Customer Reviews

Making Movies: The Inside Guide to Independent Movie Production

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This is not a fun book to read. It's like an old textbook in a community college. It's okay, and it's worth reading, but it's not worth the money. You won't gain 15 bucks of information in this book. If you want to know about independent filmmaking buy Rick Schmidt's Feautre Filmmaking at Used-car prices. This is well worth the read and the money.

A general overview of the low budget filmmaking process loaded with pertinent information and technical advice. Areas of interest: starting your own production company and an appendix containing several sample contracts. Includes interviews with the likes of George A. Romero, Tobe Hooper, Sam Raimi, Lizzie Borden, Tom Savini and Oliver Stone. It cries out for an update(its eight years old)but its an excellant exploration into the world of filmmaking nonetheless. Worth the dough.

Think this book is boring, cry me a freaking river losers. Making movies is not exciting, it's long hours and too soon deadlines and ego, ego, ego. This is how you do it. This is how The Blair Witch Project and dozens of other low/no budget videos are able to be made. I found the book to be priceless.

This book is out of date, and the "famous director tales" are only a few pages in length each. Not worth the money. Would be interesting to see how this book would look if were written today, with the impact of DV.

For a book that came out in 1989, this book holds up very well. In fact it makes a very good companion piece to R. Rodriquez's "Rebel Without a Crew". These books both offer practical advice for true independents who don't have money, and may not have access to it. Don't get me wrong if one intends to eventually work in the Hollywood system, then it is imperative that you know the hierarchy of that system like the back of your hand, but most filmmakers aren't starting out with a full crew of experienced staff. You'll be a Jack of all trades on your set, and trust me you have to be. One of the best pieces of advice I never took from one of my film school professors was "No one is going to care as much about your film as you are." Pretty straight forward, but considering they may not be getting paid, doing it only for the grade, or out of curiosity, what do you do if you're relying on someone who flakes? That is what general books like this tell you -- what you need to do and know to bring a production to completion. There are plenty of books on the market that get into the technical nuts and bolts aspects of camera work, lighting or sound, and those are great, but sometimes you need the encouragement of people who have walked the walk. You need to know how they did it, and what they learned from the experience.

This book is geared toward people who were trying to make films before going to film school and it endorses being an amateur filmmaker. In other words the best way to become a filmmaker is by making films by any means necessary. As a result many who only went to film school, or specialized in some technical aspect of production and weren't interested in directing, or producing will miss the point of this book entirely.

Lastly John Russo has creds. He was there with George Romero when they made "Night of the Living Dead", a film which probably inspired more independent filmmakers to start making movies than any other film made outside Hollywood. He has worked with a lot of the big names in Hollywood, and he gets a lot of them to talk about their experiences during the course of the book. It's a fun, easy read. If you're really into making movies then this is a must for your library.

I can't believe the last reviews for this book were written over ten years ago. I bought Making Movies by John Russo when it was first published in 1989 and lost that copy a few years later. It's been at least 15 years since I've laid eyes on it and have just recieved a copy from Amazon. Yes, the info is over twenty years old but it was nice to read what various filmmakers had to say about independent film production back in the day. Even better was checking out on the internet what all of these people have been up to over the last two decades. Some have continued in the industry with great success, some have managed to get by, while others have completely faded away.

I recommend this book because it's an interesting read for future movie makers who have no idea what it was like before the days of digital video and YouTube.