1-By Laksh, Books, ET, Movies

Hitchcock’s Notebooks

If there is one mind any movie buff would like to read or re-program, it has to be that of Alfred Hitchcock.

Famous for his suspense and the sudden shocks in his films, surprisingly his film making technique is stripped of all such uncertanities. Each of his films were pre-planned to the minutest detail, leaving nothing to chance. The master story teller was also a master planner who seldom left little for manipulation for the editors or for the studio honchos.

Hard to believe? How about some documentary evidence ? Here comes the book ‘Hitchcocks’ Notebooks” by Dan Auiler. This book is a collation of everything Hitchcock did on paper prior or during the production of the film.

Dan Auiler divides the book in to three parts : “Building the Screenplay,” “Preparing the Visual,” and “Putting It All Together.” In each section he provides documents, including memos, script excerpts, sketches, and storyboards from a selection of films.

For any process oriented film producer/director this book is a treat. The book picks several films of Hitchcock at various stages and presents snippets. For instance, the book showcases the detailed treatment of ‘Rebecca’, the final storyboard of the famous crop dusting plane scene of ‘North by Northwest’ and the lengthy correspondence on the composite visual effects/sound effects for ‘Birds’.

This book is a must for any film maker who believes in the Hitchcock’s tradition of ‘a-film-is created-on-paper-first’.

At times the book appears a little tedious as the narrative jumps from one film to the other, but if you have learnt to sustain on an over dosage of Hitchcock’s films, you wouldn’t mind 🙂

1-By Laksh, Books, Etc.

Producing Animation

Producing Animation by Catherine Winder and Zahra Dowlatabadi is written from the perspective of a producer, hence it is more process driven.

The art and craft of animation has evolved over the years and it is a global industry today. It is not uncommon for the producers of animation projects–both TV and feature– taking the outsourcing route with the pre-production stage in USA/Europe and the prouduction outsourced to a studio in Asia.

This book presents the nuts-and-bolts of how a project is created in addition to describing the role of the producer at each phase. The producer here is seen as both a project and process owner. Hence there are chapters devoted to the non-production aspects like sales pitch, concept marketing etc. It also makes an interesting surfing material  for the not so hands-on-producers, who would like to limit themselves to the deal-making and then hand over the reins to a day-to-day person.

The book dwells at length on each process and provides pre-requisites, crew requirements and check points for each one of them. This information is often supplemented by the authors’ past experience. This information is very helpful in setting up a tracking sytem.

It would be nice if the authors come up with two seperate versions for 2D and 3D animations and supplement these two with a good companion website.

Overall, if you are looking at a decent head start on the making of an animation project, this book is for you.

1-By Laksh, Books

The Seven Day Weekend

The word ‘Maverick’ describes Ricardo Semler the best. No wonder
his first book is titled as ‘Maverick’.

Maverick! was published in 1993. Since then his Semco companies in
Brazil and two other countries have grown to 3,000 employees and a
turnover of $160 million.

As Semco continues on its growth path, Semler is out there to
redefine the meaning of work and work culture for the 21st
century. He describes this new approach in his second book
‘The Seven Day weekend’.

He sets the mood of the book with a
quirky foreword which ends with
Ricardo Semler signing off ‘Lying in hammock
with a laptop and my little boy, having fed
the ducks in the nearby pond on a Monday
in May 2002’

So why the title The Seven Day Weekend?
He believes that the seven days in the week should be divided
amongst company time, personal time and idleness to provide
a work/life balance. He sees working 9 to 5 Monday to Friday
as military and boarding school mentality. He considers it outdated
for people who live their personal lives freely to have to comply
with company rules during work hours.

He gets you thinking with a few questions right at the beginning
of book.

1. Why are we able to answer email on Sundays, but unable to
go to the movies on Monday afternoons?
2. Why can’t we take the kids to work if we can take work home?
3. Why do we think the opposite of work is leisure, when in fact
it is idleness?

Semler continues this path throughout the book asking many
questions and answers a few of them. While he does that, he also
presents some insights about his Semco.
For instance, he says” Semco has no official structure. It has no
organizational chart. There’s no business plan or company
strategy – no two-year or five-year plan, no goal or mission statement,
no long-term budget… For a new employee coming in from
Arthur Andersen they paid a handsome salary but did not give
him a desk, or a title, or business cards.”

Here are some more questions from the book that sure does
serve as a guide for anyone interested in making a change to
their worksytle on a personal/organizational basis

Success and Money are Distant Relatives
1. Why do people have to stick to a career choice they made
as an unprepared adolescent?
2. Why doesn’t money buy success if almost everyone
measured their success in cash?
3. Why do billionaires greedily accumulate money,
only to donate it to ethereal concepts such as world peace?

Management By (O)mission
1. Why do we tell our employees that we trust them, then audit and
search them when they go home?
2. Why does our customized and carefully crafted credo look like
everyone else’s?
3. Why do we demand and go to war for democracy as nations, yet
accept with docility that no one has the right to choose their
own bosses?

A Long Line of Pied Pipers
1. Why do we have a flock mentality and follow rams that turn
out to be wolves?
2. Why do we think we are equipped to choose schools, doctors
and mayors, but don’t trust our capacity to lead ourselves at work?
3. Why do we continuously look for saviours and hereos to lead us?

Rambling into the Future
1. Why do we think that the future ‘is in God’s hands’ and then
pre-plan every moment of it?
2. Why do we think intuition is so valuable and unique – and
find no place for it as an official business instrument?
3. Why do we agree that living well is living every moment,
without reinforcing parst or future – but then spend most of
our work lives dealing with historical data and future budgets?

At times the concept seems a little out of hand but as you read
the book, slowly a pattern emerges.

In this connected world, when you are a click/call away from work,
why can’t you be doing what you want and make your work a part of it
than the other way around.

In short from a work-centric/company-centric you endeavor to
become a person-centric/passion-centric person.

ET, IT…and the rest