Book Description

This book is a unique exploration of the transformational process that turns film's raw material into deeply moving and provocative experiences. It takes key moments in films as examples of this process and examines how the moment is staged, how visual composition is used, how narrative is structured, how colour, light and music are handled, and how to get inside what it is like to be a fictional character that we really care about. The book also focuses on the deeply personal nature of the filmmaker's creative process, taking the international film director Vincent Ward as an example. Vincent Ward has been described as "one of film's great image-makers." The book looks into the deep sources of this ability, and by doing so provides new insights into the nature of creativity in film. The book is illustrated with a wealth of film images that are used to analyse in depth how scenes are actually constructed, including computer-generated 3-D simulations of staging, camera positioning, and movement. The sections on colour, light, and music explore how intense audio-visual experiences are produced. A section on 'what it is like' offers a new approach to understanding why we care about the people we watch on the screen.