An account of "Film School"
20 Jun 2012 12:28
The book, "Film School" by Richard D. Pierman, translated by Mohammad Gozarabadi, is a text book which trains those interested in this field how to make a film through structural analysis of several eminent movies. The content provided in this book is appropriate for the general audience in case they watch the films introduced in this book.
IBNA: Recently, with so variety of portable and inexpensive digital cameras enjoying different features and capabilities, filmmaking has been changes into an easy task especially in sense of equipment and general hardware issues, thus, with little study and research,
anyone can be trained to be a film maker .
The book "Film School" written by Richard D. Pierman, the prominent prestigious teacher and film editor in America teaches filmmaking to the audiences through watching well-made films. The author's teaching method offered in this book is new. He has selected some moments out of the 50 films and within the frame works of these selected episodes he has presented his lessons. The films selected by Pierman belong to the different American, European and Asian systems of movies among them about 40 films are considered as the classics works of cinema history.
Instead of addressing the various issues of filmmaking in the forms of film directing screenwriting, stage designing and editing, the author in this book teaches the different aspects of filmmaking within the framework of three following titles as "fiction", " Place/ location" and "character" as well.
The book, "Film School" has three sections and a conclusion. In the first chapter the author- as mentioned above- has dealt with the category of "fiction" in a movie and in order to teach it, he reviews several selected characters out of films such as "Atlantic City", " The Treasure of the Sierra Madre ", "Judo"," Casablanca (1942) "," Sir Piko "," French Liaison "," Godfather, " Tom Jones "," Noon Incident "," Miracle "and several other films.
The main drawback of these selections is that, it is probably possible that some of the incidents occurred in these movies which are characteristically involved in the actions and reactions of characters are not fully understood by Iranian audiences, and consequently they cannot reach a right conclusion in terms of the character's behavioral styles.
Taking into account the drawback mentioned above, it is probably concluded that there is an empty room here for a book to be written and published in the field of filmmaking by an Iranian author entitled ironically "Iranian Film School" in which the Iranian prominent movies are analyzed in order for the techniques to be taught to the Iranian audiences as well.
The second chapter of this book examines the category of "Place/ Location ". The 50 DVD, selected for this book, indicate their locations in different ratios and aspect ,that some of them are of "Wide» kinds. Movies introduced in this section are worth to be studied, in terms of space perception, the effect of horizon on the composition and the movement of artists and cameras on the width of the "screen" as well.
"Alexandria Nosky "made by Sergei Eisenstein, "Viridiana" by Luis Buñuel and "Eight and a Half; 8½ by Federico Fellini are among the reviewed films in this chapter. "Osama" directed by Siddiq Barmak an Afghan director, which also attended in several international prestigious festivals, is also reviewed and analyzed in this chapter in terms of "film location" as well.
The third chapter in which the category of "Character" is introduced and discussed; movies such as "Dog Day Afternoon", "Witness", "Son of Rosemary", "The Sweet Future" and "The Central Station" have been analyzed. In this part, issues related to the movie character such as "Reaction" are also defined.
While "Reactions" can present the visual action (direct) as insignificant, at the same time stimulating the viewer's imagination, they can make him involved and thus cause the viewer participate in the action (indirectly). Accordingly "reactions" are of so highest importance that one should be very careful about them while making a film.
One of the major drawbacks of this book is its "hefty and heavy language", and this heavy and complicated language has limited the hands of interpreter so that he couldn't translate it more fluently, but it does not mean that the audience cannot understand its contents, rather while reading it- he /she should spend more tolerance and be more careful.
The book "Film School" written by Richard D Pierman and translated by Mohammad Gozarabadi is published by Saqi publications in 372 pages and at the of price 77000 R was released to the book market.
