The last installment of the acclaimed Behind the Silver Screen series, Animation explores the variety of technologies and modes of production throughout the history of American animation. Drawing on archival sources to analyze the relationship between production and style, this volume provides also a unique approach to understanding animation in general. 

Directing examines a diverse range of classic and contemporary directors, including Orson Welles, Tim Burton, Cecil B. DeMille, Steven Soderbergh, Spike Lee, and Ida Lupino, and demonstrates how a century’s worth of Hollywood directors have negotiated changing film industry practices while harnessing the creative contributions of many collaborators.  

Directing examines a diverse range of classic and contemporary directors, including Orson Welles, Tim Burton, Cecil B. DeMille, Steven Soderbergh, Spike Lee, and Ida Lupino, and demonstrates how a century’s worth of Hollywood directors have negotiated changing film industry practices while harnessing the creative contributions of many collaborators.  

From the Behind the Silver Screen series, Costume, Makeup, and Hair charts the development of these three crafts in the American film industry from the 1890s to the present. Each chapter examines a different era, revealing how these artistic fields have fostered creative collaboration and improvisation, often fashioning striking looks and ingenious effects out of limited materials, while continually adapting to new technologies, fashions, and economic conditions.  

Editing and Special/Visual Effects brings together a diverse range of film scholars who trace how the arts of editing and effects have evolved in tandem. Starting with the “trick films” of the early silent era, they demonstrate the key role these two crafts have played in cinematic history. Along the way, readers learn about a variety of filmmaking techniques, from classic Hollywood’s rear projection and matte shots to the fast cuts and wall-to-wall CGI of the contemporary blockbuster. 

Producing is the first book to provide a comprehensive overview of the myriad roles that producers have played in Hollywood, from the dawn of the twentieth century to the present day. It introduces readers to the colorful figures who helped to define and reimagine the producer’s role, including inventors like Thomas Edison, entrepreneurs like Walt Disney, and mavericks like Roger Corman. Along the way, we get an illuminating picture of the creative, managerial, and financial decisions that producers make. 

Sound introduces key concepts, seminal moments, and pivotal figures in the development of cinematic sound, revealing the unseen work of film composers, Foley artists, elocution coaches, and many more. Each of the book’s six chapters cover a different era in the history of Hollywood, from silent films to the digital age, and each is written by an expert in that period. After you read Sound, you’ll never see—or hear—movies in quite the same way.

 

 

 With contributions from established film scholars and accomplished screenwriters, this collection of original essays gives readers a comprehensive portrait of both the art and business of screenwriting. Examining the films of celebrated writer-directors from Preston Sturges to Alexander Payne, while also revealing the work of journeyman writers and “script doctors” who toil in obscurity, Screenwriting charts the ever-evolving roles that screenwriters have played, from the dawn of Hollywood to the age of YouTube.