Is this book (Cronin/MacKendrick) one you'd recommend for a person who is basically illiterate in the language of film and wants to learn the language?
Keep in mind that I am not a filmmaker, but I would recommend it for both audiences—it's very good on technical details like the way the eye interprets a sudden cut to close-up or the necessary artificiality of sound mixing, but he illustrates his lectures throughout with analysis and discussion of numerous films, including his own. I found it tremendously fun and valuable. There are lectures mentioned in the foreword that weren't included for reasons of space or layout (a side-by-side comparison of Sophokles' Oidipous Tyrannos with Pasolini's Edipo re, for example, or a detailed run-down of the differences between Graham Greene's script for The Third Man and the novella he wrote as a preparatory exercise and later published) that I really want to track down now.
no subject
Keep in mind that I am not a filmmaker, but I would recommend it for both audiences—it's very good on technical details like the way the eye interprets a sudden cut to close-up or the necessary artificiality of sound mixing, but he illustrates his lectures throughout with analysis and discussion of numerous films, including his own. I found it tremendously fun and valuable. There are lectures mentioned in the foreword that weren't included for reasons of space or layout (a side-by-side comparison of Sophokles' Oidipous Tyrannos with Pasolini's Edipo re, for example, or a detailed run-down of the differences between Graham Greene's script for The Third Man and the novella he wrote as a preparatory exercise and later published) that I really want to track down now.