Today I took my nephew Max and his cousin Dezzy to the movies. After lunch and before the movie, we browsed in the local bookshop, the newly-opened Avenue Bookshop in Elsternwick, which has taken over from the very old Sunflower Bookshop.
Dezzy was looking unsuccessfully for a book on the subject of "deception", having just read and enjoyed one of her father's self-help books on the subject. Max, who wants to be a film-maker and animator, was in the film section as always, curled up with a book on 100 ideas that shaped film. Of course, I always support him in his dreams - he has already made some Lego animations and placed them on YouTube - so I bought him the book he was reading and then couldn't resist getting one for myself - this one!
Brian Sibley has been doing these books on Tolkien-based movies for some time and co-wrote the script for the BBC radio play - which I now have on CD. I do love making-of books. The best LOTR movie book I have read, so far, is the Andy Serkis one, which was not only one of those "how I got the part in this movie" books but had a lot of chapters written by people who did all the technical stuff. It was so very good that I bought a copy for my Senior Campus library, where we have Media Studies and Multimedia. Not that Andy Serkis didn't tell some entertaining anecdotes, such as his little daughter seeing him in his make-up for the deteriorating Smeagol. He'd been worried that she would be scared, but she only said, "Silly Daddy!" But it was a very good book about film-making in general.
This one does have actor interviews, but also interviews with the technical folk - make-up, costuming, hairdressers( and when you have to look after ninety-one lots of wigs and beards just for the Dwarves, that's no small job!), prosthetics artists - much harder than in the last lot of movies, because they now use a kind of silicon instead of latex, much better visually, but has to be replaced each day - even the breakdown artist, a lady whose job it is to make the costumes lived-in!
I have only read some bits while waiting for the bus and on the tram, but I'm very much looking forward to curling up with this in bed tonight.
Dezzy was looking unsuccessfully for a book on the subject of "deception", having just read and enjoyed one of her father's self-help books on the subject. Max, who wants to be a film-maker and animator, was in the film section as always, curled up with a book on 100 ideas that shaped film. Of course, I always support him in his dreams - he has already made some Lego animations and placed them on YouTube - so I bought him the book he was reading and then couldn't resist getting one for myself - this one!
Brian Sibley has been doing these books on Tolkien-based movies for some time and co-wrote the script for the BBC radio play - which I now have on CD. I do love making-of books. The best LOTR movie book I have read, so far, is the Andy Serkis one, which was not only one of those "how I got the part in this movie" books but had a lot of chapters written by people who did all the technical stuff. It was so very good that I bought a copy for my Senior Campus library, where we have Media Studies and Multimedia. Not that Andy Serkis didn't tell some entertaining anecdotes, such as his little daughter seeing him in his make-up for the deteriorating Smeagol. He'd been worried that she would be scared, but she only said, "Silly Daddy!" But it was a very good book about film-making in general.
This one does have actor interviews, but also interviews with the technical folk - make-up, costuming, hairdressers( and when you have to look after ninety-one lots of wigs and beards just for the Dwarves, that's no small job!), prosthetics artists - much harder than in the last lot of movies, because they now use a kind of silicon instead of latex, much better visually, but has to be replaced each day - even the breakdown artist, a lady whose job it is to make the costumes lived-in!
I have only read some bits while waiting for the bus and on the tram, but I'm very much looking forward to curling up with this in bed tonight.
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