Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/637797
61 Q1 2016 / CINEMONTAGE Film-Making in Action: Your Guide to the Skills and Craft by Adam Leipzig, Barry S. Weiss with Michael Goldman Bedford St. Martins Paperback, 388 pages, $113.00 ISBN # 978-0-312-61699-1 Cutting Rhythms: Intuitive Film Editing, Second Edition by Karen Pearlman, ASE Focal Press Paperback, 264 pages, $34.88 ISBN # 978-1-138-85651-6 by Betsy A. McLane T wo new books offer decidedly different approaches to the art and craft of creating motion pictures. Film- Making in Action is basic in content and cutting-edge in form. Cutting Rhythms is basic in form and avant-garde in content. Take your pick. Film-Making in Action by Adam Leipzig, Barry S. Weiss and Michael Goldman (the latter a frequent contributor to CineMontage) is a hardcore instructional manual, the subtitle of which, "Your Guide to the Skills and Craft," sums up its intent. It is a glossy, colorful how-to designed to appeal to today's beginning filmmaker. Featuring bold yellow, orange, green and blue graphics, screen grabs from recent movies, boxed outlines to highlight important information and pretty head shots of filmmakers, this book is one part of a MacMillan Education LaunchPad project. LaunchPad is an online learning platform for higher education that provides students and teachers with ready-made lesson plans, activities and support. The print book is the text for this "class" and is offered in a loose-leaf binder edition as well as a paperback. The book is seemingly the only title in the LaunchPad catalogue to deal with learning a practicable skill, and it is one of only two about filmmaking; the other is a cinema appreciation text, The Film Experience. Most of the subjects represented are traditionally academic — statistics, history, physics, etc. To use the LaunchPad interface, one purchases time-limited access to the online content and receives the print book as part of the package. The authors, and DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg — whose jacket blurb states, "Film-Making in Action manages to capture every detail and nuance of the incredibly complex filmmaking process" — are enthusiastic. This is a book crammed with data and detail. There are 15 chapters that cover everything from "Why Make a Film?" through script, camera and sound to marketing, distribution and potential careers. Editing is represented by two chapters in Part Three, "Production Glue." The first, "Editing Skills," is loaded with terminology and tips for nonlinear, explaining everything from bins and metadata to three-point editing. Featured in this section is assistant editor Mindy Elliott (The Descendants, Girls, Nebraska) in a section on "How Do I…Keep Track of Footage?" For her answer, one must go online to LaunchPad at macmillanhighered.com/filmmaking. The second editing chapter is "Telling the Story Through Editing." It begins with sage advice from editor Michael Kahn, ACE: "If you put yourself into a scene, you can contribute to what a director is giving you. Be a collaborator, not just a pair of hands." The key concepts here are storytelling, tempo and pace, and adherence to basic principles for cutting. The featured editor is William Goldenberg, ACE (The Imitation Game, Argo, Pleasantville), who explains how he edited by linking Ben CONTINUED ON PAGE 66 CUT/PRINT Textbook Examples Two Different Views on Filmmaking and Editing