The Big Picture: Filmmaking Lessons from a Life on the Set

Film production veteran Tom Reilly has worked on the sets of critically praised films and commercial blockbusters for more than three decades?including seventeen years alongside director Woody Allen. In The Big Picture, he explores the art and the craft of filmmaking from the vantage point of someone actually running the movie set. Using examples unlike any of those in other books on film, Reilly exposes not only the power and the personalities, but the secrets of the pros.  He shares the insights he gleaned while working with more than sixty Oscar-winning professionals?from Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Vanessa Redgrave to Sydney Pollack, Sven Nykvist, and Barbra Streisand.

            In these fifty entertaining, illuminating short essays, Reilly invites you to join him on the film set. What is it like to shoot a love scene? How do you do a full body burn? What is it like to film in the Everglades or in a morgue? What is blocking or matching, and how long should a script be? How do you decide when to build a set? Why is the color palette so critical?  Is night shooting worth the suffering?

            The Big Picture delivers the surprising answers to these and other fascinating questions about what it takes to make a feature film, offering a glimpse into what its like when the lights are bright, the camera is rolling, and the moviemakers are calling the shots.

Tom Reilly is a member of the Directors Guild of America and has worked in the motion picture industry for the past thirty years. Veteran of more than forty films, Reilly worked with Woody Allen on classics such as Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Bullets Over Broadway, Hannah and Her Sisters, Purple Rose of Cairo, and Zelig. He has also been assistant director on other major motion pictures such as Big, The Prince of Tides, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Pick-up Artist, Sabrina, and Great Expectations. He is married, has three children, and lives in Westchester County, New York. 

“Full of wisdom, insight, and practical filmmaking experience. Its really what goes on day to day in the trenches. Where was this book when I was starting out?”—Woody Allen

“This is the best book on the nuts and bolts—and art—of filmmaking Ive read. Tom Reilly is a consummate pro. His insightful, practical instruction and explanation will rivet anyone who cares about movies and wants to know how sometimes mundane but often astonishingly difficult work on the set ends up as magic on the screen. Reillys vivid behind-the-camera descriptions of great directors and cinematographers at work will enlighten and entertain you. If this were a movie, Id say: See it twice.”—Eric Lax, author of Conversations with Woody Allen

Film production veteran Tom Reilly has worked on the sets of critically praised films and commercial blockbusters for more than three decades?including seventeen years alongside director Woody Allen. In The Big Picture, he explores the art and the craft of filmmaking from the vantage point of someone actually running the movie set. Using examples unlike any of those in other books on film, Reilly exposes not only the power and the personalities, but the secrets of the pros.  He shares the insights he gleaned while working with more than sixty Oscar-winning professionals?from Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Vanessa Redgrave to Sydney Pollack, Sven Nykvist, and Barbra Streisand.

            In these fifty entertaining, illuminating short essays, Reilly invites you to join him on the film set. What is it like to shoot a love scene? How do you do a full body burn? What is it like to film in the Everglades or in a morgue? What is blocking or matching, and how long should a script be? How do you decide when to build a set? Why is the color palette so critical?  Is night shooting worth the suffering?

            The Big Picture delivers the surprising answers to these and other fascinating questions about what it takes to make a feature film, offering a glimpse into what its like when the lights are bright, the camera is rolling, and the moviemakers are calling the shots.

The Big Picture is a must-have book for any aspiring filmmaker who wants to know the secrets of the pros, or for movie buffs who want to know what really happens on the sets of their favorite films.