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    Making Movies
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    Making Movies
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    Making Movies
    Ebook234 pages3 hours

    Making Movies

    By Sidney Lumet

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    ONE OF THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER'S 100 GREATEST FILM BOOKS OF ALL TIME • “Invaluable.... I am sometimes asked if there is one book a filmgoer could read to learn more about how movies are made and what to look for while watching them. This is the book.” —Roger Ebert, The New York Times Book Review

    Why does a director choose a particular script? What must they do in order to keep actors fresh and truthful through take after take of a single scene? How do you stage a shootout—involving more than one hundred extras and three colliding taxis—in the heart of New York’s diamond district? What does it take to keep the studio honchos happy? From the first rehearsal to the final screening, Making Movies is a master’s take, delivered with clarity, candor, and a wealth of anecdote.

    For in this book, Sidney Lumet, one of our most consistently acclaimed directors, gives us both a professional memoir and a definitive guide to the art, craft, and business of the motion picture. Drawing on forty years of experience on movies that range from Long Day’s Journey into Night to Network and The Verdict—and with such stars as Katharine Hepburn, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, and Al Pacino—Lumet explains how painstaking labor and inspired split-second decisions can result in two hours of screen magic.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateSep 1, 2010
    ISBN9780307763662

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    Reviews for Making Movies

    4/5

    144 ratings7 reviews

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    • 3/5
      OK account of the nuts and bolts of moviemaking by Lumet. Sometimes he goes on a little long about his grievances with the process like too much producer control, etc. It is a really big team effort and sometimes results are great.
    • 4/5
      he really didn't like teamsters.
    • 5/5
      A wonderful overview of the film-making process, full of practical info and great anecdotes from an experienced man-of-the-trade. It's also very well written, leading from the technical information to the personal process seamlessly. And it makes you want to watch all Lumet's films!
    • 5/5
      Sidney Lumet is one of those powerhouses of filmmaking. His films don't all have the greatest financial success, but over the years he has delivered some amazing cinema. I mean, this is the man who adapted 12 Angry Men and Murder on the Orient Express for the screen, who brought us Dog Day Afternoon and Network. Lumet has always been one of the best, so when I saw this book on the shelf, I knew it would be a must read. Took me a while to finally get to it, but here we are.The book itself is part memoir and part manual on moviemaking. Lumet explains each technical aspect; starting with directing, moving on to writing, dealing with actors, lighting, music, sound, and even going through the processes of rushes and prints before the concluding chapter dealing with the studio and focus groups. Having been in the business since the late 50s, Lumet has had a wide and varied experience with every aspect of getting his movies made, and he shares them all here.If you're looking for a straightforward technical manual or an up-to-date look at the process of making film in the digital age, this isn't the book for you. When Lumet wrote this, digital filmmaking was still in relative infancy, and certainly wasn't being used on the simple dramas that he made. But, if you're looking for some solid advice and storytelling about making a movie from one of the best directors out there, this is definitely a welcome addition to your library or reading list.
    • 4/5
      Very informative and briskly paced. It goes step by step into the filmmaking process as it pertains to studio filmmaking.
    • 3/5
      This is a review of Sidney Lumet's Making Movies. Before you get too carried away, you have to nail down what the book about. This book is about making movies. To communicate this to the reader, I have used words, one placed laboriously after the other. You gotta be careful about words though; you can't use just any old words, they've got to go together to make sensible sentences. Here's an anecdote about how Michael Dirda reviewed this book while eating two sandwiches at once - a real technical achievement, but what do you expect? The guy is a class act. Now we're at the end of the review. I hope you will excuse my current reviews and remember the good reviews I have written (many of them a long time ago) with fondness.
    • 2/5
      I was surprised to learn that this book was published in the mid-90's, as a good chunk of it (the sections dealing with the technical aspects of movie making) is technologically passé. The book gave me a decent appreciation of the complexity of making a film and the challenges a director faces in terms of limitations and the simple realities of light and sound. The author is a serious name-dropper (there is one long paragraph towards the end of the book that is merely a list of directors he admires) and although he exercised tight control over his movies came across as a bit insecure. I would recommend this or Understanding Movies if you know nothing about filmmaking, but don't expect a thrilling read.