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This is a book with hundreds of practical lessons for amateur movie makers.

A 23 year-old disenchanted with film school made a feature film for $7,000 and sold it to Hollywood.  The film was El Mariachi and the young man was Robert Rodriguez.

Robert taught himself movie making using domestic video equipment, learned to edit by copying between VCRs - and because he lost synch if the receiving machine stayed more than five minutes in pause mode, learned to shoot tight so that he could always find the next shot in time.

He shot El Mariachi on a borrowed 16mm Arriflex, shooting tight. He went straight from negative to a video copy which he then edited.  Sound was shot non-synch: he put down the camera , picked up a Tandy tape recorder and got the amateur actors to repeat their performances!  To get round synch problems he had to cut in the middle of dialogue which gave a distinctive style.

The movie was to be his calling-card to Hollywood and he planned to get his costs back by selling it to the cheap-and-cheerful straight-to-video Mexican market.  In fact Hollywood loved it and Robert found himself wheeling and dealing with the biggest names in the business.  The film and his earlier award-winning amateur shorts were screened at festivals and to his amazement El Mariachi  was released to international success.

The book is full of practical details which will delight any amateur movie maker and give helpful hints on how to make movies for next to nothing. Rodriguez is not a polished writer but his enthusiasm and energy shines through - as does his sense of humour.  He even includes a short section called The Ten Minute Film School!

If you want to see El Mariachi and the sequel Desperado it is released on double-sided DVD.

Published by Faber & Faber, UK 1996. By Dutton, USA 1995.

Page updated on 21 March 2008

Authors' views are not necessarily those of The Institute of Amateur Cinematographers

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