be called the "reflective dimension" of film, and I believe that a discussion of this dimension would complement his other discussions and allow him to introduce in an unpretentious and insider fashion themes that are the subject of what film theorists call "ideology." Every film, at some level, has a theme -- has to have something it is "about" and this is a level that is not only of interest to film theorists but also to filmmakers. Sidney Lumet's wonderful "Making Movies" discusses this at length. For a film to work it has to have a theme and it has to somehow make sense of that theme. In some films, and

For those people that just stumbled on this book and are not aspiring filmmakers, the insight and even the abundance of photographs from major scenes are worth the purchase price. For the rest of us, everyone knows what makes a professional in any field is that little extra effort to be one-step ahead of the next person. This book may be that next step. A paragraph from the introduction says it all: "How does a surgeon attack a tumor, a lawyer a murder case, or an architect a concert hall? When you learn a craft, or a profession, or an art (and film is all of these), you have to master a way of thinking as well as a set of skills. A way of approaching the problem that make techniques your tool."

"Making Movies Work" discusses films from three types of effects the shots have on the audience. Boorstein calls the "Voyeurs Eye" the eye we have for detail, consistency and the logic of a scene, where we gather information. "Vicarious Eye" concerns the techniques filmmakers use to relate feeling and the emotions of a scene. "Visceral Eye" appeals to the part of the brain that bypasses thinking, the 'gut' reaction. This book does not go into detail on setting up shots, but rather gives the reader a useful context in which to think about shot choice. It's purpose is to help identify the purpose of a shot or scene and why a shot gives the audience the feel that it does. I thought the book was fascinating, and it puts to direct application much of film theory.

This book is unlike most film theory books in that it gives practical examples from the author's considerable personal experience in the film business. It can be used by film students, film makers or writers as a theoretical and practical guide to understanding the process. It is filled with amusing and useful anecdotes and is clearer and more fun than similar books. I recommend it.