Multimedia Books

Having perused many books on animation, illustration, etc. and having purchased a few I thought this was pretty cool. The coloring style may not be for everyone, but the book is helpful in many areas. I thought the quality of the work was not as good as GURU's book, and I would recommend that book over this one. That being said, you may be able to pick up different points from each, as I did.

There are a lot of books dedicated to Photoshop, for improving photos. Which is understandable since that's what Photoshop is mainly for. There are few books that go deep into the art possibilities. (and I have quite a few Photoshop books).

This book is heavy into comic related art, mainly, how to color comics and really make them pop. But don't let that stop you if you are not into comics. This book helps with taking simple line art and making into a good pieces of art or graphic quality. It covers scanning, stitching, layout, and it full of coloring tips from end to end.

Forget 2-dimensional line art. This book takes a basic line art and shows you how to make it fantastic visually. There are so many ideas here, it will keep you busy for quite sometime. Highly recommended.

I use this book as a teaching tool. Fantastic. If you are need to know digital color and the all the means (printing, and so on) you need this book. The best book of it's kind. Very well done.

I've just started coloring a comic, and I wish I had purchased this book before I started! It contains SO MUCH information, from scanning, to prepping your drawings for coloring, to flatting and finally to coloring itself. Sure, some of this may be in the Internet here and there, but never in one place and never, ever explained so well.

In addition to the valuable information on coloring, he also includes some invaluable scripts from Hi-Fi, which removes the tedious process of setting up your channels, etc., as well as a script for color holds and finishing up the page.

All I can say is this is the best resource I've found on computer coloring for comics. In fact, it was so good, I ordered copies for two friends.

This book is an excellent resource. The authors are talented colorists, but more importantly for the reader, they're people with real experience teaching others how to color comics professionally.

There are a hundred ways to do ANYTHING in photoshop -- what I love about _Hi-Fi Color for Comics_ is it stops to explain WHY they do it the way they're showing. I've colored a lot of comic pages and other illustrations over the years, and have my own way of doing things. I'm changing a lot of my approaches for the better because of this book.

The book covers Hi-Fi's "house style" of coloring, but the meat of the book is valuable for all styles of colorists. You've got to flat well, you've got to produce good backed-up blacks, all the rest. No matter what coloring style you're shooting for, my bet is you're going to pick up some valuable tips from this book.

And finally we have the included cd -- it's not just some sample files for practice and a couple custom brushes, it has a number of complicated photoshop actions that are serious high-quality time-savers for colorists. Any one of the actions would be worth the cover price alone.

Just starting out? This book will tell you what you need to know.
Experienced colorist? Boost your productivity, get this book.

Hello everyone ! I bought this book cause I need it !
Not only for a better understanding of max tools but for the entire process of making of a good 3d movie animation !
Well,this book acomplish its purpose !The book pass through every stages of this process !Congratulations for the author and for his clarity expositions !

I just received my copy, this is not much of a review but I have a question, i will update this as soon as i have my review.
My question: is it normal that the book comes with 2 cd-roms? And why are on the 2 cd-roms the same data?

This is a great book on completing a project, it helps in every respect, lots of tutorials, references, information, examples etc....
One thing is not mentioned, to complete these projects, you will need more then 3DS Max 6, you will need to have Adobe PREMIER to make/edit the movie, for special effects & more, you will need COMBUSTION 3, even though it is not necessary but it will be essential for a complete animation, you will need to have a sound editing software like Cakewalk's SONIC or something similar and of course Adobe Photoshop.
I am very happy with the book, and have already started planning & sketching a storyboard plus modeling the environment I will use, my characters are almost ready, but because of this fantastic book, I didn't know about the sound editing and the movie editing outside of 3DS Max requiered to finish a movie, now with this book I will complete my animation project.

This book is a very good surprise. It's very complete, well explained, very clear.

That book contains exacly what is said on the cover.. So no deception possible! (An exemple that Sanford Kennedy shoud follow because his book about 3ds max 5 is terrible, a total desaster.)

So this is the book to buy! Thank you Mr Barret Fox.

He shows how he developed, boarded, modeled, textured, rigged & animated the 3 figures shown on the cover. He doesn't wander off on side issues, nor does he gloss over the tricky parts. The book comes with a CD of usable models and scenes so you can see what and how he did it.


One word of warning is the author assumes the reader is advanced on the subject - don't get this book if you need a basic how-to animate with computer book.

to have to admit that I knew absolutely nothing about iPods other than what they were and that they looked rather cool.

But I'll never have to admit that again. This book is great for those of us who are "absolute beginners". I think it may even prove helpful to people who have a good understanding of the function of iPods but get really messed up in the organization of their iTunes libraries.

The book is broken down into three sections; iPods, iTunes, and iTunes store. The author covers each section thoroughly and yet keeps it light and entertaining.

The book has really helped to get me started with a good basic, maybe even advanced?, understanding of all things iPod.

I knew absolutely nothing about iTunes or iPods..... This book is excellent - it's helped me sort everything out. It's clear, written in as simple language as you get with anything to do with computers and what I really love is that my screen actually matches the illustrations in the book. I'd recommend it to anyone starting out.

Everything you need to know and more. This should be include with the purchase of an IPOD

The iPod is an intuitive device and most folks need only play with it to use most functions. The same thing is true for iTunes. It's when you have gone beyond the obvious and hit a snag or an annoyance that you find whether a reference is useful or not. This books does well at anticipating "second level" issues and provides good guidance. A good example is"compilations" which affects how you browse and hot music is organized. Through the index, I zeroed right in on how this works and setting it to my preference. I would recommend you start with this book whether an absolute beginner or just in need of a reference.

I am new to the ipod experience. All the kids have had them for sometime. I was confused on all the little details which now seem simple due to this easy to read and understand book. Recommend it to all.

From beginner to expert this book contains all of the answers to your lingo needs. It is packed with examples and thorough descriptions.

I can't find an updated version of it - if anyone knows of one please let me know!...

This book has got to be the best computer related book I ever bought. I wish there were reference books in this format for every other programming subject like Perl and JavaScript. It's the only book you will ever need for Director's lingo.

The thing I like most is having the Lingo grouped by subject, it makes things so easy to look up.

Darrel, please make a reference like this for Perl!!!!

If you are already familiar with the Director interface, and want to do things in Lingo that most people only wish they could do, pick this book up right now! This is the only book I use on a daily basis for quick information. Darrel Plant not only gives a clear explanation on every command but also gives you examples that you can understand and use in everyday applications. I also greatly appreciated the way that the book content is organized. Rather than list the commands in alphabetical order, they are grouped according to the type of element or function that they control. It's nice to put something together that the user/client likes, but use this book and they will be saying, "Awsome! Love it! Wow, how did you do that?" ------ Thanks Darrel

...your life will be easier if this book is within reach. I even take it with when I have to go on-site to a client. Very useful having the Lingo grouped by subject. Also very useful icons by each Lingo word showing if it can be used in Shockwave and which versions of Director it can be used in. A must-have for a Lingo programmer.

(excuse my english, I'm Swiss) Before purchasing this book or even knowing about it, I had some heavy problems in finding the right way (or a shorter one) to solve several problems in programming Multimedia-applications. I ordered this book and everything changed! It's descriptions are so easy (even when you aren't originally english-speaking!), because you just can read the text and know what the command, keyword, property a.s.o. is all about. You have even more than one solution showed in examples. There is only one bad thing: if you use this book very often, the cover of the book looks old soon; it could be a little stronger. My suggestion: if you suffer a headache from studying and controlling your non-functioning scripts, you better get this book as soon as possible and keep it handy! You will gain a hell of a time!

Have fun

Best regards

Patric Simon

I have been fascinated by the simplicity and usefulness of the
Object-Process Methodology paradigm and approach expressed in the book. As a
researcher in Science Education I have been grappling with how to represent
complex, technology-enhanced educational systems that involve humans,
processes and educational artifacts. OPM and the OPCAT software enclosed
were very instrumental in enabling me to model and represent the "big
picture" of educational systems I developed. With OPM I was then able to
gradually refine portions of the system to any desired level of detail.
The applicability of OPM to IT-intensive educational systems is a testimony
to the generic nature of the methodology and to the fact that it is useful
in so many domains. The combination of a single simple graphical model that
generates natural language on the fly is really unique and valuable. I
wholeheartedly recommend the book to anyone interested in modeling complex
systems, be they of technological, economical, or social nature. The method
is straightforward, easy to learn even for non IT-professionals, and most
rewarding in terms of the quality and clarity of the resulting graphical and
textual model.

This book describes how Object-Process Methodology (OPM) CASE can be used as a tool for generating complete system intent specifications by graphical object diagrams, precise semantic and syntactic language, and intuitive symbols, definitions and structures. As systems have become more complex, a prevalent problem in systems development has been the number of accruing errors. These errors can cause catastrophic failure in the worst-case in addition to intolerable schedule delays and cost overruns. Introducing errors as well as difficulty finding and successfully correcting them occurs because of the lack of proper analysis and design tools for complex system specifications. OPM has the attributes to mitigate against the possibility of system failure, providing comprehensive visibility for better schedule and cost control in product development. It enhances reuse of system modules, processes and software routines in different contexts, while reducing the chance of errors. OPM automatically generates intent specifications that are readily understood by both customers and product team members and are translatable to machine control subsystems. OPM is a holistic systems paradigm that extends the Object-Oriented (OO) paradigm and overcomes its major shortcomings by integrating system structure and behavior in a single integrated graphic and natural language model. OPM successfully tackles the task of development and lifecycle management of systems, products and projects. OPM is a significant extension of and a major departure from the OO approach. It incorporates the system static-structural and dynamic-procedural aspects into a single, unified model. Presented as a concise visual formalism by a set of Object-Process Diagrams (OPD set), it is automatically translated into a set of Object-Process Language (OPL) script, a subset of natural English. At the basis of the OPM philosophy is the observation that to faithfully and naturally analyze and design systems in any domain, processes, like objects, should be considered as stand-alone "things" (entities) that are not necessarily encapsulated within objects. This detachment and de-coupling of processes from objects emphasizes the duality and complementarity of objects and processes, and opens the door for structure-behavior unification. At any point in time, objects exist with some structure and state. This is the static aspect of the system. Processes affect objects by changing their states. This is the dynamic aspect of the system. System complexity is managed through a number of graphical scaling options: zooming into and out of processes, unfolding and folding objects, and expressing or suppressing object states. These mechanisms provide for selectively detailing a subset of things while still maintaining the high-level context of the details.

OPM provides a new framework for specifying design intents and capturing the complexity of hardware and software interaction. Through OPL, it is possible to translate the process into a machine executable code. In addition, OPM can capture the dynamic behavior of the hardware attributes and software states in a single integrated graphical and textual language that is understandable by domain experts who have no programming experience. These traits of OPM ease the development effort for evaluating the system reliability during the design stages. Simulation and testing protocols can be automatically generated though future extensions of OPM to reduce lengthy system verification efforts.
The main benefit of OPM is its ability to identify system objects, processes, and the relationships among them in a structured way. The resulting OPD set becomes an excellent framework for identifying how to implement structural and procedural improvements. The resulting OPL script provides a well-defined set of existing and future specifications for the system. The ability to freely switch from text to graphics and back is of great value to understanding the system as a whole with a single graphic and textual model, without the need to consult various models and carry out mental transformation among these various models.
Based on my personal experience, the following points highlight the benefits OPM can bring to the particular projects described in this paper.
1. OPM is an excellent way to represent daily activities, products, processes and other complex things
2. OPM has allowed representing the complete system with its various aspects in a single model. The model specifies the systems function, structure and behavior aspects without sacrificing clarity.
3. OPM can be used as a common language to exchange design among members of a team.
4. Since OPM design is visual and textual at the same time, it is easy to explain the design.
5. OPL is very easy to generate from OPD
6. OPM will be a good tool for documenting the existing processes and as ISO documentation.

I have used many methodologies over my career. Most of them are based around the object-oriented and structured design paradigms. I found out about OPM quite by accident about a year ago. I've been using it ever since. I have used it to model both hardware and software systems, as well as for business process modeling. It is an excellent methodology and I recommend it for anyone developing any kind of system.

One of the nice things about OPM is that it is easy: I was able to get a team "up-and-running" with the methodology in less than an hour of teaching them some basic concepts (try doing that with UML). Another feature is that you can use this for any type of project; you are not locked into a structured or object-oriented mindset like structured analysis or UML. OPM can handle both types of concepts with ease.

Finally, this methodology is fast. It is just easier and more intuitive to model in an OPM fashion. I've also found that others can comprehend the OPM models better than other methodologies too.

I used to be a UML advocate until I found OPM. I have found concepts that are difficult to model in UML are quite easy to model in OPM. It is just more flexible.

The book is really good by the way. It is very complete and gives plenty of good exammples. I congratulate Dov Dori and his team for providing something that all engineering disciplines can use to design their systems.

OPM is a methodology for modeling systems, technical as well as any other system. In the techical world it compares with UML. OPM is designed with consistant and simple notations, uses simple rules that when combined can be used to model any system (real or informational) to any level of complexity that is desired by the system architect. Also, it integrates object modeling and process modeling in one diagram (although you can still keep them separate if you wanted).

UML uses complex rules to model complex systems, something that is very difficult to make happen, therefore it is very difficult to learn and use. OPM uses simple rules and consistant notations to model complex systems. After simple introductions to the methology, we have been able to start using it in our organization. More powerful and far simpler then UML. The way UML should have been done long time ago.

There is an eternal debate between system designers
and architects of software, products and large systems:
Is it ever possible to show structure (the arrangement
of objects) and system behavior (over time) in the same
representation? Dov Dori's book shows convincingly that it can
be done. Particularly powerful is the duality between
graphical system representation and natural language.
Also, the CD-ROM with OPCAT software allows one to follow
the examples in the book and apply OPM directly to a project.
The book is clearly written and will appeal to engineers,
computer scientists and software developers. A refreshing
contrast to the traditional way of looking a object-centered
systems architecting. This begs for more ... in terms of
connecting OPM to other tools such as Design Structure Matrices,
but also for representing highly complex systems over >2 levels
of decomposition.

Wow, this book is a terrific combination of writing academics, insight and personal agony experienced by a one time actor attorney, producer, writer and current UCLA professor. The dark text at the end of each lecture "from the trenches" imparts Ron's actual experiences with some very famous people and movies. It is priceless and makes this book a fascinating read. The last chapter recounts the "Real Rocky" story, and this alone makes the book worth the money. Ron keeps it interesting and by the end of the book you feel as if you've been through the mill with him.

Frank Nuciforo
Cambria, Ca

Suppa is giving out a lot of information in this book. It's like several books rolled into one. All the information is good except for the introduction/preface by Lew Hunter. Hunter must have been all wired up on some new drug, because his delivery is disjointed and unorganized.

There are a few minor issues such as Suppa referring to Steve McQueen's movie "Bullitt" as "Bullet." Come on, Ron.

Ron Suppa is a successful film producer and instructor: he's taught fine courses in the UK on the topic of screenwriting and here offers in book form the contents of his course, which packs tips with personal experiences and polish. REAL SCREENWRITING: STRATEGIES AND STORIES FORM THE TRENCHES covers everything from movie dialogue and spec teleplay plots to understanding the importance of the entertainment lawyer. Any screenwriter - even those already successful - needs REAL SCREENWRITING to hone and perfect skills.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

If you are serious about fulfilling your dream to become a screenwriter and cannot attend Ron Suppa's classes at UCLA, it is compulsory you buy this book. It offers a rare blend of instructional criteria directly applicable to your work, with philosophical wisdom from Aristotle to David Mamet. Wondering how to define your characters or exacerbate your conflict? Accomplish that goal using his point by point "Strategies", or the plethora of easily relatable examples he gives from a treasure trove of cinematic masterpieces. Along the way you will be both entertained and impressed by his "From the Trenches" segments, priceless personal experience from a bona fide raconteur.

As a film producer, commissioned/produced writer with BBC & Granada and with a current 12MIL project underway, I can only emphasise that reading Ron Suppa's latest book was like a magnesium flash of finally understanding what real screenwriting requires.

It's not just an enjoyable read but 'from the trenches' is I think - and I've pretty much read them all - the quintessential reference book for aspirant or crestfallen screenwriters - it is a remarkable compendium of searing truth, sage pearls and machine tools.

Anyway - as one writer who's pissed blood over honed drafts, to another - great f***ing book!

Gary has done an excellent job with this book. I came to Director with a programming background, and basically this book and Gary's Advanced Lingo for Games books have allowed me to do whatever I can imagine with Director. Doesn't treat you like an idiot. Clear. Understandable. Practical. Highly recommended, and I'm going to buy the MX version when it comes out.
David Downie

Great book ! ( I just received my copy of Using Director 8.5 "Specialedition") It is really great for me since I haven't been using Director since version 5, and so much as changed !

I have been browsing through the book to get the missing or forgotten info I need to get our project up, and I have found almost every answer I need in the first 15 minutes !

I am confident this book will get me back up and running in no time, If you want to learn Director Fast, Buy this book !

Great book ! ( I just received my copy of Using Director 8.5 "Specialedition") It is really great for me since I haven't been using Director since version 5, and so much as changed !
I have been browsing through the book to get the missing or forgotten info I need to get our project up, and I have found almost every answer I need in the first 15 minutes !

I am confident this book will get me back up and running in no time, If you want to learn Director Fast, Buy this book !

Weighing in at about one-thousands pages, this book has some of the best information for practical production techniques and getting things done in Director. Having compared it to a half dozen or so other books before purchasing, it was the only one to truly address Lingo in a serious way. There seems to be a hole in the market since a few Lingo specific books that had been available at one time (from O'Reilly and another from the defunct Hayden Press) are either out of date or out of print.

Though its a heavy application, most of director is not that hard to learn (being proficient and artistic is another matter). But taking it to the next level requires an understanding of Lingo and integrating it into the rest of the programs features for practical use. Mr. Rosenzweig has done this, and with great enthusiasm and love of subject. It is an excellent book and the most advanced one that I could find on the shelves last year.

The beginner should take heed that this may be overwhelming, for all others I highly recommend it.

This book is probably the best book you will ever find on how to use Director. I read it without knowing anything about programming and i am pretty advanced now. If you feel that you are a really slow learner and/or you have no experience using a computer, don't try to learn anything about director. If, however, you are a motivated student, Gary Rozensweig will teach you from the ground up about this ultra-powerful program. For 36 dollars, it's almost a must. This book will also be great for advanced director users as a reference. get it quickly. The only drawback of this book is the fact that one of the most important appendices is almost totally missing(publishing error). There is a downloadable version of the appendix on QUE's site (HTML & PDF). Don't let this tiny glitch stop you from owning the best book on director out there!!!

I was looking to get a quick run on how Adobe Premiere Pro 2 works as I was familiar with other video packages. Not only was this manual easy to use in showing how to utilize many of the features of Adobe Premiere but it gave you ideas on how to set your workspace to maximize your editing efficiency.
I found I was able to skip to some chapters I wanted to learn more about first and ignore others that had characteristics similar to other programs I had used.

This is a good start to using the powerful features of this program. Now all I need is another book to help with the advanced image and sound editing for those videos that look grainy or have sound drops.

Got the program? Need help to use it? This is probably the best reference. I rated it 4 stars because not all of the material is in the lesson. You will have to copy resource material to your computer.

Anyone would easily think that Adobe premiere pro would be such a hard thing to learn how to do. Thanks to Jeff Schell, that problem is over. With easy excercises, this book is the essential tool to help you understand how to use the problem much better. It teaches you the basic tools, guides, and shortcuts that can help you create your own masterpiece (whatever that may be). The book also includes the disc that helps you step by step to create a simple video. I highly recommend this book for those who definitly want to learn Premiere Pro. It's Good Stuff

A book that I can read and understand without breaking into a sweat.
It solved one of my big problems inside five minutes.
You will not regret buying this book.

I would rate myself at the intermediate level when it comes to editing. I was fairly new to Premiere Pro 2 (was using 6.5 before) when I purchased the book. There were some things I knew already that the book described but I didn't know a lot of the shortcuts. It also taught me a great deal about using all of the Audio features, so that was a huge bonus for me. All in all, I thought the book was great. It was easy to work through and follow. It also allows you to skip around throughout chapters easily.

When PeachPit sent me this book to review I was already excited about it since Shake is something I've taken much interest in the last couple months. I'd already begun to amass all kinds of training resources on the topic and had even set out a schedule for which to execute the consumption of said resources. So receiving this book was much on point for me.

At the time of this review I had already worked my way through the Shake documentation (the first stop on my agenda) so I went into this with a rudimentary understanding of the application. I was pleased to discover that the writer of this book had taken that into consideration (and without even having to ask me!). They even state in the opening chapter that the book is not meant to replace the [free] documentation that comes with every Shake install but is aimed at enhancing what's already there. I found this to be accurate to some degree. After all, the basics must still be covered for those who were too [lazy/unaware/apathetic] towards the Shake documentation but for the most part every chapter enhanced its documentation counter-part rather nicely.

The second top notable feature of this book, in my opinion, is that you are supposedly adequately ready to take (and presumably pass) the Apple Pro Certification exam on Shake after completing the book. I say supposedly because I myself have not taken the exam and cannot speak on my preparedness. However, as some may know, the PeachPit book on Shake is the curriculum used in Apple Pro Training classes all over these great United States. This is also stated early in the book.

Other notable features of the book include a chapter relevant keyboard shortcuts matrix at the end of every chapter, high quality examples (some being clips from commercials you've seen on TV) for you, the student, to dig your fingers into in the labs, and pro level tips peppered throughout the book such as "always be sure auto-keyframe is enabled before rotoscoping (no one wants to roto for an hour only to find their work lost due to an oversight)" or "instead of color-matching in RGB, color-match each individual channel separately. it is much easier this way". The tips may seem basic but we all forget the basics sometimes so its great that they include this aspect of real-world protocols in a training book.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. This is notable because I went into it with high expectations, which is usually a situation ripe with potential for disappointment. It was a fun and easy read and clearly written by a seasoned professional (the Pro Training way). I felt like he was my mentor sometimes the way he addressed certain issues "they don't teach you in school" (mentioned earlier in this review). I do recommend, if you buy the book, to download the errata available from PeachPit's website. It will clear up some minor confusion from the few typos that appear in chapters 2 and 13.

---

About the reviewer: Ezra Peace is a narrative filmmaker based in New York. His credits include several feature length independent films and many independent short films as well as marketing and promotional work done in Miami and New York.

If you are Final Cut Pro editor as I am, and want to take a next level of your creations? Then get this book with the application software. Not only teach you for solid ground compositing also take you to the pro level.

This is a great way to learn Shake because it guides you step by step. The thing is that you need to know theorical concepts about compositing or have enough experience in another compositing software so you fully understand what he says, because sometimes the terms are not explained, just the way to do it, so if you don't know a lot about this I suggest you to first learn a little about how compositing works.

It is perfect for anybody wanting to learn shake. I bought the book with zero experiance and now i not only understand the program but I can relate nearly every "real" job to certain lessons in the book.

Marco, as always, has created another great Shake book. But as many of you know, Apple has recently stopped support of Shake. But thankfully they also reduced the price to nearly nothing making this powerful software available to everyone. But what do you do if you need support as a user? Check out [...]

After reading several chapters, and struggling to assemble my own one-minute documentary for a class project, I'm paying closer attention to how a documentary is put together from an artistic, expressive point of view. We used this book in a short, informal class for older adults. We started by writing a one-minute description of an important moment in our lives. We recorded the narration, then added photos, videos, and recordings. I found that with each additional step I could pare back excess verbiage and let the images convey the ideas. There are plenty of technical books about how to operate a digital camcorder. Thank goodness, this isn't one of them.

The Art of the Documentary
By Mary Cunningham
Review by Pi Ware

Mary Cunningham's "The Art of the Documentary" is an attractive full-color compilation of interviews with some of the world's foremost documentarians. It's an intimate and insightful glimpse into both the art and craft of docs and a must-read for filmmakers serious about creating non-fiction work. You'll learn how Errol Morris creates "first-person cinema" using The Interrotron; why Ken Burns locks music before script, how D A Pennebaker futhered art via technology, and how cinema-verité documentarians like Haskell Wexler are able to "inspire" scenarios within their films.

Notably missing are the king of the personal documentary, Ross McElwee, and the masterful doc team of Bruce Sinofsky and Joe Berlinger. But Cunningham fills the spaces with interviews of the behind-the-scenes players--editors, executives and cinematographers. And in doing so she gives you a broader picture of the doc world and deeper insights into what it will take for you to make a successful non-fiction film.

Ever wanted Ken Burns or others in the pantheon of documentary greats as your personal film making mentor? This book gives you that and more. This versatile book is as perfect for someone just starting out in documentary films as it is for a veteran who wants in on a few secrets of the masters. Our film production company read from it aloud on location and everyone, from the producer to the cinematographer to the researchers, all gleaned practical tips from it. The interviews are substantive, insightful and most importantly, very useful. A real keeper for those interested in learning nuances and techniques from a wide range of documentary styles.

Megan Cunningham's Art Of The Documentary offers ten conversations with some of the best documentary directors, editors and producers in the industry. Nonfiction documentaries reveal the methods and focus their directors, which is captured in chapters which begin with project concept and move through the entire production process. Plenty of color photos illustrate each director's works.

Consider this book a master class in documentary filmmaking.

Megan Cunningham's interviews are incredibly engaging - she manages to at once explore each documentarians' creative process, AND discuss how these various filmmakers achieved their success, AND to discuss specific films in-depth AND to elicit the filmmakers' fascinating views on theoretical issues such as what constitutes "cinema verite" or whether documentaries can be considered art.

Furthermore, Cunningham's book is wonderfully readable and well organized (and full of photos!). I especially enjoyed how Cunningham devoted equal space to such luminaries as Errol Morris and lesser known but equally powerful documentarians such as Lauren Lazin. The book manages to seamlessly cover more than 50 years of American filmmaking and it's wonderful to have the thoughts of multiple generations of directors, editors, and cinematographers compiled in one volume.

Whether you're a fan of documentaries, an aspiring documentary filmmaker, or unfamiliar with the entire field and would like to learn more, "The Art of the Documentary" is the book for you.