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Laughing Gas Virtual Book Store - Film Table of Contents Books on Improvisational Acting Books on Improv Companies Books on Improv Performers Books on Acting Books on Theatre Books on Comedy Writing Books on Stand-Up Comedy Monty Python Books, Movies, Videos, and CDs Books on Building Your Acting Career Books on Voice and Dialects DVDs Books on Filmmakers Books on Independent Filmmaking Movie Editing Software Screenwriting Software Editing Computers Search: All Products Books Popular Music Classical Music Video DVD ToysGames ComputerVideo Games Electronics Software ToolsHardware LawnPatio Kitchen CameraPhoto Keywords: Amazon.com Search Engine Independent Filmmaking If you are ready to explore the world of independent filmmaking, the books and software below can help. The digital revolution is about to turn the entertainment industry upside down, as actors, directors, and writers realize that they can now produce a feature film for about the same cost as producing a play. The books and videos listed here can help you join the cutting edge of the new entertainment industry. Click on the title of any book or video for more information. You can order any title instantly through the Amazon.com system, and online ordering security is guaranteed. Many titles are available for 20-30% off list price! You can also do your own search by using the Amazon.com search engine in the Table of Contents. BOOKS ON FILMMAKING NEW! First Time Director: How to Make Your Breakthrough Movie Gil Bettman A practical and comprehensive look at all issues facing the first-time director of a feature. Most other books assume the first timer is a self-financed film school grad using borrowed equipment. But what about those directors who are working as hired guns on low-budget professional productions? This book addresses numerous useful issues, such as the actual pecking order on the set (the producer has the last word) and how to collaborate successfully with other film professionals who may know more about the field than you do. There is also a useful section on directing the actors, and an excellent introduction to camera blocking, a field that has undergone a revolution since Spielberg changed all the rules. Also has a concise introduction to lens selection and forced perspective. The author, a protege of Robert Zemeckis, is a respected director who has episodic TV, music videos and feature films to his credit, and now teaches directing at the college level. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! NEW! The Guerilla Film Maker's Movie Blueprint Chris Jones, Jonathan Newman, Cara Williams Jones is one half of the team who wrote The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook, the best-selling low-budget film book in the UK (now fully revised for the American market). He has made 3 low-budget movies: Escape From Survival Zone (aka The Runner), White Angel, and Urban Ghost Story. Now that he's finished writing this book, he hopes to make another movie. The single most comprehensive, honest, information-packed book ever written on how to make a low budget movie. This amazing book explains EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW. From lighting to camera equipment, from festivals to sales distribution, from catering (yes, it even contains recipes your crew will love) to costumes...it's all here. Packed with thousands of photos, flowcharts, and interviews, and written with an enthusiasm that can only be described as scary, The Guerilla Film Makers Movie Blueprint is a book you could not possibly regret buying. Buy It Now! Feature Filmmaking at Used car Prices: How to Write, Produce, Direct, Shoot, Edit, and Promote a Feature-Length Movie for Less than $15,000 Rick Schmidt A revised edition (2000) of the indie filmmaking classic, the author now focuses on DV as a low-budget medium of choice (earlier editions were aimed at 16mm filmmaking). Buy It Now! How to Shoot a Feature Film for Under $10,000...And Not Go to Jail Bret Stern A seriously humorous look at the business of ultra low budget filmmaking, full of practical advice for the financially challenged artist. Buy It Now! The Digital Filmmaking Handbook Ben Long and Sonja Schenk Book and CD ROM disk (Mac/Win). Second edition (2002) All aspects of digital filmmaking. If you wish to make movies using the new digital video cameras and desktop editing technology, this is the book for you. Covers all currently-available platforms (mini-DV, Digital 8, Digibeta, DV Cam, 24 P HDTV, etc.) with detailed information on all preproduction, production and post production issues. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! Film Production The Complete Uncensored Guide to Independent Filmmaking Greg Merritt a useful, highly readable introduction to the field of low budget (or no budget filmmaking), covering scriptwriting, financing, preproduction, budgeting, casting, crew requirements, scheduling, camera technique, sound, postproduction, and distribution. It is oriented to those who shoot on film, but about 80% of the book is applicable to those who plan to shoot on digital video. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! The Filmmaker's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for the Digital Age Steven Ascher, et al. In over 600 pages, 18 chapters, and nine appendices, the authors detail virtually everything you need to know about filmmaking, from which lens to choose all the way through final editing and sound mixing. Much of the book focuses on gear and hardware, and rightly so since making a film or video is both dependent on and influenced by the gear that is used. This handbook describes the differences between the tools--film stock, lenses, lighting setups--and the impact of each on the look of the finished product. This new edition has been updated to include information on digital cameras, the digital video format, nonlinear editing systems, and other contemporary tools. Buy It Now! NEW! Digital Cinematography Paul Wheeler High-end digital cinematography can truly challenge the film camera in many of the technical, artistic and emotional aspects of what we think of as 'cinematography'. Digital Cinematography is a practical 'on-the-set' guide for practicing and aspiring cinematographers and DOPs to digital cinematography essentials - from how to use the cameras to the rapidly emerging world of High Definition cinematography and 24p technology. Buy It Now! Producing Great Sound for Digital Video Jay Rose Getting great-looking video is only half the battle. Sound is a vital but often overlooked element in independent movie productionin fact more indie features are sunk by bad sound than any other single problem. This book shows you how to capture great sound the first time around. Highly Recommended Buy it now! Audio Postproduction for Digital Audio Jay Rose "We'll fix it in post." How many times have we heard that tired mantra? Well, eventually postproduction rolls around, and you have great video but your sound is in desperate straits. Jay Rose actually shows you what can be done to salvage flawed sound and replace what can't be saved. Highly Recommended .Buy It Now! Placing Shadows: Lighting Techniques for Video Productions Chuck B. Gloman, Tom Letourneau This new edition includes an expanded section on location lighting, including the latest equipment and techniques to make location work easier, less expensive and using considerably less power. A section on studio lighting completes the work, including Hollywood-style lighting fixtures and techniques that will give interior work a balanced, professional appearance. The book includes all the latest lighting units available today. Buy It Now! Digital Guerilla Video: A Grassroots Guide to the Revolution Avi Hoffer Book and CD ROM disk (Mac/Win). A guide to creating great looking video without a major budget. Though it is not strictly aimed at movie production, most of the lessons still apply to independent filmmakers. Buy It Now! Digital Moviemaking: The Filmmaker's Guide to the 21st Century Scott Billups A butt-kicking, pixel-twisting, vision of the digital future and how to make your next movie on your credit card. Buy It Now! Digital Filmmaking 101: An Essential Guide to Producing Low-Budget Movies Dale Newton, John Gaspard A step by step guide, from development and preproduction through distribution. Smart, funny advice for independent filmmakers from people who've gone through the process more than once--and lived to tell about it! Buy It Now! Persistence of Vision: An Impractical Guide to Producing a Feature Film for Under $30,000 Dale Newton, John Gaspard The authors start out by saying "Buying this book was your first mistake" and go on to explain the first two tenets of their philosophy: 1) Never pay full price for anything, and 2) Never ever buy what you can borrow or get for free. Filled with good humor and healthy skepticism about commonly held beliefs and instructions for potential filmmakers, this is a book any would-be movie maker would do well to read. While debunking many myths and misconceptions about making films, it is not a dry manual, but rather, a realistic how-to book written by two guys who know what they are talking about from personal experience, including their admitted mistakes. Buy It Now! What They Don't Teach You at Film School: 161 Strategies for Making Your Own Movie No Matter What Camille Landau, Tiare White Not a lesson on camera angles or lens filters, this nifty little volume shows you the strategies needed to get the job done, including a female's perspective on how to get it done in a male-dominated industry. It encourages the filmmaker to break free of the "mother-may-I" mentality of film schools that dictate who is "artistically ready" to make a movie. It also deals with the realities of getting (and keeping) a cast and crew on little or no budget (and where that budget comes from). Buy It Now! NEW! The Independent Film and Videomaker's Guide 2nd Edition Michael Wiese Making your film is easy compared to raising the financing or finding distribution. Here are insights Michael Wiese has learned over the last 25 years that will help you get your work made and out into the world! Buy It Now! Independent Feature Film Production: A Complete Guide from Concept Through Distribution Gregory Goodell Aimed at producers rather than directors, this is a brutally realistic guide to the business of financing, shooting, and distributing an independent movie. Buy It Now! The Complete Film Production Handbook Eve Light Honthaner A guide to the day-by-day details of film production. Among the topics are pre-production tasks, establishing company policy, insurance, setting up files, dealing with the talent, music clearance, visas and customs, and a little bit of post production. Includes reproducible forms for every conceivable situation. Buy It Now! Micro Budget Hollywood: Budgeting (And Making Feature Films for $50,000 to $500,000) Philip Gaines and David Rhodes It's all about funding. Buy It Now! The Producer's Business Handbook John J. Lee A comprehensive guide to the business of motion pictures for producers at all levels. The book and its companion CD-ROM provide both instruction and worksheet support to independent producers at all levels of industry experience. The Producer's Business Handbook gives an insight to the relationships that the most successful producers have with the various participants in the motion picture industry. This includes how these producers direct their relationships with domestic and foreign studios, agencies, attorneys, talent, completion guarantors, banks, and private investors. It provides a thorough orientation to operating development and producing companies, from solicitation of literary properties through direct rights sales, and the management of global distribution relationships. A companion website features extremely valuable spreadsheets, such as the bank financing worksheet and the producer's share analysis. The interactive website also provides examples and exercises using various worksheets. Buy It Now! Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances for Film and Television Judith Weston Many film schools prepare the director to communicate with everyone on the set except the actor. You know what you want, but you need to know how to draw that performance out of the actor. This book shows you how. Weston was an actor before she was a director, and this book offers one of the best explanations of the actor's process, presented in a way that non-actors can understand. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! BOOKS ON FILMMAKERS Rebel Without a Crew: Or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker with $7000 Became a Hollywood Player Robert Rodriguez Screenwriter and director Robert Rodriguez (Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Spy Kids) discloses all his unique strategies and original techniques he used to make his remarkable debut film, El Mariachi, on a shoestring budget. This is both one man's remarkable story and an essential guide to anyone who has a celluloid story to tell and the dreams and determination to see it through. The lesson here isn't that he spent seven grand on his first movie and got the standard Hollywood Rich and Famous Contractthe real lesson is that he taught himself filmmaking by shooting and editing dozens of shorts on video before he ever shot on celluloid. And now he shoots and edits exclusively in HD video. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime Roger Corman, Jim Jerome The king of Hollywood's independent filmmakers tells how he did it. Fast, funny, entertaining, and very informative. Corman was a director, producer, and distributor who worked outside the traditional studio system. Highly Recommended Buy it Now! Roger Corman: An Unauthorized Biography of the Godfather of Indie Filmmaking Beverly Gray Pioneering film director Roger Corman is a fascinating study in contrasts. A flamboyant artist, the original king of the exploitative film has filled his movies with images of blood-sucking vampires, rampaging biker gangs, vigilante strippers, and abducting aliens. Corman has produced 400 to 500 films on shoestring budgets, all on his own terms, and has seen nearly every one of his projects make money. The list of Corman proteges reads like a who's who of motion pictures - John Sayles, James Cameron, Dennis Hopper, Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppola, and Jonathan Demme to name just a few. Author Beverly Gray was Roger Corman's story editor and development executive for nearly a decade. Buy It Now! All I Need to Know About Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger: The Shocking True Story of Troma Studios Lloyd Kaufman, James Gunn Troma Studios is the brainchild of Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz, whose exploitation hits, The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke 'Em High, Tromeo & Juliet, ans Terror Firmer today fill the midnight movie section of most video rental shops (except icky "squeeky-clean" Blockbuster). Here, Kaufman traces his lifelong dedication to big-screen gore, disfigurement, mutation and raunchy sex from his days in the Yale film society as a disaffected undergrad in the mid-1960s to his present career as a leading impresario of bad taste. The Toxic Avenger, produced in 1982, catapulted Troma into the international limelight and has since become an icon of fringe cinema, spawning merchandise, a Saturday morning cartoon and late-night cable exposure. Not so much a manual as an autobiography, this is still a funny and occasionally brilliant little book on what it's like being an independent film producer in the age of megaconglomerates (Troma is currently the oldest independent studio in the United States). Buy It Now! NEW! Make Your Own Damn Movie! Secrets of a Renegade Director Lloyd Kaufman, Trent Haaga, Adam Jahnke Troma Studios' manic impressario Lloyd Kaufman has relented and actually written a how-to book on ultra-low-budget filmmaking (this is the book Putnam-Penguin expected him to write five years ago). It still has mental digressions on the soulless corporate film industry, bodily functions, Napster, and Lloyd's improbable sleeping arrangements at Cannes, but it also addresses the kinds of disasters that can and will befall first-time filmmakers, and takes the reader step-by-step from pre-production through distribution. He even reveals the secret of raising the funds to make a movie (find rich people, then grovel and beg). Co-authors Haaga and Jahnke often disagree with their boss and mentor, and are actually given substantial chunks of the book to refute him (particularly his personal obsession with shooting on 35mm film when most low-budget indies are shooting digitally). Even if you don't plan to do a kitschy, monster blood-fest, the everyday issues of keeping a set running inexpensively make it worthwhile. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! Shooting to Kill: How an Independent Producer Blasts Through the Barriers to Make Movies That Matter Christine Vachon, David Edelstein Christine Vachon has made her name with such bold, controversial, and commercially successful films as Boys Don't Cry, Poison, Swoon, Kids, Safe, I Shot Andy Warhol, and Velvet Goldmine. Over the last decade, she has become a driving force behind the most daring and strikingly original independent filmmakers-from Todd Haynes to Tom Kalin and Mary Harron-and helped put them on the map. In this savagely witty and straight-shooting guide, Vachon reveals the guts of the filmmaking process--from developing a script, nurturing a director's vision, getting financed, and drafting talent to holding hands, stroking egos, stretching every resource to the limit and pushing that limit. Along the way, she offers shrewd practical insights and troubleshooting tips on handling everything from hysterical actors and disgruntled teamsters to obtuse marketing executives. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste John Waters Baltimore's bad boy filmmaker (the Baltimore Sun dubbed him the "Sultan of Sleaze...cultivating it like a rare orchid") expounds on his theories of "good bad taste." Waters is known for such films as Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Desperate Living, Multiple Maniacs, Polyester, Pecker, Serial Mom and Hairspray. His most recent film is Cecil B. Demented, a parody of independent filmmaking itself. Waters' bizarrely original reputation has allowed him to use Hollywood "names," (like Kathleen Turner) in his more recent films, which enjoy substantially higher production values. Buy It Now! NEW! Stanley Kubrick, Director: A Visual Analysis Alexander Walker, Sybil Taylor, Ulrich Ruchti The only book about Kubrick ever written with the director's cooperation, this volume examines the highly visual technique of one of the 20th Century's most original directors. Buy It Now! Making Movies Sidney Lumet The veteran director of Twelve Angry Men, The Pawnbroker, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, The Verdict, and many other fine movies, knows the ins and outs of American filmmaking as well as anyone. In this excellent, personable account, Lumet tells what he's learned about making movies in the course of the last 40 years. He shows why fine directors need to have strong imaginations, extraordinary adaptability, and skill in many different fields. His enthusiasm for his life's work, particularly his love of actors, is evident on every page of this book. As Herculean as the labors of film directing are, Lumet takes great pleasure in his work, almost guiltily admitting that the film director's job is "the best in the world." Buy It Now! NEW! Moviemaker Master Class: Private Lessons from the World's Foremost Directors Laurent Tirard From Scorsese and Lynch to Wenders and Godard, interviews with twenty of the world's greatest directors on how they make films--and why. Each great filmmaker has a secret method to his moviemaking--but each of them is different. In Moviemaker Master Class, Laurent Tirard talks to twenty of today's most important filmmakers to get to the core of each director's approach to film, exploring the filmmaker's vision as well as his technique, while allowing each man to speak in his own voice. In these interviews--which originally appeared in the French film magazine Studio and are being published here in English for the first time, Laurent Tirard has succeeded in finding out what makes each filmmaker--and his films--so extraordinary, shedding light on both the process and the people behind great moviemaking. Among the other filmmakers included are Bernardo Bertolucci, Lars von Trier, Woody Allen, Tim Burton, Joel and Ethan Coen, and John Woo. Buy It Now! Making Movies on Your Own: Practical Talk from Independent Filmmakers Kevin J. Lindenmuth In this work, J.R. Bookwalter, Ronnie Cramer, Mike Gingold, Eric Stanze, Steve Ballot, and 19 others tell what it is really like to make an independent feature. Covering such topics as the script, equipment, actors, publicity, distribution, all facets of production, and budgeting, these indie filmmakers give a virtual how-to for those interested in joining them or just learning more about how those interesting titles end up on video store shelves. Buy It Now! Martin Scorcese: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series) Martin Scorcese, Peter Brunette The University Press of Mississippi's volume on Martin Scorsese effectively mixes in-depth, question-and-answer interviews, often from film journals, with narrative profiles from the mainstream press. The combination works well, with the more structured biographical information from the profiles serving as narrative support for the freewheeling answers in the interviews. The chronological arrangement allows the reader to watch Scorsese's distinguished career develop from film to film, as most of the pieces originally appeared in conjunction with the opening of a film. Buy It Now! The Cinema of Martin Scorcese Lawrence S. Friedman Friedman explores Scorsese's influences, his stock company of actors (which includes Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Harvey Keitel), his student films, and all his major works, including the masterpieces Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas. This well-written and engaging book offers many insights into an artist who believes that "my whole life has been movies and religion. That's it. Nothing else." Buy It Now! Quentin Tarantino: The Cinema of Cool Jeff Dawson A biography and critique of Tarantino, whose breakthrough films, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, established him as a new force in independent moviemaking. Book features interviews with the director, as well as Samuel L. Jackson, Harvey Keitel, and others. Buy It Now! Quentin Tarantino Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series) Quentin Tarantino, Gerald Perry A chronological digest of Tarantino's published interviews as well as biographical information. Buy It Now! The Films of John Cassavetes: The Adventure of Insecurity Ray Carney Traces the films and career of one of Hollywood's mavericks, an actor and filmmaker who refused to be hemmed in by the Hollywood studio system. Buy It Now! The Films of John Cassavetes: Pragmatism, Modernism, and the Movies Ray Carney Tells the inside story of the making of six of Cassavetes' most important works: Shadows, Faces, Minnie and Moskowitz, A Woman Under the Influence, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Love Streams. Includes almost 50 previously unpublished photos from the private collections of Sam and Larry Shaw, and excerpts from interviews with the filmmaker and many of his closest friends. Buy It Now! This Is Orson Welles Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Rosenbaum (ed.) In 1992, the first publication of This Is Orson Welles brought a priceless document to light. In the late '60s and early '70s, filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich had conducted extensive interviews with Welles, but a number of circumstances--including the director's desire to compose an autobiography that he never got around to writing--kept the interviews out of the public eye. He discusses his forays into acting, producing, and writing as well as directing, his confidences and insecurities, and his plans for film projects that were either never made or only partially completed. He also offers insights into the triumph of Citizen Kane and other masterpieces like Macbeth, The Lady from Shanghai, Touch of Evil, Othello, and Chimes at Midnight. His defense of his controversial adaptation of Kafka's The Trial is so fascinating that readers might want to rush out and rent the film.While the book is worth owning just for this 322-page interview, it is also full of other material that is equally revealing. Rosenbaum presents a meticulous chronology of Welles's life, closely following his day-to-day activities from his birth in 1915 to his death in 1985. Buy It Now! Click here to return to the Table of Contents. FILM FESTIVALSFilm festivals do more than celebrate the art of filmmaking--they are vital marketplaces where distribution companies look for The Next Big Thing. Two of the most influential are Sundance and Cannes. Sundance: A Festival Virgin's Guide Benjamin Craig Sundance - A Festival Virgin's Guide is the essential handbook for filmmakers, film industry professionals, and film-fans looking to attend the festival. Demystifying the event and providing practical advice for attending, Sundance: A Festival Virgin's Guide is about helping you make the most of your visit to Park City and America's most important film festival. Features include:THE CITY - getting there, getting around, places to stay, places to eat, and more; THE FESTIVAL - its history, structure, how to attend and all about the screenings; THE BIZ - an overview of the business side of the festival, for filmmakers looking to attend Sundance for networking or with a project in tow; THE LOWDOWN - a series of interviews with Sundance veterans from across the industry spectrum, offering their advice and tips; FIVE APPENDICES containing a wealth of additional information. Buy It Now! Cannes: A Festival Virgin's Guide (4th Edition) Benjamin Craig For filmmakers, Cannes is about doing deals, networking, selling films (as well as yourself), and generally working very hard to stay on top of 12 days of intense film business. Perhaps it is the fact that the event takes place in France, or maybe it is simply part and parcel of the world's most famous film festival, but first-time visitors to Cannes can often find it all a bit overwhelming. Cannes: A Festival Virgin's Guide is the leading handbook for filmmakers looking to attend the festival, and to do so on a shoe-string budget. Demystifying the event and providing practical advice for attending, Cannes - A Festival Virgin's Guide is about helping you make the most of your visit to the world's most famous film festival, and hopefully come out with your wallet intact. Buy It Now! The Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide Chris Gore Learn the secrets of succesfully marketing and selling your film at Sundance, Telluride, Slamdance and over 400 film festivals worldwide. This comprehensive and eye-opening guide is jam-packed with information for filmmakers and film lovers alike. The Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide reveals how to get a film accepted and what to do after acceptance, from putting together a press kit to putting on a great party to actually closing a deal. Includes interviews with actual filmmakers who have experienced wildly varying degrees of success; the directors are remarkably candid and very generously try to help others avoid their own mistakes. Buy It Now! THE SCRIPT Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting Syd Field Love him or hate him, Syd Field's formula for constructing movie scripts is reflected in nearly every successful Hollywood film, and his book is required reading in many college screenwriting courses. His three-act structure works--just don't get too obsessed with actually hitting your major plot points on the precise page he suggests. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! The Screenwriter's Problem Solver: How to Recognize, Identify, and Define Screenwriting Problems Syd Field Screenplays can bog down in vague and mysterious ways, but identifying a screenwriting problem is half the battle. By identifying symptoms in the writing, Field isolates about 20 different screenwriting problems, each related to plot, character, or structure (after all, what else is there?). His fixes generally involve getting to know your characters or story better, through the use of automatic writing, biographical sketches, and the like. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! Selling a Screenplay: The Screenwriter's Guide to Hollywood Syd Field Okay, maybe you're not a budding Auteur, wanting to write, produce and direct the whole thing yourself. If you want to write scripts for the big shots, Syd field takes you behind the movie moguls' closed doors and shows how to sell a screenplay--and earn upwards of $100,000 in the process. Buy It Now! The Tools of Screenwriting David Howard, Edward Mabley A comprehensive guide to writing screenplays by an experienced screenwriter and a respected writing teacher. Along with sections on the sreenwriter's craft, basic storytelling, and the parts and objectives of a screenplay, the book is distinguished by detailed analyses of sixteen successful films' screenplays, including the likes of E.T., Some Like It Hot, North by Northwest, Citizen Kane, and Annie Hall. Buy It Now! Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting Robert McKee The screenwriter must labor meticulously over his or her prose, yet very little of that prose is ever heard by filmgoers. The few words that do reach the audience, in the form of the characters' dialogue, are, according to Robert McKee, best left to last in the writing process (As Alfred Hitchcock once remarked, 'When the screenplay has been written and the dialogue has been added, we're ready to shoot.' ). In Story, McKee puts into book form what he has been teaching screenwriters for years in his seminar on story structure, which is considered by many to be a prerequisite to the film biz. (The long list of film and television projects that McKee's students have written, directed, or produced includes Air Force One, The Deer Hunter, E.R., A Fish Called Wanda, Forrest Gump, NYPD Blue, and Sleepless in Seattle.) McKee is passionate about the art of screenwriting. "No one needs yet another recipe book on how to reheat Hollywood leftovers," he writes. "We need a rediscovery of the underlying tenets of our art, the guiding principles that liberate talent." Story is a true path to just such a rediscovery. In it, McKee offers so much sound advice, drawing from sources as wide ranging as Aristotle and Casablanca, Stanislavski and Chinatown, that it is impossible not to come away feeling immeasurably better equipped to write a screenplay and infinitely more inspired to write a brilliant one. Buy It Now! BOOKS ON EDITING SOFTWARENEW! iMovie 4 and iDVD Visual Quickstart Guide Jeff Carlson One makes cinematographers out of the masses; the other gives the masses a medium on which to distribute their masterworks--and that's just the beginning of what Apple's iMovie 4 and iDVD 4 are capable of. This task-based guide is the key to using them effectively and creatively. In friendly, Visual QuickStart fashion, this volume uses step-by-step instructions and loads of illustrations to get you up to speed quickly in the process of making movies with iMovie 4 and creating Hollywood-quality DVDs on which to share them (as well as photos, music, and more). You'll find all the basics covered here--from shooting and capturing footage, viewing clips, and working in the iMovie timeline to dragging and dropping iMovies into new iDVD projects and adding GarageBand-created songs to your newly created DVDs. You'll also find detailed explanations of all of the programs' niftiest new features, including iDVD's more than 20 new themes (from Wedding to Drive In!) and iMovie's in-timeline editing capabilities. Buy It Now! iMovie 3 and iDVD: The Missing Manual David Pogue The author of the highly successful Mac for Dummies series presents a guide to Apple's free nonlinear editing program, iMovie 3, which was bundled with Apple's Macintosh OSX Version 10.3 Panther operating system (compatible with older G3 and G4 computers). It adds cool new features, like the "Ken Burns Effect," which allows you to pan over a still image, a technique made popular by the documentary filmmaker. Once you're done, you can burn your movies onto DVD disks using Apple's free iDVD application! If you have just purchased a new Mac, or bought the iLife upgrade separately, you have iMovie 4, and you can download a free update chapter from the author's website showing you how to activate exciting new features, like audio waveform displays for sound clips. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! iMovie 2: The Missing Manual David Pogue The author presents a thorough guide to Apple's free nonlinear editing program, iMovie 2, which turns out to have far more features than you might suspect. If you have an Apple running System 9 with a Firewire port, you can shoot and edit digital video instantly! Highly Recommended Buy It Now! The Final Cut Pro 4 Bible Zed Saeed, J. J. Marshall, Jeffrey Chong If you're serious about video editing, this book and Final Cut Pro 4 are the tools you need. The QuickStart tutorial lets you get your feet wet right away. If you already have some experience, dive right into organizing media, editing, color correcting, rendering, creating final output, and more. You'll learn all about video editing fundamentals, and you'll discover how Final Cut Pro 4 turns your Mac with OSX into a professional studio. Includes bonus DVD with tutorial and Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, and Illustrator tryout versions, as well as demo versions of Joe's Filters, Boris FX, Boris CONTINUUM COMPLETE, CGM DVE, and Aurora Sky, plus more. Buy It Now! Final Cut Pro 4 for Dummies Helmut Kobler, Chad Fahs Most technical books are written as if you already know the subject. The beauty of the Dummies series is that it assumes you are bright but untrained, and it walks you through the basics and explains the terminology as well as the techniques involved. This title teaches new and inexperienced users of Final Cut Pro how to capture, import, and edit digital video. This book includes coverage on rendering, compositing, transitions, adding titles, audio and video filters, advanced effects, and much more. Includes CD ROM with FCP plug-ins. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! The Little iDVD Book Bob LeVitus Create your own DVD movies and burn your own DVDs using Apple's new iDVD software in no time! New iDVD technology enables users to share movies, music, and pictures on DVD that can be watched on television or on the computer. This book will show readers how to get QuickTime files into the iDVD interface, select themes within iDVD, and then burn their own DVD movies using a DVD-r/CD-RW drive. The book will include tips on: shooting and editing digital video, converting your footage to DVD, using pre-existing "themes" within iDVD, creating your own menus and buttons, and expert advice on previewing and burning your own DVD. Did we mention that the software is bundled free on all new Macs with DVD burners?. Buy It Now! MacWorld iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie and iDVD Bible Bob LeVitus, Dennis R. Cohen New Mac computers are loaded with free digital media software for digital photography, digital audio, digital video editing, and DVD creation and burning. This guide shows readers how to tap the potential of the four digital media programs that come standard with the computer. Each program is covered followed by step-by-step tutorials, tips, techniques, hints, and advice. Buy It Now! Windows Movie Maker for Dummies Keith Underdahl Well, suppose you want to get started in nonlinear editing, but you're trapped in the Windows universe? As it happens, Microsoft, following on Apple's heels, has introduced its own little video editing utility, Movie Maker. Less powerful than iMovie, but a lot cheaper than Premiere (it's bundled free with Windows XP). This book will help get you started. Buy It Now! Digital Video for Dummies Martin Doucette In this 2001 edition, the author devotes separate chapters to the free editing software now offered by Microsoft (Movie maker) and Apple (iMovie), as well as a section on Adobe's venerable warhorse, Premiere. Buy It Now! Computer Videomaker Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Making Video Computer Videomaker Magazine (Editor) Features in-depth articles from Videomaker's expert writers covering all aspects of video production and delivery. New chapters provide insight on streaming and producing video for the internet Buy It Now! Sam's Teach Yourself Adobe Premiere 6.5 in 24 Hours Jeff Sengstack Sam's Teach Yourself Adobe Premiere in 24 Hours offers practical advice from an author with a strong writing background, solid teaching experience, and extensive television production credentials. The book includes not only instruction on the basics of using Premiere, but also tips on shooting high quality video, creating professional voice-overs, and effective methods. Adobe Premiere brings high-end video editing to the PC (90% of Premiere users use Windows). Anyone with a Windows PC who wants to venture into anything more than very simple video editing will eventually turn to Premiere. Premiere 6.5 will garner significant attention in part because it will add DVD authoring to its extensive feature set. The author has been working closely with Adobe, advising them on DVD software issues. Buy It Now! Video Editing With Adobe Premiere 6.0 David Peck Chock full of fast-paced, high-interest tutorials and exercises, Video Editing with Adobe Premiere 6.0 is cleverly divided into sections that allow users of all abilities to quickly master the art of using one of today's most popular digital video editing tools to combine video footage, sound files, photography, and art files. Heavily illustrated with dynamic media clips on the accompanying CD to engage interest, this book puts its readers on a direct path to presenting their own projects by following a few simple steps. As they learn how to navigate like a pro through the most sophisticated Adobe Premiere 6.0 features and functions, readers will glean useful insights into hardware needs, the proper use of transitions, the impact of motion effects, integrating and balancing sound files, streaming video for the Web, working with digital camcorders and decks, and more! Buy It Now! Adobe Premiere 6 Bible Seth Greenberg, Adele Droblas Greenberg Adobe has finally worked most of the kinks out of Premiere, and this book will guide you through the new features of this latest version of Adobe's venerable nonlinear editing program. Buy It Now! Premiere 6 for Macintosh and Windows: Visual Quickstart Guide Antony Bolante A visual tutorial on software for editing digital video, audio, still images, and text on a desktop computer. Concise explanation and step-by-step instructions for specific tasks are accompanied by b&w screen shots from both Macintosh and Windows platforms. Chapters are organized to present topics as they are encountered in a typical editing project. Buy It Now! NEW! Adobe After Effects 5 for Macintosh and Windows: Visual QuickPro Guide Antony Bolante With this program, a desk top editor has more special effects horsepower than George Lucas did when he created the first Star Wars trilogy. The author introduces video and film producers to the comprehensive set of tools available in After Effects. Step-by-step instructions lead intermediate-level readers through some of After Effects's more advanced features in video editing. The most useful, project-enhancing features of Adobe's powerful application are covered in detail. Book and CD ROM (Mac/Win) Buy It Now! NEW! Creative After Effects 5.0, Animation, Visual Effects, and Motion Graphics for TV and Video Angie Taylor A comprehensive guide to the fundamental workings of Adobe After Effects. Taylor explains how to think creatively with the software, so that you can achieve the most unique and professional looking results. Also included are lots of invaluable tips and tricks, ideas, animation rules, design and typography rules and lists of other resources you will find useful. Book CD-ROM Buy It Now! Click here to return to the Table of Contents. EDITING AND EFFECTS SOFTWARE NEW! Final Cut Pro HD Apple Computer's proprietary editing program is the most flexible nonlinear editing software on the market. This revolutionary software is also compatible with all currently available Standard Definition video formats, including DV, DVCAM, DVCPRO, DVCPRO 50. Works with NTSC or PAL. Final Cut Pro HD is the creative, professional, and extensible video editing tool for editing and finishing in SD and HD formats. Besides native DVCPRO HD editing, and RT Extreme with HD effects, Digital Cinema Desktop lets you play back full-screen HD on an Apple Cinema Display. You get superb image quality for a fraction of the cost of typical HD monitors. Features:Native DVCPRO HD editing: allows editing of broadcast-quality HD 720p (at 24 and 60 frames per second) and at 1080i (at 30 frames per second). RT Extreme for HD: gives users real-time multi-stream effects and transitions for HD formats. Final Cut Pro HD combines unmatched scalability, precision editing tools and seamless workflow in one high-performance, comprehensive application. Now supporting DVCPRO HD capture and output over FireWire in addition to HD-SDI capture Final Cut Pro HD changes the rules for high-definition production. Now you can capture DVCPRO HD footage over FireWire without the generational loss that can happen in other systems that force recompression using proprietary codecs. With Final Cut Pro HD, you edit in camera-original format and output via FireWire when you're done. Final Cut Pro HD introduces RT Extreme for HD. The real-time playback of effects, filters, transitions and composited video streams that you're used to in SD is now available for HD. Choose from over 150 real-time-capable effects, transitions and filters: no rendering and no expensive hardware add-ons are required. With RT Extreme HD, you can select between full-resolution, high-quality playback or preview mode for maximum simultaneous streams and effects. Final Cut Pro HD has the power to scale from DV to SD, HD and Film. With small file sizes and quality high enough for broadcast, you can avoid down-converting using DVCPRO HD. Work in 1080i and 720p HD from start to finish without managing multiple offline formats. Encode DV, SD, and HD content to MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 in pristine quality. Create custom soundtracks and audio to score your project. Render final output to virtually any professional format. Apple has joined the growing list of companies planning to support JVC's HDV format in future product releases. HDV support for FCP can be found at Heuris and Lumiere. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! NEW! Final Cut Express Want a Macintosh-based editing program that is more sophisticated than iMovie but doesn't have the steep learning curve of Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere? Then Final Cut Express is the ideal choice for you! It is designed for DV-formated video, for the majority of users who are not shooting on HD or Digibeta. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! NEW! iLife iLife '04 gathers the latest versions of five media applications, iTunes 4, iPhoto 4, iMovie 4, and iDVD 4 and the new GarageBand music application in one convenient package with tremendous integration. Powerful new features let them manage music and easily create professional-quality slideshows, music, movies, and DVDs. Key features include seamless integration of the applications. iMovie 4 now features sound waveforms for enhaced audio editing. iMovie accesses iTunes and iPhoto media libraries, and it can output projects directly to iDVD. iLife features a single installer that updates all existing iLife applications. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! NEW! Macintosh OSX Version 10.3 Panther If you have a G3 or G4 Mac running OS9, now is the time to upgrade to OS X, which is required to take advantage of the latest versions of iMovie, Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro. Mac OS X features a stunning new user interface called Aqua, making work and play on the Mac even more intuitive for new users, while providing powerful, customizable tools for professionals. At the foundation of Mac OS X lies an industrial-strength, UNIX-based core operating system that delivers unprecedented stability and performance. Mac OS X is the world's most advanced operating system, blending the power and stability of UNIX with the legendary simplicity and ease-of-use of the Macintosh. Mac OS X version 10.3 "Panther" contains over 150 new features and provides significant enhancements to its modern, UNIX-based foundation. Panther includes iChat AV for personal video conferencing, Expose for instantly finding any window, and a new Finder for easy access to everything you need. It's like having an all-new Mac. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! NEW! Adobe Premiere Pro 7.0 for Windows Adobe Premiere Pro software is built for Microsoft Windows XP systems, and offers a new, real-time editing experience that provides immediate feedback and enables you to edit with amazing speed. Take advantage of multiple, nestable timelines to experiment more freely and manage complex projects more efficiently. Use color correction tools to adjust hue, saturation, and lightness for highlights, midtones, and shadows; replace a color throughout a clip with a single selection; and more. Produce richer, more vibrant audio using sample-level editing, VST filters, track-based effects, and 5.1 surround sound. Customize keyboard shortcuts to fit your editing style. Use default presets, leverage industry-standard shortcuts, or create your own. Work closely with your other video software and hardware tools: Adobe Premiere Pro supports the latest industry standards, including OHCI, ASIO, AAF, and VST. Import, edit, and deliver HD or SD productions using certified OEM hardware with Adobe Premiere Pro. Encode HD Windows Media 9 Series content using the built-in Adobe Media Encoder. Enjoy unmatched integration with your favorite Adobe applications, including Adobe After Effects, Adobe Encore DVD, and Adobe Photoshop software. Enjoy extensive hardware support and an open architecture that let you work with everything from an impressive list of DVCAM gear to the latest video decks and camcorders to third-party hardware, including SD and HD boards. Make the most of multiple processors, advanced multithreading technology, and hyperthreading support on the latest Intel Pentium based Windows XP systems. Import and work with MPEG-1, MPEG-2, DV, AVI, Windows Media 9 Series, and QuickTime formats. Import and work with WAV, WMA, MP3, and AIFF as well as audio-only AVI and QuickTime formats. Produce video and audio content for the leading delivery media: broadcast formats, DV, DVD, CD, VCD, SVCD, and the Web. Output AAF files for sharing with other professional editing systems. Work with AI, AI sequence, PSD, PSD sequence, JPEG, TGA, TGA sequence, TIFF, TIFF sequence, PCX, BMP, and BMP sequence files. Export Adobe Premiere Pro projects directly to DVD for distribution of high-quality MPEG-2 content. Buy It Now! NEW! Adobe After Effects 6.5 for Macintosh The newest incarnation of Adobe After Effects enables you to create motion graphics and visual effects for professional cross-media delivery. It is a complete tool set for 2-D and 3-D compositing, animation, and effects for film, video, multimedia, and the Web, and offers tight integration with Adobe Premiere, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator. Compatible with Apple's Final Cut Pro. Buy It Now! NEW! Adobe After Effects 6.5 for Windows The newest incarnation of Adobe After Effects enables you to create motion graphics and visual effects for professional cross-media delivery. It is a complete tool set for 2-D and 3-D compositing, animation, and effects for film, video, multimedia, and the Web, and offers tight integration with Adobe Premiere, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator. Buy It Now! SCREENWRITING SOFTWARE Final Draft 7.0 for Windows and Macintosh Writing for stage and screen has its own arcane set of rules. Break them, and your masterpiece is likely to be tossed in the garbage before it ever gets considered. Courier is the only typeface that's acceptable, dialogue must be centered, "foreground" is abbreviated f.g., while "interior" is INT. Final Draft promises it will sweat these details for you, allowing you to concentrate on storytelling. The program also converts text to speech, so you can assign different voices to characters and have your computer read your masterpiece out loud. A function called SmartType anticipates what a given word might be, saving writers from repetitive typing. If your script goes into production, the program has a revision mode to create A and B pages. And the program is platform-independent, which means that two writers can collaborate, even if one uses a Windows computer and the other uses a Mac. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! Movie Magic Screenwriter With Free Book "The Screenwriter's Bible" for Windows and Macintosh Movie Magic is another effective screenwriting program that allows you to create movie or television scripts in standard Hollywood formats. Movie Magic includes sample templates of many actual television programs, and unlike Final Draft, it allows changes to be made when displaying scenes in notecard format. It compares well with Final Draft, and it's really just a matter of personal preference, as both attempt to match new features found in the other. It does export scenes to Movie Magic Scheduling software, which can be convenient in production. Buy It Now! EDITING COMPUTERS The Apple Computer offers an integrated solution to video editing, with software and hardware that is designed to function seamlessly. If you are tired of struggling with balky hardware and software that refuse to work together, and you just want to get on with the creative process, the answer is simple: get a Mac! Macintosh's new OS X operating system is based on Unix, and is virtually crash-proof. All the computers listed come loaded with iMovie 3, a simple but powerful editing program, and all are compatible with Apple's award-winning Final Cut Pro 4 editing software. NEW! Apple iMac Desktop with 17" Widescreen LCD (1.25 GHz Power PC G4, 256 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD RW Drive) Inside story Inside the new 17-inch iMac, for instance, you get the 1.25GHz PowerPC G4 with Velocity Engine, 256MB of PC2700 (333MHz) Double Data Rate SDRAM main memory (expandable up to 1GB), NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra graphics with 64MB of DDR SDRAM, and an Ultra-ATA/100 80GB hard disk that dishes out data at 7200 rpm. Includes built-in 10/100BASE-T Ethernet and 56K V.92 modem, two FireWire 400 ports, three USB 2.0 ports, two USB 1.1 ports (on keyboard), VGA output port, S-video and composite video output, headphone jack, Apple speaker minijack and audio line in jack. You can also enjoy the freedom of wireless computing: both iMac models come AirPort Extreme-ready, and you can add an internal Bluetooth module as a build-to-order option. If you decide after purchasing your system that you want Bluetooth capability, you can easily plug in an external D-Link USB Bluetooth Adapter. The iLife software application suite that come on your new iMac include iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD. They let you do fun, creative things with your pictures, music and movies -- and share them with family and friends -- in ways that people who use PCs can only dream about. The iMac with SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW) lets you burn your own movies and photos on a DVD disc that plays in almost any standard DVD player. Even better, the SuperDrive burns DVDs at 4x speed. And, naturally, you can pop in your DVD movies and watch them in widescreen letterbox format on the brilliant LCD display of your iMac. In fact, the new 17-inch iMac can even encode DVD video faster than real time. The SuperDrive supports DVD-Video, DVD-ROM and DVD-R, as well as CD-ROM, CD-Audio, CD-R, CD-RW. Pop an AirPort Extreme Card into your iMac, and you're ready for the freedom of wireless networking from anywhere in your home or dorm -- up to 150 feet from an AirPort Extreme Base Station. The iMac's sizzling graphics processors kick Quartz Extreme and 3-D games and graphics into high gear with hardware transform and lighting (T&L), per-pixel shading and drop-dead gorgeous effects at high resolutionsover a billion textured pixels per second. And the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra delivers even more 3-D graphics firepower with an advanced Live FX engine engineered to generate the most lifelike characters. And with Quartz Extreme, the graphics processors take over the transform and lighting calculation functions from the iMac's CPU, freeing the PowerPC G4 processor to perform essential system tasks faster than ever before. iMac comes with Apple Pro Speakers that handle 14 watts of undistorted digital sound. And since the iMac also provides power to the speakers, you don't need an additional power brick. The result? Reduced cable clutter. Features an internal speaker, internal digital amplifier, Apple Pro Speaker jack, headphone jack, and an audio line-in jack that lets you use it as a sound editing studio. Mac OS X features preemptive multitasking that allocates processor cycles on an as-needed basis, and protected memory that keeps you up and running even if an application happens to crash. And now with Mac OS X Panther, Quartz Extreme takes full advantage of the NVIDIA graphics chip in your iMac to make everything onscreen move faster, freeing up processor cycles for the PowerPC G4 chip to crunch MP3 files and burn DVDs. Features a new superfast system architecture with DDR SDRAM which constantly feeds data to the powerful G4 processor to make more efficient use of each clock cycle. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! Apple 15" iMac Desktop (1 GHz Power PC G4, 256 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW) This is an amazing desktop editing computer at an amazing price. It has a 15-inch flat screen liquid crystal display, G4 Velocity Engine chip, a Superdrive DVD/CD burner (with software), and an 80 gig ultra ATA hard drive. Also includes a full suite of software including Mac OS X Panther v10.3, Mail, iChat, Safari, Sherlock, Address Book, QuickTime, iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, iDVD, Garageband, iSync, iCal, DVD Player, AppleWorks, Mac OS X Chess and Classic environment, Earthlink for 30 days, Quicken Deluxe, World Book Encyclopedia, Microsoft Office v.X Test Drive, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, Deimos Rising and Sound Studio, Apple Hardware Test. Two Firewire ports (IEEE 1394), 3 USB ports, optical mouse, Apple Pro keyboard, four speakers, 56 kb modem. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! NEW! Apple eMac 17" Desktop (1 GHz Power PC G4, 256 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, DVD-RW/CD-RW Drive Apple's all-in-one eMac, originally designed for the education market, is now available to everyone. The most affordable G4-based computer series ever, the eMac now includes Apple's SuperDrive, which allows you to burn both recordable DVDs and CDs, along with a suite of Apple software that will allow your digital creativity to flow from the moment you plug in the computer. Includes iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, iPhoto, Garageband, Safari, Appleworks. The new SuperDrive-equipped eMac model is the industry's lowest-cost way to author and burn custom DVDs that play in most consumer DVD players. Apple's award-winning iMovie and iDVD applications come pre-installed on the new eMac, enabling users to edit their video and create and burn their own custom DVDs without buying additional software. The popular eMac features a stunning 17-inch flat CRT display in a remarkably compact design. Its shape lets you conserve desk space--the entire computer is smaller than most 17-inch displays, yet it includes not only the display, but also an integrated high-performance stereo audio system with a 16-watt digital amplifier, as well as the SuperDrive. In fact, it's actually less deep (by about 8 mm) than the original groundbreaking 15-inch iMac. It also features 256 MB of system memory, an 80 GB hard drive, and an nVidia GeForce2 MX graphics processor for stunning graphics display. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! NEW! Apple Power Mac Desktop (Dual Processor 2 GHz Power PC G5, 512 Mb RAM, 120 GB Hard Drive) This is the Mother of All Personal Computers, ideally suited to video editing with real-time transition and effects rendering when running Final Cut Pro 4. It is reputedly the fastest personal computer in the world, with a new chip architecture developed in cooperation with IBM. It comes with a ATI DRADEON 9600 graphics card. The G5 comes bundled with iLife (including iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD), QuickBooks for Mac New User Edition, FAXstf, SArt Directors Toolkit, Microsoft Office v.X Test Drive, FileMaker Pro Trial, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, GraphicConverter, QuickTime, iChat Safari, Sherlock, Address Book, iCal, iSync, DVD Player, Mail EarthLink, Acrobat Reader, Classic enviroment and Apple Developer Tools. In addition, the Power Mac lets you spread your work across two monitors for a larger workspace. This Power Mac comes with a huge fast 120 GB Ultra-ATA hard disk drive and three additional 3.5-inch hard disk drive expansion bays--with support for a total of up to four internal hard drives, for up to 480 GB of storage. Since the SuperDrive-equipped Power Mac comes with iDVD 2, you can burn data CDs and DVDs--with point-and-click ease--to archive your work minutes after you take your new system out of its box. It also accommodates a second optical drive in addition to the SuperDrive, so you can even watch a DVD movie while your work is burning to disc, or archive material at the same time. You also get the benefit of built-in Gigabit Ethernet for shooting large files across your network at previously unheard-of speeds, the 108-key Apple Pro keyboard, a 56K modem, four USB ports and two high-speed FireWire ports for connecting all kinds of peripherals, and an AirPort card slot. Four PCI expansion slots are also integrated directly into the main system controller, speeding expansion cards' throughput. Highly Recommended Buy It Now! LaCie d2 52X24X52 External Firewire CD-RW Drive If your Mac didn't come with a CD burner, this Firewire-based unit will allow you to burn data, music or video CDs (a video format compatible with most computers and DVD players that uses ordinary CR-R disks). Buy It Now! Click here to browse through our Video Catalog! Click here for the Amazon.com 100 Hot Videos! Click here to return to the Table of Contents. Haven't found what you were looking for? Don't give up! Just use the Amazon.com search engine below and you can go through their entire database of movies, music, electronics and books by artist or author's name, title, subject, keywords, publisher, or manufacturer. Search: All Products Books Popular Music Classical Music Video DVD ToysGames ComputerVideo Games Electronics Software ToolsHardware LawnPatio Kitchen CameraPhoto Keywords: Click here to return to the Table of Contents. Copyright ©2008 - Laughing Gas - All Rights Reserved (305) 461-1161 for Reservations Home
Table of Contents
Independent Filmmaking If you are ready to explore the world of independent filmmaking, the books and software below can help. The digital revolution is about to turn the entertainment industry upside down, as actors, directors, and writers realize that they can now produce a feature film for about the same cost as producing a play. The books and videos listed here can help you join the cutting edge of the new entertainment industry.
Click on the title of any book or video for more information. You can order any title instantly through the Amazon.com system, and online ordering security is guaranteed. Many titles are available for 20-30% off list price! You can also do your own search by using the Amazon.com search engine in the Table of Contents.
BOOKS ON FILMMAKING
Gil Bettman A practical and comprehensive look at all issues facing the first-time director of a feature. Most other books assume the first timer is a self-financed film school grad using borrowed equipment. But what about those directors who are working as hired guns on low-budget professional productions? This book addresses numerous useful issues, such as the actual pecking order on the set (the producer has the last word) and how to collaborate successfully with other film professionals who may know more about the field than you do. There is also a useful section on directing the actors, and an excellent introduction to camera blocking, a field that has undergone a revolution since Spielberg changed all the rules. Also has a concise introduction to lens selection and forced perspective. The author, a protege of Robert Zemeckis, is a respected director who has episodic TV, music videos and feature films to his credit, and now teaches directing at the college level. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
NEW! The Guerilla Film Maker's Movie Blueprint
Chris Jones, Jonathan Newman, Cara Williams Jones is one half of the team who wrote The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook, the best-selling low-budget film book in the UK (now fully revised for the American market). He has made 3 low-budget movies: Escape From Survival Zone (aka The Runner), White Angel, and Urban Ghost Story. Now that he's finished writing this book, he hopes to make another movie. The single most comprehensive, honest, information-packed book ever written on how to make a low budget movie. This amazing book explains EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW. From lighting to camera equipment, from festivals to sales distribution, from catering (yes, it even contains recipes your crew will love) to costumes...it's all here. Packed with thousands of photos, flowcharts, and interviews, and written with an enthusiasm that can only be described as scary, The Guerilla Film Makers Movie Blueprint is a book you could not possibly regret buying. Buy It Now!
Feature Filmmaking at Used car Prices: How to Write, Produce, Direct, Shoot, Edit, and Promote a Feature-Length Movie for Less than $15,000
Rick Schmidt A revised edition (2000) of the indie filmmaking classic, the author now focuses on DV as a low-budget medium of choice (earlier editions were aimed at 16mm filmmaking). Buy It Now!
How to Shoot a Feature Film for Under $10,000...And Not Go to Jail
Bret Stern A seriously humorous look at the business of ultra low budget filmmaking, full of practical advice for the financially challenged artist. Buy It Now!
The Digital Filmmaking Handbook
Ben Long and Sonja Schenk Book and CD ROM disk (Mac/Win). Second edition (2002) All aspects of digital filmmaking. If you wish to make movies using the new digital video cameras and desktop editing technology, this is the book for you. Covers all currently-available platforms (mini-DV, Digital 8, Digibeta, DV Cam, 24 P HDTV, etc.) with detailed information on all preproduction, production and post production issues. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
Film Production The Complete Uncensored Guide to Independent Filmmaking
Greg Merritt a useful, highly readable introduction to the field of low budget (or no budget filmmaking), covering scriptwriting, financing, preproduction, budgeting, casting, crew requirements, scheduling, camera technique, sound, postproduction, and distribution. It is oriented to those who shoot on film, but about 80% of the book is applicable to those who plan to shoot on digital video. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
The Filmmaker's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for the Digital Age
Steven Ascher, et al. In over 600 pages, 18 chapters, and nine appendices, the authors detail virtually everything you need to know about filmmaking, from which lens to choose all the way through final editing and sound mixing. Much of the book focuses on gear and hardware, and rightly so since making a film or video is both dependent on and influenced by the gear that is used. This handbook describes the differences between the tools--film stock, lenses, lighting setups--and the impact of each on the look of the finished product. This new edition has been updated to include information on digital cameras, the digital video format, nonlinear editing systems, and other contemporary tools. Buy It Now!
NEW! Digital Cinematography
Paul Wheeler High-end digital cinematography can truly challenge the film camera in many of the technical, artistic and emotional aspects of what we think of as 'cinematography'. Digital Cinematography is a practical 'on-the-set' guide for practicing and aspiring cinematographers and DOPs to digital cinematography essentials - from how to use the cameras to the rapidly emerging world of High Definition cinematography and 24p technology. Buy It Now!
Producing Great Sound for Digital Video
Jay Rose Getting great-looking video is only half the battle. Sound is a vital but often overlooked element in independent movie productionin fact more indie features are sunk by bad sound than any other single problem. This book shows you how to capture great sound the first time around. Highly Recommended Buy it now!
Audio Postproduction for Digital Audio
Jay Rose "We'll fix it in post." How many times have we heard that tired mantra? Well, eventually postproduction rolls around, and you have great video but your sound is in desperate straits. Jay Rose actually shows you what can be done to salvage flawed sound and replace what can't be saved. Highly Recommended .Buy It Now!
Placing Shadows: Lighting Techniques for Video Productions
Chuck B. Gloman, Tom Letourneau This new edition includes an expanded section on location lighting, including the latest equipment and techniques to make location work easier, less expensive and using considerably less power. A section on studio lighting completes the work, including Hollywood-style lighting fixtures and techniques that will give interior work a balanced, professional appearance. The book includes all the latest lighting units available today. Buy It Now!
Digital Guerilla Video: A Grassroots Guide to the Revolution
Avi Hoffer Book and CD ROM disk (Mac/Win). A guide to creating great looking video without a major budget. Though it is not strictly aimed at movie production, most of the lessons still apply to independent filmmakers. Buy It Now!
Digital Moviemaking: The Filmmaker's Guide to the 21st Century
Scott Billups A butt-kicking, pixel-twisting, vision of the digital future and how to make your next movie on your credit card. Buy It Now!
Digital Filmmaking 101: An Essential Guide to Producing Low-Budget Movies
Dale Newton, John Gaspard A step by step guide, from development and preproduction through distribution. Smart, funny advice for independent filmmakers from people who've gone through the process more than once--and lived to tell about it! Buy It Now!
Persistence of Vision: An Impractical Guide to Producing a Feature Film for Under $30,000
Dale Newton, John Gaspard The authors start out by saying "Buying this book was your first mistake" and go on to explain the first two tenets of their philosophy: 1) Never pay full price for anything, and 2) Never ever buy what you can borrow or get for free. Filled with good humor and healthy skepticism about commonly held beliefs and instructions for potential filmmakers, this is a book any would-be movie maker would do well to read. While debunking many myths and misconceptions about making films, it is not a dry manual, but rather, a realistic how-to book written by two guys who know what they are talking about from personal experience, including their admitted mistakes. Buy It Now!
What They Don't Teach You at Film School: 161 Strategies for Making Your Own Movie No Matter What
Camille Landau, Tiare White Not a lesson on camera angles or lens filters, this nifty little volume shows you the strategies needed to get the job done, including a female's perspective on how to get it done in a male-dominated industry. It encourages the filmmaker to break free of the "mother-may-I" mentality of film schools that dictate who is "artistically ready" to make a movie. It also deals with the realities of getting (and keeping) a cast and crew on little or no budget (and where that budget comes from). Buy It Now!
NEW! The Independent Film and Videomaker's Guide 2nd Edition
Michael Wiese Making your film is easy compared to raising the financing or finding distribution. Here are insights Michael Wiese has learned over the last 25 years that will help you get your work made and out into the world! Buy It Now!
Independent Feature Film Production: A Complete Guide from Concept Through Distribution
Gregory Goodell Aimed at producers rather than directors, this is a brutally realistic guide to the business of financing, shooting, and distributing an independent movie. Buy It Now!
The Complete Film Production Handbook
Eve Light Honthaner A guide to the day-by-day details of film production. Among the topics are pre-production tasks, establishing company policy, insurance, setting up files, dealing with the talent, music clearance, visas and customs, and a little bit of post production. Includes reproducible forms for every conceivable situation. Buy It Now!
Micro Budget Hollywood: Budgeting (And Making Feature Films for $50,000 to $500,000)
Philip Gaines and David Rhodes It's all about funding. Buy It Now!
The Producer's Business Handbook
John J. Lee A comprehensive guide to the business of motion pictures for producers at all levels. The book and its companion CD-ROM provide both instruction and worksheet support to independent producers at all levels of industry experience. The Producer's Business Handbook gives an insight to the relationships that the most successful producers have with the various participants in the motion picture industry. This includes how these producers direct their relationships with domestic and foreign studios, agencies, attorneys, talent, completion guarantors, banks, and private investors. It provides a thorough orientation to operating development and producing companies, from solicitation of literary properties through direct rights sales, and the management of global distribution relationships. A companion website features extremely valuable spreadsheets, such as the bank financing worksheet and the producer's share analysis. The interactive website also provides examples and exercises using various worksheets. Buy It Now!
Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances for Film and Television
Judith Weston Many film schools prepare the director to communicate with everyone on the set except the actor. You know what you want, but you need to know how to draw that performance out of the actor. This book shows you how. Weston was an actor before she was a director, and this book offers one of the best explanations of the actor's process, presented in a way that non-actors can understand. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
BOOKS ON FILMMAKERS
Rebel Without a Crew: Or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker with $7000 Became a Hollywood Player
Robert Rodriguez Screenwriter and director Robert Rodriguez (Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Spy Kids) discloses all his unique strategies and original techniques he used to make his remarkable debut film, El Mariachi, on a shoestring budget. This is both one man's remarkable story and an essential guide to anyone who has a celluloid story to tell and the dreams and determination to see it through. The lesson here isn't that he spent seven grand on his first movie and got the standard Hollywood Rich and Famous Contractthe real lesson is that he taught himself filmmaking by shooting and editing dozens of shorts on video before he ever shot on celluloid. And now he shoots and edits exclusively in HD video. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime
Roger Corman, Jim Jerome The king of Hollywood's independent filmmakers tells how he did it. Fast, funny, entertaining, and very informative. Corman was a director, producer, and distributor who worked outside the traditional studio system. Highly Recommended Buy it Now!
Roger Corman: An Unauthorized Biography of the Godfather of Indie Filmmaking
Beverly Gray Pioneering film director Roger Corman is a fascinating study in contrasts. A flamboyant artist, the original king of the exploitative film has filled his movies with images of blood-sucking vampires, rampaging biker gangs, vigilante strippers, and abducting aliens. Corman has produced 400 to 500 films on shoestring budgets, all on his own terms, and has seen nearly every one of his projects make money. The list of Corman proteges reads like a who's who of motion pictures - John Sayles, James Cameron, Dennis Hopper, Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppola, and Jonathan Demme to name just a few. Author Beverly Gray was Roger Corman's story editor and development executive for nearly a decade. Buy It Now!
All I Need to Know About Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger: The Shocking True Story of Troma Studios
Lloyd Kaufman, James Gunn Troma Studios is the brainchild of Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz, whose exploitation hits, The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke 'Em High, Tromeo & Juliet, ans Terror Firmer today fill the midnight movie section of most video rental shops (except icky "squeeky-clean" Blockbuster). Here, Kaufman traces his lifelong dedication to big-screen gore, disfigurement, mutation and raunchy sex from his days in the Yale film society as a disaffected undergrad in the mid-1960s to his present career as a leading impresario of bad taste. The Toxic Avenger, produced in 1982, catapulted Troma into the international limelight and has since become an icon of fringe cinema, spawning merchandise, a Saturday morning cartoon and late-night cable exposure. Not so much a manual as an autobiography, this is still a funny and occasionally brilliant little book on what it's like being an independent film producer in the age of megaconglomerates (Troma is currently the oldest independent studio in the United States). Buy It Now!
NEW! Make Your Own Damn Movie! Secrets of a Renegade Director
Lloyd Kaufman, Trent Haaga, Adam Jahnke Troma Studios' manic impressario Lloyd Kaufman has relented and actually written a how-to book on ultra-low-budget filmmaking (this is the book Putnam-Penguin expected him to write five years ago). It still has mental digressions on the soulless corporate film industry, bodily functions, Napster, and Lloyd's improbable sleeping arrangements at Cannes, but it also addresses the kinds of disasters that can and will befall first-time filmmakers, and takes the reader step-by-step from pre-production through distribution. He even reveals the secret of raising the funds to make a movie (find rich people, then grovel and beg). Co-authors Haaga and Jahnke often disagree with their boss and mentor, and are actually given substantial chunks of the book to refute him (particularly his personal obsession with shooting on 35mm film when most low-budget indies are shooting digitally). Even if you don't plan to do a kitschy, monster blood-fest, the everyday issues of keeping a set running inexpensively make it worthwhile. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
Shooting to Kill: How an Independent Producer Blasts Through the Barriers to Make Movies That Matter
Christine Vachon, David Edelstein Christine Vachon has made her name with such bold, controversial, and commercially successful films as Boys Don't Cry, Poison, Swoon, Kids, Safe, I Shot Andy Warhol, and Velvet Goldmine. Over the last decade, she has become a driving force behind the most daring and strikingly original independent filmmakers-from Todd Haynes to Tom Kalin and Mary Harron-and helped put them on the map. In this savagely witty and straight-shooting guide, Vachon reveals the guts of the filmmaking process--from developing a script, nurturing a director's vision, getting financed, and drafting talent to holding hands, stroking egos, stretching every resource to the limit and pushing that limit. Along the way, she offers shrewd practical insights and troubleshooting tips on handling everything from hysterical actors and disgruntled teamsters to obtuse marketing executives. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste
John Waters Baltimore's bad boy filmmaker (the Baltimore Sun dubbed him the "Sultan of Sleaze...cultivating it like a rare orchid") expounds on his theories of "good bad taste." Waters is known for such films as Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Desperate Living, Multiple Maniacs, Polyester, Pecker, Serial Mom and Hairspray. His most recent film is Cecil B. Demented, a parody of independent filmmaking itself. Waters' bizarrely original reputation has allowed him to use Hollywood "names," (like Kathleen Turner) in his more recent films, which enjoy substantially higher production values. Buy It Now!
NEW! Stanley Kubrick, Director: A Visual Analysis
Alexander Walker, Sybil Taylor, Ulrich Ruchti The only book about Kubrick ever written with the director's cooperation, this volume examines the highly visual technique of one of the 20th Century's most original directors. Buy It Now!
Making Movies
Sidney Lumet The veteran director of Twelve Angry Men, The Pawnbroker, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, The Verdict, and many other fine movies, knows the ins and outs of American filmmaking as well as anyone. In this excellent, personable account, Lumet tells what he's learned about making movies in the course of the last 40 years. He shows why fine directors need to have strong imaginations, extraordinary adaptability, and skill in many different fields. His enthusiasm for his life's work, particularly his love of actors, is evident on every page of this book. As Herculean as the labors of film directing are, Lumet takes great pleasure in his work, almost guiltily admitting that the film director's job is "the best in the world." Buy It Now!
NEW! Moviemaker Master Class: Private Lessons from the World's Foremost Directors
Laurent Tirard From Scorsese and Lynch to Wenders and Godard, interviews with twenty of the world's greatest directors on how they make films--and why. Each great filmmaker has a secret method to his moviemaking--but each of them is different. In Moviemaker Master Class, Laurent Tirard talks to twenty of today's most important filmmakers to get to the core of each director's approach to film, exploring the filmmaker's vision as well as his technique, while allowing each man to speak in his own voice. In these interviews--which originally appeared in the French film magazine Studio and are being published here in English for the first time, Laurent Tirard has succeeded in finding out what makes each filmmaker--and his films--so extraordinary, shedding light on both the process and the people behind great moviemaking. Among the other filmmakers included are Bernardo Bertolucci, Lars von Trier, Woody Allen, Tim Burton, Joel and Ethan Coen, and John Woo. Buy It Now!
Making Movies on Your Own: Practical Talk from Independent Filmmakers
Kevin J. Lindenmuth In this work, J.R. Bookwalter, Ronnie Cramer, Mike Gingold, Eric Stanze, Steve Ballot, and 19 others tell what it is really like to make an independent feature. Covering such topics as the script, equipment, actors, publicity, distribution, all facets of production, and budgeting, these indie filmmakers give a virtual how-to for those interested in joining them or just learning more about how those interesting titles end up on video store shelves. Buy It Now!
Martin Scorcese: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series)
Martin Scorcese, Peter Brunette The University Press of Mississippi's volume on Martin Scorsese effectively mixes in-depth, question-and-answer interviews, often from film journals, with narrative profiles from the mainstream press. The combination works well, with the more structured biographical information from the profiles serving as narrative support for the freewheeling answers in the interviews. The chronological arrangement allows the reader to watch Scorsese's distinguished career develop from film to film, as most of the pieces originally appeared in conjunction with the opening of a film. Buy It Now!
The Cinema of Martin Scorcese
Lawrence S. Friedman Friedman explores Scorsese's influences, his stock company of actors (which includes Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Harvey Keitel), his student films, and all his major works, including the masterpieces Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas. This well-written and engaging book offers many insights into an artist who believes that "my whole life has been movies and religion. That's it. Nothing else." Buy It Now!
Quentin Tarantino: The Cinema of Cool
Jeff Dawson A biography and critique of Tarantino, whose breakthrough films, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, established him as a new force in independent moviemaking. Book features interviews with the director, as well as Samuel L. Jackson, Harvey Keitel, and others. Buy It Now!
Quentin Tarantino Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series)
Quentin Tarantino, Gerald Perry A chronological digest of Tarantino's published interviews as well as biographical information. Buy It Now!
The Films of John Cassavetes: The Adventure of Insecurity
Ray Carney Traces the films and career of one of Hollywood's mavericks, an actor and filmmaker who refused to be hemmed in by the Hollywood studio system. Buy It Now!
The Films of John Cassavetes: Pragmatism, Modernism, and the Movies
Ray Carney Tells the inside story of the making of six of Cassavetes' most important works: Shadows, Faces, Minnie and Moskowitz, A Woman Under the Influence, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Love Streams. Includes almost 50 previously unpublished photos from the private collections of Sam and Larry Shaw, and excerpts from interviews with the filmmaker and many of his closest friends. Buy It Now!
This Is Orson Welles
Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Rosenbaum (ed.) In 1992, the first publication of This Is Orson Welles brought a priceless document to light. In the late '60s and early '70s, filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich had conducted extensive interviews with Welles, but a number of circumstances--including the director's desire to compose an autobiography that he never got around to writing--kept the interviews out of the public eye. He discusses his forays into acting, producing, and writing as well as directing, his confidences and insecurities, and his plans for film projects that were either never made or only partially completed. He also offers insights into the triumph of Citizen Kane and other masterpieces like Macbeth, The Lady from Shanghai, Touch of Evil, Othello, and Chimes at Midnight. His defense of his controversial adaptation of Kafka's The Trial is so fascinating that readers might want to rush out and rent the film.While the book is worth owning just for this 322-page interview, it is also full of other material that is equally revealing. Rosenbaum presents a meticulous chronology of Welles's life, closely following his day-to-day activities from his birth in 1915 to his death in 1985. Buy It Now!
FILM FESTIVALSFilm festivals do more than celebrate the art of filmmaking--they are vital marketplaces where distribution companies look for The Next Big Thing. Two of the most influential are Sundance and Cannes.
Sundance: A Festival Virgin's Guide
Benjamin Craig Sundance - A Festival Virgin's Guide is the essential handbook for filmmakers, film industry professionals, and film-fans looking to attend the festival. Demystifying the event and providing practical advice for attending, Sundance: A Festival Virgin's Guide is about helping you make the most of your visit to Park City and America's most important film festival. Features include:THE CITY - getting there, getting around, places to stay, places to eat, and more; THE FESTIVAL - its history, structure, how to attend and all about the screenings; THE BIZ - an overview of the business side of the festival, for filmmakers looking to attend Sundance for networking or with a project in tow; THE LOWDOWN - a series of interviews with Sundance veterans from across the industry spectrum, offering their advice and tips; FIVE APPENDICES containing a wealth of additional information. Buy It Now!
Cannes: A Festival Virgin's Guide (4th Edition)
Benjamin Craig For filmmakers, Cannes is about doing deals, networking, selling films (as well as yourself), and generally working very hard to stay on top of 12 days of intense film business. Perhaps it is the fact that the event takes place in France, or maybe it is simply part and parcel of the world's most famous film festival, but first-time visitors to Cannes can often find it all a bit overwhelming. Cannes: A Festival Virgin's Guide is the leading handbook for filmmakers looking to attend the festival, and to do so on a shoe-string budget. Demystifying the event and providing practical advice for attending, Cannes - A Festival Virgin's Guide is about helping you make the most of your visit to the world's most famous film festival, and hopefully come out with your wallet intact. Buy It Now!
The Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide
Chris Gore Learn the secrets of succesfully marketing and selling your film at Sundance, Telluride, Slamdance and over 400 film festivals worldwide. This comprehensive and eye-opening guide is jam-packed with information for filmmakers and film lovers alike. The Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide reveals how to get a film accepted and what to do after acceptance, from putting together a press kit to putting on a great party to actually closing a deal. Includes interviews with actual filmmakers who have experienced wildly varying degrees of success; the directors are remarkably candid and very generously try to help others avoid their own mistakes. Buy It Now!
THE SCRIPT
Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting
Syd Field Love him or hate him, Syd Field's formula for constructing movie scripts is reflected in nearly every successful Hollywood film, and his book is required reading in many college screenwriting courses. His three-act structure works--just don't get too obsessed with actually hitting your major plot points on the precise page he suggests. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
The Screenwriter's Problem Solver: How to Recognize, Identify, and Define Screenwriting Problems
Syd Field Screenplays can bog down in vague and mysterious ways, but identifying a screenwriting problem is half the battle. By identifying symptoms in the writing, Field isolates about 20 different screenwriting problems, each related to plot, character, or structure (after all, what else is there?). His fixes generally involve getting to know your characters or story better, through the use of automatic writing, biographical sketches, and the like. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
Selling a Screenplay: The Screenwriter's Guide to Hollywood
Syd Field Okay, maybe you're not a budding Auteur, wanting to write, produce and direct the whole thing yourself. If you want to write scripts for the big shots, Syd field takes you behind the movie moguls' closed doors and shows how to sell a screenplay--and earn upwards of $100,000 in the process. Buy It Now!
The Tools of Screenwriting
David Howard, Edward Mabley A comprehensive guide to writing screenplays by an experienced screenwriter and a respected writing teacher. Along with sections on the sreenwriter's craft, basic storytelling, and the parts and objectives of a screenplay, the book is distinguished by detailed analyses of sixteen successful films' screenplays, including the likes of E.T., Some Like It Hot, North by Northwest, Citizen Kane, and Annie Hall. Buy It Now!
Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
Robert McKee The screenwriter must labor meticulously over his or her prose, yet very little of that prose is ever heard by filmgoers. The few words that do reach the audience, in the form of the characters' dialogue, are, according to Robert McKee, best left to last in the writing process (As Alfred Hitchcock once remarked, 'When the screenplay has been written and the dialogue has been added, we're ready to shoot.' ). In Story, McKee puts into book form what he has been teaching screenwriters for years in his seminar on story structure, which is considered by many to be a prerequisite to the film biz. (The long list of film and television projects that McKee's students have written, directed, or produced includes Air Force One, The Deer Hunter, E.R., A Fish Called Wanda, Forrest Gump, NYPD Blue, and Sleepless in Seattle.) McKee is passionate about the art of screenwriting. "No one needs yet another recipe book on how to reheat Hollywood leftovers," he writes. "We need a rediscovery of the underlying tenets of our art, the guiding principles that liberate talent." Story is a true path to just such a rediscovery. In it, McKee offers so much sound advice, drawing from sources as wide ranging as Aristotle and Casablanca, Stanislavski and Chinatown, that it is impossible not to come away feeling immeasurably better equipped to write a screenplay and infinitely more inspired to write a brilliant one. Buy It Now!
BOOKS ON EDITING SOFTWARENEW! iMovie 4 and iDVD Visual Quickstart Guide
Jeff Carlson One makes cinematographers out of the masses; the other gives the masses a medium on which to distribute their masterworks--and that's just the beginning of what Apple's iMovie 4 and iDVD 4 are capable of. This task-based guide is the key to using them effectively and creatively. In friendly, Visual QuickStart fashion, this volume uses step-by-step instructions and loads of illustrations to get you up to speed quickly in the process of making movies with iMovie 4 and creating Hollywood-quality DVDs on which to share them (as well as photos, music, and more). You'll find all the basics covered here--from shooting and capturing footage, viewing clips, and working in the iMovie timeline to dragging and dropping iMovies into new iDVD projects and adding GarageBand-created songs to your newly created DVDs. You'll also find detailed explanations of all of the programs' niftiest new features, including iDVD's more than 20 new themes (from Wedding to Drive In!) and iMovie's in-timeline editing capabilities. Buy It Now!
iMovie 3 and iDVD: The Missing Manual
David Pogue The author of the highly successful Mac for Dummies series presents a guide to Apple's free nonlinear editing program, iMovie 3, which was bundled with Apple's Macintosh OSX Version 10.3 Panther operating system (compatible with older G3 and G4 computers). It adds cool new features, like the "Ken Burns Effect," which allows you to pan over a still image, a technique made popular by the documentary filmmaker. Once you're done, you can burn your movies onto DVD disks using Apple's free iDVD application! If you have just purchased a new Mac, or bought the iLife upgrade separately, you have iMovie 4, and you can download a free update chapter from the author's website showing you how to activate exciting new features, like audio waveform displays for sound clips. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
iMovie 2: The Missing Manual
David Pogue The author presents a thorough guide to Apple's free nonlinear editing program, iMovie 2, which turns out to have far more features than you might suspect. If you have an Apple running System 9 with a Firewire port, you can shoot and edit digital video instantly! Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
The Final Cut Pro 4 Bible
Zed Saeed, J. J. Marshall, Jeffrey Chong If you're serious about video editing, this book and Final Cut Pro 4 are the tools you need. The QuickStart tutorial lets you get your feet wet right away. If you already have some experience, dive right into organizing media, editing, color correcting, rendering, creating final output, and more. You'll learn all about video editing fundamentals, and you'll discover how Final Cut Pro 4 turns your Mac with OSX into a professional studio. Includes bonus DVD with tutorial and Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, and Illustrator tryout versions, as well as demo versions of Joe's Filters, Boris FX, Boris CONTINUUM COMPLETE, CGM DVE, and Aurora Sky, plus more. Buy It Now!
Final Cut Pro 4 for Dummies
Helmut Kobler, Chad Fahs Most technical books are written as if you already know the subject. The beauty of the Dummies series is that it assumes you are bright but untrained, and it walks you through the basics and explains the terminology as well as the techniques involved. This title teaches new and inexperienced users of Final Cut Pro how to capture, import, and edit digital video. This book includes coverage on rendering, compositing, transitions, adding titles, audio and video filters, advanced effects, and much more. Includes CD ROM with FCP plug-ins. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
The Little iDVD Book
Bob LeVitus Create your own DVD movies and burn your own DVDs using Apple's new iDVD software in no time! New iDVD technology enables users to share movies, music, and pictures on DVD that can be watched on television or on the computer. This book will show readers how to get QuickTime files into the iDVD interface, select themes within iDVD, and then burn their own DVD movies using a DVD-r/CD-RW drive. The book will include tips on: shooting and editing digital video, converting your footage to DVD, using pre-existing "themes" within iDVD, creating your own menus and buttons, and expert advice on previewing and burning your own DVD. Did we mention that the software is bundled free on all new Macs with DVD burners?. Buy It Now!
MacWorld iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie and iDVD Bible
Bob LeVitus, Dennis R. Cohen New Mac computers are loaded with free digital media software for digital photography, digital audio, digital video editing, and DVD creation and burning. This guide shows readers how to tap the potential of the four digital media programs that come standard with the computer. Each program is covered followed by step-by-step tutorials, tips, techniques, hints, and advice. Buy It Now!
Windows Movie Maker for Dummies
Keith Underdahl Well, suppose you want to get started in nonlinear editing, but you're trapped in the Windows universe? As it happens, Microsoft, following on Apple's heels, has introduced its own little video editing utility, Movie Maker. Less powerful than iMovie, but a lot cheaper than Premiere (it's bundled free with Windows XP). This book will help get you started. Buy It Now!
Digital Video for Dummies
Martin Doucette In this 2001 edition, the author devotes separate chapters to the free editing software now offered by Microsoft (Movie maker) and Apple (iMovie), as well as a section on Adobe's venerable warhorse, Premiere. Buy It Now!
Computer Videomaker Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Making Video
Computer Videomaker Magazine (Editor) Features in-depth articles from Videomaker's expert writers covering all aspects of video production and delivery. New chapters provide insight on streaming and producing video for the internet Buy It Now!
Sam's Teach Yourself Adobe Premiere 6.5 in 24 Hours
Jeff Sengstack Sam's Teach Yourself Adobe Premiere in 24 Hours offers practical advice from an author with a strong writing background, solid teaching experience, and extensive television production credentials. The book includes not only instruction on the basics of using Premiere, but also tips on shooting high quality video, creating professional voice-overs, and effective methods. Adobe Premiere brings high-end video editing to the PC (90% of Premiere users use Windows). Anyone with a Windows PC who wants to venture into anything more than very simple video editing will eventually turn to Premiere. Premiere 6.5 will garner significant attention in part because it will add DVD authoring to its extensive feature set. The author has been working closely with Adobe, advising them on DVD software issues. Buy It Now!
Video Editing With Adobe Premiere 6.0
David Peck Chock full of fast-paced, high-interest tutorials and exercises, Video Editing with Adobe Premiere 6.0 is cleverly divided into sections that allow users of all abilities to quickly master the art of using one of today's most popular digital video editing tools to combine video footage, sound files, photography, and art files. Heavily illustrated with dynamic media clips on the accompanying CD to engage interest, this book puts its readers on a direct path to presenting their own projects by following a few simple steps. As they learn how to navigate like a pro through the most sophisticated Adobe Premiere 6.0 features and functions, readers will glean useful insights into hardware needs, the proper use of transitions, the impact of motion effects, integrating and balancing sound files, streaming video for the Web, working with digital camcorders and decks, and more! Buy It Now!
Adobe Premiere 6 Bible
Seth Greenberg, Adele Droblas Greenberg Adobe has finally worked most of the kinks out of Premiere, and this book will guide you through the new features of this latest version of Adobe's venerable nonlinear editing program. Buy It Now!
Premiere 6 for Macintosh and Windows: Visual Quickstart Guide
Antony Bolante A visual tutorial on software for editing digital video, audio, still images, and text on a desktop computer. Concise explanation and step-by-step instructions for specific tasks are accompanied by b&w screen shots from both Macintosh and Windows platforms. Chapters are organized to present topics as they are encountered in a typical editing project. Buy It Now!
NEW! Adobe After Effects 5 for Macintosh and Windows: Visual QuickPro Guide
Antony Bolante With this program, a desk top editor has more special effects horsepower than George Lucas did when he created the first Star Wars trilogy. The author introduces video and film producers to the comprehensive set of tools available in After Effects. Step-by-step instructions lead intermediate-level readers through some of After Effects's more advanced features in video editing. The most useful, project-enhancing features of Adobe's powerful application are covered in detail. Book and CD ROM (Mac/Win) Buy It Now!
NEW! Creative After Effects 5.0, Animation, Visual Effects, and Motion Graphics for TV and Video
Angie Taylor A comprehensive guide to the fundamental workings of Adobe After Effects. Taylor explains how to think creatively with the software, so that you can achieve the most unique and professional looking results. Also included are lots of invaluable tips and tricks, ideas, animation rules, design and typography rules and lists of other resources you will find useful. Book CD-ROM Buy It Now!
EDITING AND EFFECTS SOFTWARE
NEW! Final Cut Pro HD
Apple Computer's proprietary editing program is the most flexible nonlinear editing software on the market. This revolutionary software is also compatible with all currently available Standard Definition video formats, including DV, DVCAM, DVCPRO, DVCPRO 50. Works with NTSC or PAL. Final Cut Pro HD is the creative, professional, and extensible video editing tool for editing and finishing in SD and HD formats. Besides native DVCPRO HD editing, and RT Extreme with HD effects, Digital Cinema Desktop lets you play back full-screen HD on an Apple Cinema Display. You get superb image quality for a fraction of the cost of typical HD monitors. Features:Native DVCPRO HD editing: allows editing of broadcast-quality HD 720p (at 24 and 60 frames per second) and at 1080i (at 30 frames per second). RT Extreme for HD: gives users real-time multi-stream effects and transitions for HD formats. Final Cut Pro HD combines unmatched scalability, precision editing tools and seamless workflow in one high-performance, comprehensive application. Now supporting DVCPRO HD capture and output over FireWire in addition to HD-SDI capture
Final Cut Pro HD changes the rules for high-definition production. Now you can capture DVCPRO HD footage over FireWire without the generational loss that can happen in other systems that force recompression using proprietary codecs. With Final Cut Pro HD, you edit in camera-original format and output via FireWire when you're done.
Final Cut Pro HD introduces RT Extreme for HD. The real-time playback of effects, filters, transitions and composited video streams that you're used to in SD is now available for HD. Choose from over 150 real-time-capable effects, transitions and filters: no rendering and no expensive hardware add-ons are required. With RT Extreme HD, you can select between full-resolution, high-quality playback or preview mode for maximum simultaneous streams and effects.
Final Cut Pro HD has the power to scale from DV to SD, HD and Film. With small file sizes and quality high enough for broadcast, you can avoid down-converting using DVCPRO HD. Work in 1080i and 720p HD from start to finish without managing multiple offline formats.
Encode DV, SD, and HD content to MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 in pristine quality. Create custom soundtracks and audio to score your project. Render final output to virtually any professional format.
Apple has joined the growing list of companies planning to support JVC's HDV format in future product releases. HDV support for FCP can be found at Heuris and Lumiere. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
NEW! Final Cut Express
Want a Macintosh-based editing program that is more sophisticated than iMovie but doesn't have the steep learning curve of Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere? Then Final Cut Express is the ideal choice for you! It is designed for DV-formated video, for the majority of users who are not shooting on HD or Digibeta. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
NEW! iLife iLife '04 gathers the latest versions of five media applications, iTunes 4, iPhoto 4, iMovie 4, and iDVD 4 and the new GarageBand music application in one convenient package with tremendous integration. Powerful new features let them manage music and easily create professional-quality slideshows, music, movies, and DVDs. Key features include seamless integration of the applications. iMovie 4 now features sound waveforms for enhaced audio editing. iMovie accesses iTunes and iPhoto media libraries, and it can output projects directly to iDVD. iLife features a single installer that updates all existing iLife applications. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
NEW! Macintosh OSX Version 10.3 Panther
If you have a G3 or G4 Mac running OS9, now is the time to upgrade to OS X, which is required to take advantage of the latest versions of iMovie, Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro. Mac OS X features a stunning new user interface called Aqua, making work and play on the Mac even more intuitive for new users, while providing powerful, customizable tools for professionals. At the foundation of Mac OS X lies an industrial-strength, UNIX-based core operating system that delivers unprecedented stability and performance. Mac OS X is the world's most advanced operating system, blending the power and stability of UNIX with the legendary simplicity and ease-of-use of the Macintosh. Mac OS X version 10.3 "Panther" contains over 150 new features and provides significant enhancements to its modern, UNIX-based foundation. Panther includes iChat AV for personal video conferencing, Expose for instantly finding any window, and a new Finder for easy access to everything you need. It's like having an all-new Mac. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
NEW! Adobe Premiere Pro 7.0 for Windows
Adobe Premiere Pro software is built for Microsoft Windows XP systems, and offers a new, real-time editing experience that provides immediate feedback and enables you to edit with amazing speed. Take advantage of multiple, nestable timelines to experiment more freely and manage complex projects more efficiently. Use color correction tools to adjust hue, saturation, and lightness for highlights, midtones, and shadows; replace a color throughout a clip with a single selection; and more. Produce richer, more vibrant audio using sample-level editing, VST filters, track-based effects, and 5.1 surround sound. Customize keyboard shortcuts to fit your editing style. Use default presets, leverage industry-standard shortcuts, or create your own. Work closely with your other video software and hardware tools: Adobe Premiere Pro supports the latest industry standards, including OHCI, ASIO, AAF, and VST. Import, edit, and deliver HD or SD productions using certified OEM hardware with Adobe Premiere Pro. Encode HD Windows Media 9 Series content using the built-in Adobe Media Encoder. Enjoy unmatched integration with your favorite Adobe applications, including Adobe After Effects, Adobe Encore DVD, and Adobe Photoshop software. Enjoy extensive hardware support and an open architecture that let you work with everything from an impressive list of DVCAM gear to the latest video decks and camcorders to third-party hardware, including SD and HD boards. Make the most of multiple processors, advanced multithreading technology, and hyperthreading support on the latest Intel Pentium based Windows XP systems. Import and work with MPEG-1, MPEG-2, DV, AVI, Windows Media 9 Series, and QuickTime formats. Import and work with WAV, WMA, MP3, and AIFF as well as audio-only AVI and QuickTime formats. Produce video and audio content for the leading delivery media: broadcast formats, DV, DVD, CD, VCD, SVCD, and the Web. Output AAF files for sharing with other professional editing systems. Work with AI, AI sequence, PSD, PSD sequence, JPEG, TGA, TGA sequence, TIFF, TIFF sequence, PCX, BMP, and BMP sequence files. Export Adobe Premiere Pro projects directly to DVD for distribution of high-quality MPEG-2 content. Buy It Now!
NEW! Adobe After Effects 6.5 for Macintosh
The newest incarnation of Adobe After Effects enables you to create motion graphics and visual effects for professional cross-media delivery. It is a complete tool set for 2-D and 3-D compositing, animation, and effects for film, video, multimedia, and the Web, and offers tight integration with Adobe Premiere, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator. Compatible with Apple's Final Cut Pro. Buy It Now!
NEW! Adobe After Effects 6.5 for Windows
The newest incarnation of Adobe After Effects enables you to create motion graphics and visual effects for professional cross-media delivery. It is a complete tool set for 2-D and 3-D compositing, animation, and effects for film, video, multimedia, and the Web, and offers tight integration with Adobe Premiere, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator. Buy It Now!
SCREENWRITING SOFTWARE
Final Draft 7.0 for Windows and Macintosh
Writing for stage and screen has its own arcane set of rules. Break them, and your masterpiece is likely to be tossed in the garbage before it ever gets considered. Courier is the only typeface that's acceptable, dialogue must be centered, "foreground" is abbreviated f.g., while "interior" is INT. Final Draft promises it will sweat these details for you, allowing you to concentrate on storytelling. The program also converts text to speech, so you can assign different voices to characters and have your computer read your masterpiece out loud. A function called SmartType anticipates what a given word might be, saving writers from repetitive typing. If your script goes into production, the program has a revision mode to create A and B pages. And the program is platform-independent, which means that two writers can collaborate, even if one uses a Windows computer and the other uses a Mac. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
Movie Magic Screenwriter With Free Book "The Screenwriter's Bible" for Windows and Macintosh
Movie Magic is another effective screenwriting program that allows you to create movie or television scripts in standard Hollywood formats. Movie Magic includes sample templates of many actual television programs, and unlike Final Draft, it allows changes to be made when displaying scenes in notecard format. It compares well with Final Draft, and it's really just a matter of personal preference, as both attempt to match new features found in the other. It does export scenes to Movie Magic Scheduling software, which can be convenient in production. Buy It Now!
EDITING COMPUTERS The Apple Computer offers an integrated solution to video editing, with software and hardware that is designed to function seamlessly. If you are tired of struggling with balky hardware and software that refuse to work together, and you just want to get on with the creative process, the answer is simple: get a Mac! Macintosh's new OS X operating system is based on Unix, and is virtually crash-proof. All the computers listed come loaded with iMovie 3, a simple but powerful editing program, and all are compatible with Apple's award-winning Final Cut Pro 4 editing software.
NEW! Apple iMac Desktop with 17" Widescreen LCD (1.25 GHz Power PC G4, 256 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD RW Drive)
Inside story Inside the new 17-inch iMac, for instance, you get the 1.25GHz PowerPC G4 with Velocity Engine, 256MB of PC2700 (333MHz) Double Data Rate SDRAM main memory (expandable up to 1GB), NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra graphics with 64MB of DDR SDRAM, and an Ultra-ATA/100 80GB hard disk that dishes out data at 7200 rpm. Includes built-in 10/100BASE-T Ethernet and 56K V.92 modem, two FireWire 400 ports, three USB 2.0 ports, two USB 1.1 ports (on keyboard), VGA output port, S-video and composite video output, headphone jack, Apple speaker minijack and audio line in jack. You can also enjoy the freedom of wireless computing: both iMac models come AirPort Extreme-ready, and you can add an internal Bluetooth module as a build-to-order option. If you decide after purchasing your system that you want Bluetooth capability, you can easily plug in an external D-Link USB Bluetooth Adapter.
The iLife software application suite that come on your new iMac include iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD. They let you do fun, creative things with your pictures, music and movies -- and share them with family and friends -- in ways that people who use PCs can only dream about.
The iMac with SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW) lets you burn your own movies and photos on a DVD disc that plays in almost any standard DVD player. Even better, the SuperDrive burns DVDs at 4x speed. And, naturally, you can pop in your DVD movies and watch them in widescreen letterbox format on the brilliant LCD display of your iMac. In fact, the new 17-inch iMac can even encode DVD video faster than real time. The SuperDrive supports DVD-Video, DVD-ROM and DVD-R, as well as CD-ROM, CD-Audio, CD-R, CD-RW.
Pop an AirPort Extreme Card into your iMac, and you're ready for the freedom of wireless networking from anywhere in your home or dorm -- up to 150 feet from an AirPort Extreme Base Station.
The iMac's sizzling graphics processors kick Quartz Extreme and 3-D games and graphics into high gear with hardware transform and lighting (T&L), per-pixel shading and drop-dead gorgeous effects at high resolutionsover a billion textured pixels per second. And the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra delivers even more 3-D graphics firepower with an advanced Live FX engine engineered to generate the most lifelike characters. And with Quartz Extreme, the graphics processors take over the transform and lighting calculation functions from the iMac's CPU, freeing the PowerPC G4 processor to perform essential system tasks faster than ever before.
iMac comes with Apple Pro Speakers that handle 14 watts of undistorted digital sound. And since the iMac also provides power to the speakers, you don't need an additional power brick. The result? Reduced cable clutter. Features an internal speaker, internal digital amplifier, Apple Pro Speaker jack, headphone jack, and an audio line-in jack that lets you use it as a sound editing studio.
Mac OS X features preemptive multitasking that allocates processor cycles on an as-needed basis, and protected memory that keeps you up and running even if an application happens to crash. And now with Mac OS X Panther, Quartz Extreme takes full advantage of the NVIDIA graphics chip in your iMac to make everything onscreen move faster, freeing up processor cycles for the PowerPC G4 chip to crunch MP3 files and burn DVDs. Features a new superfast system architecture with DDR SDRAM which constantly feeds data to the powerful G4 processor to make more efficient use of each clock cycle. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
Apple 15" iMac Desktop (1 GHz Power PC G4, 256 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW)
This is an amazing desktop editing computer at an amazing price. It has a 15-inch flat screen liquid crystal display, G4 Velocity Engine chip, a Superdrive DVD/CD burner (with software), and an 80 gig ultra ATA hard drive. Also includes a full suite of software including Mac OS X Panther v10.3, Mail, iChat, Safari, Sherlock, Address Book, QuickTime, iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, iDVD, Garageband, iSync, iCal, DVD Player, AppleWorks, Mac OS X Chess and Classic environment, Earthlink for 30 days, Quicken Deluxe, World Book Encyclopedia, Microsoft Office v.X Test Drive, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, Deimos Rising and Sound Studio, Apple Hardware Test. Two Firewire ports (IEEE 1394), 3 USB ports, optical mouse, Apple Pro keyboard, four speakers, 56 kb modem. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
NEW! Apple eMac 17" Desktop (1 GHz Power PC G4, 256 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, DVD-RW/CD-RW Drive
Apple's all-in-one eMac, originally designed for the education market, is now available to everyone. The most affordable G4-based computer series ever, the eMac now includes Apple's SuperDrive, which allows you to burn both recordable DVDs and CDs, along with a suite of Apple software that will allow your digital creativity to flow from the moment you plug in the computer. Includes iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, iPhoto, Garageband, Safari, Appleworks.
The new SuperDrive-equipped eMac model is the industry's lowest-cost way to author and burn custom DVDs that play in most consumer DVD players. Apple's award-winning iMovie and iDVD applications come pre-installed on the new eMac, enabling users to edit their video and create and burn their own custom DVDs without buying additional software.
The popular eMac features a stunning 17-inch flat CRT display in a remarkably compact design. Its shape lets you conserve desk space--the entire computer is smaller than most 17-inch displays, yet it includes not only the display, but also an integrated high-performance stereo audio system with a 16-watt digital amplifier, as well as the SuperDrive. In fact, it's actually less deep (by about 8 mm) than the original groundbreaking 15-inch iMac. It also features 256 MB of system memory, an 80 GB hard drive, and an nVidia GeForce2 MX graphics processor for stunning graphics display. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
NEW! Apple Power Mac Desktop (Dual Processor 2 GHz Power PC G5, 512 Mb RAM, 120 GB Hard Drive)
This is the Mother of All Personal Computers, ideally suited to video editing with real-time transition and effects rendering when running Final Cut Pro 4. It is reputedly the fastest personal computer in the world, with a new chip architecture developed in cooperation with IBM. It comes with a ATI DRADEON 9600 graphics card. The G5 comes bundled with iLife (including iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD), QuickBooks for Mac New User Edition, FAXstf, SArt Directors Toolkit, Microsoft Office v.X Test Drive, FileMaker Pro Trial, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, GraphicConverter, QuickTime, iChat Safari, Sherlock, Address Book, iCal, iSync, DVD Player, Mail EarthLink, Acrobat Reader, Classic enviroment and Apple Developer Tools.
In addition, the Power Mac lets you spread your work across two monitors for a larger workspace.
This Power Mac comes with a huge fast 120 GB Ultra-ATA hard disk drive and three additional 3.5-inch hard disk drive expansion bays--with support for a total of up to four internal hard drives, for up to 480 GB of storage. Since the SuperDrive-equipped Power Mac comes with iDVD 2, you can burn data CDs and DVDs--with point-and-click ease--to archive your work minutes after you take your new system out of its box. It also accommodates a second optical drive in addition to the SuperDrive, so you can even watch a DVD movie while your work is burning to disc, or archive material at the same time.
You also get the benefit of built-in Gigabit Ethernet for shooting large files across your network at previously unheard-of speeds, the 108-key Apple Pro keyboard, a 56K modem, four USB ports and two high-speed FireWire ports for connecting all kinds of peripherals, and an AirPort card slot. Four PCI expansion slots are also integrated directly into the main system controller, speeding expansion cards' throughput. Highly Recommended Buy It Now!
LaCie d2 52X24X52 External Firewire CD-RW Drive
If your Mac didn't come with a CD burner, this Firewire-based unit will allow you to burn data, music or video CDs (a video format compatible with most computers and DVD players that uses ordinary CR-R disks). Buy It Now!
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