Customer Reviews

The Visual Story: Seeing the Structure of Film, TV and New Media

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is a revelation! If you are all serious about making movies (or getting the most out of watching them) you must have this book. Bruce Block's theories will open your eyes to a hidden world of communication encoded into film. You will learn how visuals and their structure are just as effective and important as story and dialogue. You will see all films in a completely new and exciting way. You will gain the insight and tools to make your own movies visually compelling and powerful. I've also attended Bruce's visual expression classes in Los Angeles and can honestly say they were the most formative and enlightening of any film theory class I've ever had. Read this book and you'll never see movies the same way.

"The Visual Story" really is unlike anything out there for its emphasis on the ways in which the structure of an image or of images in sequence -- its shape, its apparent spatial dimensions, its movement, its complexity, its rhythm and texture, its color dimensions -- can all work together to support the emotional and thematic dimensions of the story it aims to tell. His explanations are simultaneously simple and insightful, and spending time with this book can really open your eyes to the wide range of ways in which moving images can be meaningful at a level that can be independent of the actual content of the image (who is in it, what is being shown). Essential reading for filmmakers who aspire to take advantage of the potentials of the medium, this book would also be enormously revealing and useful for students of film, for film lovers, and even for those who have a broad interest in the visual arts. His chapters on space and on color, and his discussions of their emotional as well as their formal content, are especially valuable and full of insight. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

Eye-opening is an understatement, Bruce Block turned film editing for me from a mystery into a language. I was fortunate enough to attend his seminar once, the single most useful lecture on anything I've ever been to. My notes are falling apart from constant use, finally he has a book out!

Going beyond the usual editing basics of clarity and information delivery, this book explains with how to use shapes, colour, and motion on screen to control pacing and feeling. No film student should be without it; also screenwriters, comic artists, web designers, anyone who deals with visual storytelling. Five stars, I'd give it more if I could!

This is a fantastic book. The book explains many visual tools used to make better films. I can't recommend this enough. Take your films from an amatuer level to professional level. Helps you to build great visual style.

Having taken Bruce Block's visual expression class while getting my MFA at USC Film School I highly recommend this book. It's one of the few classes I took in film school that has had any lasting value. It should be part of any filmmakers foundation.

Finally, someone who relays that REAL cinematic storytelling involves many dialects of the same language. Like any art form, cinema displays a plethora of possibilities, yet all filmmakers seem so willing to conform to the latest visual trend. Hey, if it works, it works. But let's not forget that so many people in the world clamor for "original" ideas, including within the visual realm. This book saves time by compressing all the principles established by Pudovkin and Eisenstein. However, Bruce Block doesn't tell you HOW to come up w/ the ideas, or where to go with them; rather, he does something better. He gives you a map of the visual "terrain," complete w/ a key of useful terms. Remember, the map and compass can't tell you where to go; its purpose: to show you what's out there. In which direction you plan to go---that's up to you...

Film is all about the image, and Bruce Block gives you a visual toolkit. With this, you can construct images that help to tell your story, set the mood, and control how the image affects the audience. His techniques can make any film stronger. I highly recommend it.

I can't recommend this book strong enough - I've been compiling course material - this book was an explosion of light at the end of a dreary tunnel of books on visual literacy - the film school should have had this as compulsary reading. Clearly set out with good graphics and in plain english. It marries the theoretical with the practical. The best book on the topic I have read so far.

I had to get this book for a class I'm taking (Visual Language of the Moving Image) at UCF. Like most books that we are required to purchase, I wasn't too happy about it... But, honestly, this one is different. It is very well written and illustrated. I actually love this book. Bruce Block knows his stuff, and, more importantly, he knows how teach it.

I bought this book along with "If it's Purple, Someone's Gonna Die." This book ("Visual Story") is the more scholarly and useful of the two, while "Purple" is an easier read.

If you are a critic or student of film-making, this book definitely is a must-have. It's got great info on "why." So many books are centered around "how."

"Why" is more important than "how."

Descriptive, though pedestrian illustrations. Clean, honest writing. Easy to understand. Slightly dry. It would be nice to have more real-world examples, but that get's very difficult to get all of those movie and TV show clearances, so I understand why they're not there, but it would have definitely made the book much more interesting.