Christopher Kenworthy — Shoot Like Scorsese
Christopher Kenworthy (Michael Wiese Productions)
- book
- reel
- scorsese
- practical
- craft
Christopher Kenworthy, Shoot Like Scorsese — a practical shot-by-shot manual: named camera moves, diagrammed, with instructions for reproducing them.
Good for
Turning Camerawork from description into something a student can actually execute. Where the critical books say a shot is expressive, this says where to put the camera and when to move it. Useful in class as the bridge between analysis and production, and as a check on vague writing: if a move can be diagrammed, it can be named precisely.
Handle with care
The premise — that a director's style reduces to a repertoire of moves — is exactly what the Personal context note argues against. Style is what a filmmaker does with movie-memory, not a list of setups. Use it for craft vocabulary; don't let it stand in for an account of why Scorsese frames as he does.
In the library
Held in Reel, the local research library of scanned and indexed film books. 17 parts, 289 indexed passages. No page numbers in this scan.
This scan carries no page numbers, so it cannot be cited by page — quote it as sls and locate the passage by searching. (Reflowable sources such as EPUBs have no fixed pagination to record.)
Strongest on
Measured, not guessed. Each figure is how much denser this book is on a concept than the library average — so common words don't crowd out real specialisms.