Christmas is coming up, and all I want is film books and headphones, so I was wondering if you guys had any recommendations for books on film, mainly behind-the-scenes stuff, like set production, lighting, sound, editing, etc. If you could help, it would be great!

story by robert mckee

The Screenwriter's Bible (Trottier)
Screenplay: Foundations In Screenwriting (Field)
The Screenwriter's Workbook (Field)
The Screenwriter's Problem Solver (Field)
Your Screenplay Sucks! (Akers)
The Hollywood Standard (Riley)
Story (McKee)
The Writer's Journey (Vogler)
The Tools of Screenwriting (Howard/Mabley)
The 5 C's of Cinematography (Mascelli)
Cinematography: Theory and Practice (Brown)
Motion Picture and Video Lighting (Brown)
The Visual Story (Block)
The Filmmaker's Eye (Mercado)
Film Directing Shot by Shot (Katz)
Directing: Film Techniques and Aesthetics (Rabiger)
The Film Director Prepares (Schreiberman)
Making Movies (Lumet)
In the Blink of an Eye (Murch)
Friendly Enemies (Salvi)
Directing Actors (Weston)
The Filmmaker's Handbook (Ascher/Pincus)
Planning the Low-Budget Film (Brown)
Chris Gore's ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide (Gore)
Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema - David Sonnenschein
The Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound - David Lewis Yewdall
The Foley Grail - Vanessa Theme Ament
The Sound Effects Bible - Ric Viers
Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures - John Purcell

AaronFaulkner wrote:The Screenwriter's Bible (Trottier)
Screenplay: Foundations In Screenwriting (Field)
The Screenwriter's Workbook (Field)
The Screenwriter's Problem Solver (Field)
Your Screenplay Sucks! (Akers)
The Hollywood Standard (Riley)
Story (McKee)
The Writer's Journey (Vogler)
The Tools of Screenwriting (Howard/Mabley)
The 5 C's of Cinematography (Mascelli)
Cinematography: Theory and Practice (Brown)
Motion Picture and Video Lighting (Brown)
The Visual Story (Block)
The Filmmaker's Eye (Mercado)
Film Directing Shot by Shot (Katz)
Directing: Film Techniques and Aesthetics (Rabiger)
The Film Director Prepares (Schreiberman)
Making Movies (Lumet)
In the Blink of an Eye (Murch)
Friendly Enemies (Salvi)
Directing Actors (Weston)
The Filmmaker's Handbook (Ascher/Pincus)
Planning the Low-Budget Film (Brown)
Chris Gore's ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide (Gore)
Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema - David Sonnenschein
The Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound - David Lewis Yewdall
The Foley Grail - Vanessa Theme Ament
The Sound Effects Bible - Ric Viers
Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures - John Purcell

For writing, you should definitely include SAVE THE CAT. Like it or not, it's become one of the standards, especially for breaking down/structuring scripts/stories.

My other favorite is THE 8 SEQUENCE APPROACH. It focuses on structure--most features can be broken into 8 sequences, making a the task of writing one much easier then thinking in just 3 large acts

My issue with Snyder is: 1) He determines the quality of the script on how much money it makes 2) His beats form TOO rigid of a structure. I would say, if you want something like that...read Vogler's book because that's where Snyder took his ideas from in the first place. And even then, read Campbell's book because that's where Vogler took HIS ideas from. So on and so forth. I've heard good and bad things about The Sequence book but I've never read it.

Filmmaking for teens: Pulling off your shorts (this is mainly for short films

Screenwriting (structure of a script, how to write and sell it)

Feature Film Making at used car prices

AaronFaulkner wrote:The Filmmaker's Eye (Mercado)

I remember reading this a while back. Interesting and easy to grasp, and it will really help me in the long run.

bLaZe wrote:

AaronFaulkner wrote:The Filmmaker's Eye (Mercado)

I remember reading this a while back. Interesting and easy to grasp, and it will really help me in the long run.

A very easy and accessible "intro" book. It was interesting to see the format of the book as well.

that's what I wanted, Lee.