The Art of the Filmmaker

The Art of the Filmmaker: The Practical Aesthetics of the Screen explores the filmmaker’s intention and method, their creation and capture of the fiction on the screen, and their formulation of the elements of the frame as a designed address to the audience. Positing ’practical aesthetics’ as a resource of visual communication central to cinematic art, this book examines the concepts fundamental to the selective processes of the filmmaker and offers the reader highly informed textual analyses of specific films to explain the how and why of cinematic decision-making.

After general consideration of language and cinema, Peter Markham sets out categories essential to the reader in their understanding of the filmmaker’s art: dramatic narrative, elements before the lens, screen language, the shot, camera, editing, sound and music. Furthermore, Markham provides insight into how a comparison of the film with its screenplay can reveal the evolution of the filmmaker’s storytelling strategies.

This book also includes case studies of scenes and sequences from three films by contemporary filmmakers: Hereditary (Ari Aster), Moonlight (Barry Jenkins), and Nomadland (Chloe Zhao). Screenshots are used to illustrate the concepts articulated in the carefully constructed text.

This book is intended for the student of filmmaking, its practitioners, students and scholars of film studies and film theory, for those in media studies and arts programs, and for lovers of movies.

After a career in production with BBC TV Drama and Films, working with filmmakers such as Anthony Minghella and Martin Scorsese, and directing in Film and TV, Peter Markham was head of the MFA directing program at the AFI Conservatory, Los Angeles. He has taught in Beijing and Shanghai, been a lead instructor with Sundance Collab, and is a consultant and educator in creative filmmaking. He is the author of What’s the Story? The Director Meets Their Screenplay: An Essential Guide for Directors and Writer-Directors (2020).