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On Film-making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director

On Film-making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director
By Alexander Mackendrick

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A priceless examination of the filmmaker's craft, from the renowned director of Sweet Smell of Success

After more than twenty years in the film industry as a screenwriter, storyboard editor, and director of memorable films such as The Ladykillers, Alexander Mackendrick turned his back on Hollywood and began a new career as the Dean of one of the country's most demanding and influential film schools. His absolute devotion to the craft of filmmaking served as a powerful impetus to students at the California Institute for the Arts for almost twenty five years, with a teaching style that included prodigious notes, neatly crafted storyboards, and handouts containing excerpts of works by Kierkegaard, Aristotle, and others. At the core of Mackendrick's lessons lay a deceptively simple goal: to teach aspiring filmmakers how to structure and write the stories they want to tell, while using the devices particular to the medium of film to tell their stories effectively.

In this impressive volume, edited by Paul Cronin, the myriad materials that made Mackendrick's reputation as an instructor are collected for the first time, offering a chance for professionals as well as students to discover a methodology of filmmaking that is challenging yet refreshing in its clarity. Meticulously illustrated and drawing on examples from such classic films as North by Northwest, Citizen Kane, and Touch of Evil, Mackendrick's elegant lessons are sure to provide inspiration for a new generation of filmmakers.
Alexander Mackendrick directed several films, including The Man in the White Suit, which earned him an Oscar Nomination for Screenwriting. He died in 1993.
 
Paul Cronin is the editor of Herzog on Herzog.
After more than twenty years in the film industry as a screenwriter, storyboard editor, and director of memorable films such as The Ladykillers, Alexander Mackendrick turned his back on Hollywood and began a new career as the dean of one of the country's most demanding and influential film schools. His absolute devotion to the craft of film-making served as a powerful impetus to students at the California Institute for the Arts for almost twenty-five years, with a teaching style that included prodigious notes, neatly crafted storyboards, and handouts containing excerpts of works by Kierkegaard, Aristotle, and others. At the core of Mackendrick's lessons lay a deceptively simple goal: to teach aspiring filmmakers how to structure and write the stories they want to tell, while using the devices particular to the medium of film to tell their stories effectively.

In this impressive volume, edited by Paul Cronin, the myriad materials that made Mackendrick's reputation as an instructor are collected for the first time, offering a chance for professionals as well as students to discover a methodology of filmmaking that is challenging yet refreshing in its clarity. Meticulously illustrated and drawing on examples from such classic films as North by Northwest, Citizen Kane, and Touch of Evil, Mackendrick's elegant lessons are sure to provide inspiration for a new generation of filmmakers.
"This quite remarkable book—I know nothing in print that is quite like it—records in painstaking yet fascinating detail the options available to the director as he prepares to shoot and as he does so . . . On Film-making is a sampling of the handouts, often illustrated by his own sketches, that [the author] presented to students over the years. Using these papers, as coherently edited by Paul Cronin, the attentive student could, I think, make quite a respectable film—well-structured and technically proficient . . . He gives many instructive examples of how meaning can be fully conveyed through action, not dialogue, shortening running time and enlivening our visual pleasure."—Richard Schickel, Los Angeles Times
"This quite remarkable book—I know nothing in print that is quite like it—records in painstaking yet fascinating detail the options available to the director as he prepares to shoot and as he does so . . . On Film-making is a sampling of the handouts, often illustrated by his own sketches, that [the author] presented to students over the years. Using these papers, as coherently edited by Paul Cronin, the attentive student could, I think, make quite a respectable film—well-structured and technically proficient. To make a movie as good or better than Mackendrick's best, all he would have to supply would be talent, or in a best-case scenario, genius, neither of which, as Mackendrick well knew, can be taught. One foresees that this book will have a long and useful life in film schools . . . Bookstores are full of biographies and book-length interviews with directors, and magazines are forever profiling them as their new pictures are released . . . These books and articles tend toward the vague—and occasionally the grandiose . . . Mackendrick will have none of that. There is nothing leonine about the way he discusses his craft . . . He gives many instructive examples of how meaning can be fully conveyed through action, not dialogue, shortening running time and enlivening our visual pleasure."—Richard Schickel, Los Angeles Times
 
"Mr. Cronin's provided a great service in his work on Mackendrick. Tight Little Island and The Ladykillers are perfect films. Any director knows they are worthy of both study and awe, and this book brings them, and Mackendrick, into contemporary focus beautifully."—David Mamet
 
"Mackendrick blows the theory merchants out of the picture with a blast of cool Scottish sagacity . . . He offers up the accumulated wisdom of a disciplined and productive career . . . Whether you use this book to help you reflect on your working  practice or see it as an enjoyable insight into the development and execution of a film idea, there's a great deal packed into these pages."—Zoe Green, The Guardian

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #30132 in Books
  • Published on: 2005-08-31
  • Released on: 2005-08-11
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 336 pages

Features

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Alexander Mackendrick directed several films, including The Man in the White Suit, which earned him an Oscar Nomination for Screenwriting. He died in 1993.

Paul Cronin is the editor of Herzog on Herzog.

Customer Reviews

How To Make Movies, Good Movies5
Shaw said, "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." In a strange way, Alexander Mackendrick fits both sides of that dictum. "Sandy" Mackendrick was an accomplished film director. After having worked in advertising, he started making films for the British Government during World War II. After the war he wrote scripts and he began directing. For the Ealing Studios, he made _Whiskey Galore!_, _The Man in the White Suit_, and _The Ladykillers_. Then he came to Hollywood, where he made the wonderfully biting _Sweet Smell of Success_. He could direct fine movies, and he did; but then he slipped into the "can't do" category, not for any lack of talent, but because he was not much of a deal-maker, and resented having to negotiate details with the studios. He started teaching, becoming dean of the film school at the California Institute of the Arts in 1969. He continued teaching until his death in 1993, but now filmmakers and audiences can get a glimpse of what he taught, in _On Film-making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director_ (Faber and Faber). It is a sampling of his lecture handouts, some illustrated by his own sketches, that he delivered to students over the years, and shows the richness of his thinking on the surprising complexities of artistic decisions regarding even simple shoots on tiny films. Those who enjoy movies, but don't know much about how they are made, will be astonished at how many details of technique the director has to consider before anyone yells "Action!" Those who make movies, or want to, could not do better than to study what Mackendrick has to say.

Mackendrick emphatically agrees with Truffaut, who in his interview book with Hitchcock wrote, "Whatever is _said_ instead of being _shown_ is lost on the viewer." (One of Mackendrick's many slogans: "Movies SHOW... and then TELL.") Always, regard to the audience is paramount: "Try to tell the story while always remembering that the audience has somewhere better to go and something better to do." Like a good storyteller, use curiosity, expectation, and suspense to keep them buttonholed. The reader of this book will want to be familiar with certain films to which Mackendrick returns again and again, like _The Third Man_ or _On the Waterfront_, but not all the cinema is fine cinema. In a chapter titled "Plausibility and Willing Suspension of Disbelief," he discusses the sci-fi film _Them!_ which he says is a "piece of nonsense" but shows solid, simple plot mechanisms, and follows the rule that "we are allowed only one major Incredible Thing" (Giant ants are invading!) while "everything else in the story should actually be logical, even over-logical." There is rich advice about dealing with actors. A student who asked, "How does a director get an actor to do what he wants?" took Mackendrick off guard, as he had never asked the question in those terms. It's the wrong question. "You don't," came the eventual answer, "You try to get the actor to want what you need."

Mackendrick knows you can't teach the art and inspiration that directors have to have intuitively, though there is a useful chapter titled "A Technique for Having Ideas." The craft involved in direction, though, has a possibility of being taught, and he has here covered the craft from scriptwriting through editing. I only sit in audiences for films (and the intimidating muster of factors Mackendrick brings up that the director must consider tells me I am in the right spot in front of the screen, not behind the camera), but I have a much better appreciation for what a director does after reading these fine instructions. I also wish that every director now working would simply follow these rules. The principles here, if followed universally, would benefit directors, audiences, and the quality of Hollywood's output, not to mention its bottom line.

He changed me5
When Sandy MacKenrick told my CalArts MFA Thesis committee that my thesis film script was, "long, much too long, and very much too long" and, "doomed to never be completed", I was shocked and terrified.

Sandy was one of the most brilliant and irritating people ever to tell a story or to browbeat an egotistical young film student. His films and lectures convey that contradiction -- his every work is a pearl.

If you were not lucky enough to get Sandy's notes while at CalArts, you must buy this book.

Odds are good, you won't have the genius of Sandy MacKendrick, but you will appreciate how much you could grow as you strive to attain what he found so simple.

I was proud to invite Sandy to the first screening of my thesis film, "Pirate's Dagger", and it still hurts that he was too ill to attend. I wouldn't have gotten it done without his special form of encouragement.

Very, very good5
Unlike most how-to directing and writing books, Mackendrick was an accomplished director with decades of professional experience. He speaks from hard-won experience, not dubious armchair notions of what makes a successful film or director. He is wise enough to know there are no "secrets" or immutable laws of storytelling, only rules of thumb. Every time I go back to it, I learn something new, and with every film I make, I am struck by points in the book which ring ever more true. This book will not make you a great director by reading it, but Mackendrick has the good sense and candor to know that a book or a course never will, only lots and lots of hard work and dedication.