Rating: 
Summary: Eat Your Heat Out Kubrick, Oh Yeah He's Dead.
Review: Instead of being a how-to book on making movies, WHAT THEY DON'T TEACH YOU AT FILM SCHOOL is a book that provides all sorts of useful and practical information that people might not know or think about when they start or have started making a movie. A great gift for any film student or any film fanatic.
Rating: 
Summary: FiveStars for moviemaking ZeroStars for relationship advice
Review: It is a must read because: It covers things no other book covers in as much depth. For example: how to act and interrelate to members of your film crew. It is inspiring in its insistence on persistence. Amazingly, this book brilliantly discusses how you might feel while promoting your project and how it affects you and your promotional efforts. (Again something unique.) And much more. It is at 244 pages too short. It is a hoot. These women are love's loosers. They may know how to act toward their crew--but life seems to have given the authors nothing but used trucks with bad transmissions when it comes to boyfriends. They have a philosophy to match. So take their advice on everything but love--and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: FiveStars for moviemaking ZeroStars for relationship advice
Review: It is a must read because: It covers things no other book covers in as much depth. For example: how to act and interrelate to members of your film crew. It is inspiring in its insistence on persistence. Amazingly, this book brilliantly discusses how you might feel while promoting your project and how it affects you and your promotional efforts. (Again something unique.) And much more. It is at 244 pages too short. It is a hoot. These women are love's loosers. They may know how to act toward their crew--but life seems to have given the authors nothing but used trucks with bad transmissions when it comes to boyfriends. They have a philosophy to match. So take their advice on everything but love--and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Very cool
Review: It's a wonderful and witty book full of great advice that could only come about through hard-won experience. If you're a beginning filmmaker you'll want to read it to know about what lies ahead, if you're a seasoned professional it'll make you smile as you remember your own versions of their anecdotes.
Rating:
Summary: Practical, useful, slightly boring
Review: It's kind of ridiculous for this book to advertise itself as "161 Strategies to Making Your Own Movie". Very few of the 161 items can be called strategies at all, and most aren't really even advice of any sort. Most of the book, unfortunately, amounts to hype. And while this seems to be satisfying the fly-by-night wannabee readers, those of us who actually have made films - or who are struggling to do so - are left with very little practical guidance. That being said, there are a number of helpful nuggets of wisdom to be found. With 161 entries, they had to get lucky a few times, and they did. There are several tricks and tools that are described, typically for the ultra-low- and no-budget filmmaker, that can help minimize costs and make your production easier and/or more successful. But if you want to find it, you have to be willing to dig through self-help lectures, third grade time management advice and methods for looking cool at parties. All-in-all, not a total waste of time and money, if you've got some of each to throw around.
Rating: 
Summary: Mine the Hype and You'll Maybe Find a Diamond or Two
Review: It's kind of ridiculous for this book to advertise itself as "161 Strategies to Making Your Own Movie". Very few of the 161 items can be called strategies at all, and most aren't really even advice of any sort. Most of the book, unfortunately, amounts to hype. And while this seems to be satisfying the fly-by-night wannabee readers, those of us who actually have made films - or who are struggling to do so - are left with very little practical guidance. That being said, there are a number of helpful nuggets of wisdom to be found. With 161 entries, they had to get lucky a few times, and they did. There are several tricks and tools that are described, typically for the ultra-low- and no-budget filmmaker, that can help minimize costs and make your production easier and/or more successful. But if you want to find it, you have to be willing to dig through self-help lectures, third grade time management advice and methods for looking cool at parties. All-in-all, not a total waste of time and money, if you've got some of each to throw around.
Rating:
Summary: Not really about filmmaking
Review: Perhaps the reason they don't teach those 161 things in film school is because they're really not about filmmaking. For the most part the book is about guerrilla marketing, and fundraising. These come after, and are important. But don't expect an underground guide to making film - it's not that.
Rating:
Summary: Encouraging, insightful, conversational, and intelligent
Review: Sometimes I randomly buy books like this that SOUND like they have a really great premise, but they turn out to be amateur and doltish. Not so with this book -- it more than delivered on the promise made by the title and description. What a book! I was struck in the first few pages at the encouraging tone of the book, and then again by the heft of the authors' intellects -- wow, these women have brains! But brains aren't all they have. They've got plenty of common sense about filmmaking with which they have been more than generous in their book. I learned more about filmmaking than I have from reading any other book, and at the same time I was energized and ready to pick up a camera, instead of discouraged and ready to run far away from any dreams of filmmaking. It may be too late to go to film school, but it's never too late to read this book and get the down-low on everything you could want to know about making a film, conceptually, practically, and realistically. I'll have to read this book a few more times, and keep it close at hand for reference. Well done, Camille and Tiare.
Rating: 
Summary: Too basic to be excellent!
Review: This book covers a lot of aspects in how to make a film. And it illuminates some basic problems that are associated with it. But I think that some of the chapters are un-necessary. Like the one about all that dutchtape can be used for and the advice to not have affairs on the set or not let a filmcrew into your appartement. It is just something you will know after having made your first movie. And the part about affairs is something you should be able to figure out yourself. Leave something for the imagination.
It doesn't cover more basic knowledge like how to fund your films. I think that's what everyone would like to know. It does mention that if you get a break in the film business, you'll need a script to get something out of it. That part is excellent. And there are some parts in the book that are as good as this one. But all around the solutions are just too easy. It should be basic knowledge for most of us. So if you want to buy a book about how to make a film, don't buy this one. Watch "Living in Oblivion" instead. But if you want to read about all the small problems that you can encounter on the set, and you are not into thinking of your own, then this is the right book for you.
Rating:
Summary: What They Don't Teach You at Film School
Review: This book has a lot of sound advice for filmmakers. It will motivate you to make films and keep making them. I found it gets a little to "LA" for me towards the end. I felt like they really let you into their minds, and if this is what women think... Heh, get this book! I enjoyed it.
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