The Power of Film [Paperback]

Howard Suber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2006

America's most distinguished film professor provides the definitive A to Z course on the intricacies of film. Each entry in this remarkable book, which represents a lifetime of teaching film, has already inspired and educated several generations of Hollywood's greatest filmmakers and writers. This book examines the patterns and principles that make films popular and memorable, and will be useful both for those who want to create films and for those who just want to understand them better. Advance Review Quotes: "Howard Suber's understanding of film storytelling fills the pages of this wise, liberating book. Much of it is surprisingly contrary to what 'everyone knows.' A remarkable work." Francis Ford Coppola

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Advance Reviews for the Power of Film "Suber genuinely helps us understand 'the power of film' - why it has been the predominant art form for more than a century, and why it continues to have such power over the lives we all lead" - Geoff Gilmore, Director of the Sundance Film Festival

"What Artistotle did for drama, Suber has now done for film. This is a profound and succint book that is miraculously fun to read." -David Koepp, Screenwriter, War of the Worlds (2005), Spider-Man, Mission Impossible, Jurassic Park

About the Author

Suber has taught more than 65 different courses in 40 years at UCLA's celebrated film schoo. He has been a consultant to every major film studio, and his former students are currently active throughout the world.

Product Details

• Paperback: 424 pages
• Publisher: Michael Wiese Productions (September 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932907173
• ISBN-13: 978-1932907179
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #77,088 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Howard Suber was the founding chair of the Film and Television Producers Program at UCLA, where he has been a faculty member for more than 47 years. He has taught thousands of young filmmakers in more than 65 different courses covering most areas of film and television as both arts and industries. In recent decades, 2/3rds of his students have been screenwriters. He has also taught a several-week workshop for the winners of the Independent Feature Project, West's screenwriting competition.

Suber's book, The Power of Film (thepoweroffilm.com), produced reactions such as these:

"Howard Suber is one of the foremost teachers of film in the world."
--Geoffrey Gilmore, Director, Sundance Film Festival

"Howard Suber's understanding of film storytelling fills the pages of this wise, liberating book. Much of it is surprisingly contrary to what "everyone knows." A remarkable work."
-- Francis Ford Coppola

"For years students in Howard Suber's legendary classes at UCLA begged him to write a book. Now that he has delivered it, filmmakers, scholars and anyone else with a serious interest in film can rejoice. A fascinating and thought-provoking work."
-- Alexander Payne, Director/Screenwriter, Sideways, About Schmidt

"What Aristotle did for drama, Howard Suber has now done for film. This is a profound and succinct book that is miraculously fun to read."
-- David Koepp, Screenwriter, War of the Worlds (2005), Spider-Man, Mission Impossible, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

Suber has been a consultant and expert witness for every Hollywood studio and several networks and cable companies, especially dealing with issues of screenplay copyrights and creative control, and he has been employed to advise a major studio on screenplays being considered for production.

He was been an Associate Dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film, Television and Digital Media, and President of The Society for Film Studies, the national scholarly organization in the field, and has been awarded UCLA's Distinguished Teaching Award and life achievement awards from two film festivals.

Before being asked to develop UCLA's Producers Program in 1987, he devoted nearly 20 years to developing and chairing UCLA's program in film history, theory, and criticism, including creating and chairing the Ph.D. program in film and television. He was also a member of The National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress, which selects 25 films each year for national recognition and preservation.

Suber was the Director and one of the founders of the UCLA Film Archive, which became the largest such institutional collection outside the Library of Congress during his tenure.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great read - informative and terrific fun, February 14, 2007

By 

Doug Carneal (clifton, virginia United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Power of Film (Paperback)

Getting the book and reading all of the blurbs on the cover written by film experts like Coppola and several successful Hollywood screenwriters, I was a bit concerned that perhaps I had purchased an insiders handbook, which might prove too esoteric for the casual reader. The 'power of the book' Prof. Suber has written, is his ability to take substantive information and make it enjoyable reading. The book is written in bite size stories, alphabetized by topic, each insightful and entertaining. I often sat down with the intent of a quick read of one or two articles and discovered I had read seven or eight. The topics are easy to digest, yet informative enough to go back and read several times.
Certainly as Bill Cosby used to say, "Be careful or you just might learn something". Film students and pros, no doubt already know about(and swear by)this book, this review is for the rest of us, those who just like films. The Power of Film would make a terrific gift for lovers of films of all ages and is certainly a must read for anyone with film career aspirations.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Essential Book, May 15, 2007

By 

Don Maxwell (MO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Power of Film (Paperback)

Howard Suber delivered a lecture to a large gathering in a theater in Kansas City this spring. What was striking about the experience was how Professor Suber turned this theater into a classroom and, by asking questions, made us active participants in a search for answers to the question: "What makes a film great?".

Suber's book, "The Power of Film", uses this same Socratic Method but the technique is necessarily different. Instead of asking questions, a writer can only pose riddles, and to this end Suber employees wit and irony to provoke careful and thoughtful reading of his concise dictionary like definitions.

The films Suber examines are American films. Without being jingoistic, he says that over the decades American films have been the most popular not only in the U.S. but all over the world. The American films he focuses on are those that have maintained their appeal ten years after they were released those, in other words, which have stood the test of time and remain perennial favorites.

The question he asks is: "What makes these films classics?"

Some of the answers are surprising. The notion, for example, that Hollywood films, to be popular, have to have a happy ending, Suber demonstrates is not true. Think of the Godfather films, Lawrence of Arabia, Chinatown. Even "It's a Wonderful Life" journeys through some very dark regions before emerging with a comic ending.

So why do people go to see these films? Suber suggests that going to the movies is akin to going to church, that what people need and want is to experience time honored rituals that put us in touch with our humanity.

As a practicing filmmaker, I have spent many hours over the years thinking about how to use the power of film to move an audience and I am always looking for help. Of the many available, I have culled a few "essential" books on film theory and aesthetics. Eisenstein's "Film Sense" and "Film Form" are two, Pudovkin's 'Film Technique and Film Acting", Mascelli's "Five C's of Cinematography" and a few others. Suber's "The Power of Film" has already taken its place with these.

Why? Because first of all, the book is packed with information and insight covering every subject about American film, literally from A to Z. Second, the insights are uncannily precise. A brief example: I don't like using flashbacks because I feel they are too easy but I find I must at times because they are sometimes necessary and I haven't been able to think of anything better. This is in Suber's definition of "Flasbacks":

"The reason flashbacks came back is that they are not merely
stylistic flourishes, like iris shots; they are necessary tools
that, so far, cannot be replaced by others."

The authority of this statement is reassuring, but notice the two words: "so far"; this tiny insertion leaves open the possibility and, indeed, ecourages the search for other ways.

How to transition to a flashback?

"The camera moves to a tight close up of a character's eyes, they
glaze over and we hear an echo chamber voice..."

I fear that every time I use this device that someone in the audience is going to yell out: "Visual cliche!". It never happens and I continue to use it because, as Professor Suber says: "no one has come up with anything substantially better.".

This is a sampling of some of what can be considered Suber's practical advise; but this book is very rich and has a broad range and covers everything from the technical to the philosophical.

The entry for "Tragedy" is three pages long but delivers a store of wisdom. One paragraph in this concise definition is about "impulsivity", and the final line reads:

"Impulsivity we see over and over again leads to tragedy."

The philosopher Martin Buber in his book "Good and Evil" devotes pages of discussion to the tendancy to impulsivity and how it is an aspect of evil. Suber's book is obviously a distillation of years of thinking and study not only about film but also about human nature.

The entries that make up this book are cross referenced. This cross referencing, like the use of wit and irony, is not only an practical aid, but also an encouragement to explore the connection of ideas.

Suber has carefully culled the essential ideas of what makes a film "great" and this selection reveals that the subject in Suber's mind has a unity, that it constitutes an aesthetic, an interlocking system of ideas. It is an indication of Howard Suber's wisdom as a teacher that he does not expound this system but only indicates it; and because this system must be discovered and recreated by every reader, it will always be new.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Meet the Author: Howard Suber on The Power of Film, November 27, 2008

By 

Michael Wiese (Cornwall, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Power of Film (Paperback)

Length:: 2:37 Mins

Author and mentor to many of Hollywood's most successful writers, directors and producers, Howard Suber discusses some of the paradigm busting ideas found in his book.