How to Shoot a Feature Film for Under $10,000 (And Not Go to Jail)

Rating:
Summary: Worth reading, but can't stand alone.
Review: Ultimately, a Director is really a Manager whose employees are artists and technicians instead of clerks and accountants. S/he is all that stands between the lunatics and the asylum. A beginning filmmaker, then, is by definition terrified. S/he is seeking guidance. Naturally, s/he turns to Amazon.
This book offers something which is incredibly important to those setting out down the mine strewn road of film: encouragement. No one ever needed to be discouraged from filmmaking, that will take care of itself. This book is most valuable as evidence that you're not alone, and that as insane as this job is, you may just be up to it. It does this chiefly through an irreverent tone, maintained throughout the book.
But what about the technical advice? Well, this is mostly sound, but a lot of it is too general to be much good to someone who hasn't spent alot of time hanging around film sets and equipment. As far as his cost saving measures, they mostly boil down to "make a lot of friends" and "hand out around movie sets". That way you can get film remainders, finagle hard-to-get rentals, etc. All well and good if you live in an area with a lot of filmmaking going on, but this isn't always the case. Not a lot of detail on editing theory, how to set up and capture the shots you want, or how to effecitvely light for a certain scene. Okay, yeah, there are crew specialists to handle that stuff, but a director should know how to do them, and when you're an indie director shooting your own thing on your own resources, you can't count on getting a DP or a pro sound guy. Also, the irreverent tone can be a little annoying, as there are a few spots where you can't tell if he's joking or not. It also seems to obscure whether or not he knows the answer to a problem: is he kidding to be funny, or to hide a gap in knowledge? On the other hand, his advice on dealing with actors and the audition process was good.
Finally, a suggestion to all of you who are contemplating writing a book like this: if you're going to include a snippet of your original screenplay, make sure that you're Orson Welles. This author uses a few short excerpts from the screenplay he was shooting, and they're really not impressive. Come on, the guy made a movie about making a movie, and he's surprised that he can't get distribution? First lesson of filmmaking: the only people who care about the lives of filmmakers are other filmmakers. The old saw about "writing what you know" (terrible advice, in a way) is an exhortation to go out and live a little, not to hunker down and write about yourself.
Final analysis: This book does have some useful tips and handy information, and I would recommend it to people just starting out and who have no one to guide them. I would also recommend that they supplement it with more serious, techinically focused books. Despite what people say, film is a highly technical art; you can't grab any old camera, start filming, and have something watchable. And it takes more than one film to understand how to effectively structure a tale at feature length. Still, I did get something out of this book that others don't give: a laugh, and some encouragement. Good to read at the outset.