The cinema of Japan predates that of Russia, China, and India, and it has been able to sustain itself without outside assistance for over a century. Japanese cinema's long history of production and considerable output has seen films made in a variety of genres, including melodramas, romances, gangster movies, samurai movies, musicals, horror films, and monster films. It has also produced some of the most famous names in the history of cinema: Akira Kurosawa, Hayao Miyazaki, Beat Takeshi, T...

Written by an industry venteran with 40 years of experience, this book is the new edition of Costume Design

Actors often say they only really assume the identity of their character when they have donned the costumes painstakingly created for them by the costume designer. In this volume of the FilmCraft series of books, 16 of the world's leading costume designers come together to share their inspiration and knowledge with the reader. They provide insights into the challenges of building a team, working with budgets, and collaboration with production designers, actors and directors. Designers feat...

The book’s journey into the future of television begins with “You Are Here,” delving into “The Great Convergence” of television and Internet and the vortex of change we all inhabit now. Then, glancing back, we explore “The Old World” of broadcast television to understand how we got to this moment of transition. Next, traveling “Between Worlds,” we visit cable television and see how the boundaries between network, cable, and Internet are mutating. After that, we enter “The New World” that r...

Film noir-literally "black cinema"-is the label customarily given to a group of black and white American films, mostly crime thrillers, made between 1940 and 1959. Today there is considerable dispute about what are the shared features that classify a noir film, and therefore which films should be included in this category. These problems are partly caused because film noir is a retrospective label that was not used in the 1940s or 1950s by the film industry as a production category and the...

Though loved by moviegoers worldwide, Spanish cinema has thus far suffered from a relative lack of critical attention. Focusing on the vast corpus of films that have left their marks on generations of spectators, Directory of World Cinema: Spain returns the national cinema of Spain rightfully to the forefront with numerous full-colour stills and essays establishing the key players and genres in their sociopolitical context, including civil war films, romances, comedies and the cin...

Foreword by Brad BirdCharacter Animation Crash Course! is a veritable Genie’s lamp stuffed with everything the aspiring animator could wish for! Renowned animator Eric Goldberg’s detailed text and drawings illuminate how to conceive characters "from the inside out” to create strong personalities. Classic animation techniques are analyzed and brought to life through this unique book and its accompanying website companion that offers readers animated movie examples that show, in real...

In this book the author takes a fresh look at horror film series as series and presents an understanding of how the genre thrived in this format for a large portion of its history. It sheds light on older films such as the Universal and the Hammer series films on Dracula, Frankenstein and the Mummy as well as putting more recent series into perspective, such as The Nightmare on Elm Street films. A well rounded review of these films and investigation into their success as a format, this use...

An important addition to Intellect’s popular series, Directory of World Cinema: Finland provides historical and cultural overviews of the country’s cinema. Over the course of their contributions to this volume, scholars from a variety of disciplines construct a collective argument that complicates the dominant international view of Finnish cinema as small-scale industry dominated by realist art-house films.The contributors approach the topic from a variety of angles, cover...

Spanish cinema is emerging as one of the most exciting, fascinating, and special cinemas in the world. Not only are others viewing Spanish films, but they are adopting Spanish producers and Spanish actors as their own. While Spanish cinema has been maturing for a long time and has been producing excellent directors, actors, and films for decades-including during the dark times of the Franco regime-only now is it winning numerous fans not only at home but also abroad. And with directors lik...

One of the biggest stars of the golden age of Hollywood, James Cagney appeared in more than sixty films throughout his career. In addition to starring in the classics White Heat, Mister Roberts, and One, Two, Three, Cagney received the Academy Award for his performance as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy. From his debut in Sinner’s Holiday to one of his many gangster portrayals in The Roaring Twenties, the actor appeared in more than thirty films of the 1930s. Though he started out i...

The value of the editor's craft to a finished film cannot be underestimated, and it's no surprise that directors rely heavily on the same editor over and over again. Seventeen exclusive interviews with some of the world's top film editors, including Walter Murch, Virginia Katz, Joel Cox, Tim Squyres and Richard Marks, explore the art of film editing; its complex processes, the relationship with other film practitioners, and the impact of modern editing techniques.The Filmcraft seri...