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Roman Polanski is a Polish-French film director, actor and writer. He is regarded by many to be the one of the true international filmmakers. Mr. Polanski’s career began when he was a student studying at the National Film School in Lodz. He began acting in the 1950′s and some of his earliest movies were “Two Men and a Wardrobe” and “When Angels Fall”. His starting his career as a director in 1962, when he directed the film “Knife in (more…)

A Study of Francis Ford Coppola’s Dramatic style has to begin with his twin masterpieces The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. Another director may have taken one look at the script and saw only a film about a family of mobsters, whereas Coppola saw a film essentially about an American Family and their pursuit of the American dream. And that appreciation for the anti-hero runs through his films, including an Army officer barely clinging to his sanity on a covert operation during the Vietnam War in (more…)

Traditionally, documentary films were fairly dry pieces of video journalism that sought to tell a particular story in as factual a manner as possible. They used straight interviews with subjects, and basically followed them around with cameras, documenting events along the way. This was occasionally inter-cut with photos and footage of historical events, where applicable. While at at times the events themselves lent drama to the footage, documentary films tended to be a little on the boring side. Modern documentary filmmakers use a variety (more…)

There have always been stories about filmmakers who realized their dream of producing a film through a variety of very creative means: borrowing from parents, maxing out credit cards. “American Movie” was a documentary film about a man trying to realize such a dream, and the proceeds of that film helped him to achieve it. The good news for prospective filmmakers is that you don’t necessarily have to go into debt to finance your dream. There (more…)