Whether in your backyard or at your favorite holiday getaway, a good book is a good thing to have on hand.
June is here, bringing long days and the perfect excuse to dive into some summer reading. Whether you're lounging in your backyard or relaxing at your favorite holiday getaway, a good book is always a great companion. This season, my picks cover a wide spectrum—from sex in animation to the art of digital filmmaking, a practical guide to Premiere Pro for filmmakers, and expert insights for scriptwriters. No matter your passion, there’s something here for everyone.
INTIMATE ANIMATION
By Ben Mitchell and Laura-Beth Cowley
CRC Press ISBN: 9781032541501
232 Pages Color Illustrations
€44.66 £39.19 $52.72 e-book 39.19£
Ben Mitchell, the editor of the United Kingdom’s Skwigly Online Animation Magazine and author of Independent Animation, and Laura-Beth Cowley, an animator and feature writer, have based their book on conversations with animators on their conversations with animations on their Intimate Animation Podcasts from 2016 to 2022. The initial podcast discussion was with the incredibly talented Czech animator Michaela Pavlatova, director of such films as the Oscar-nominated Reci, Reci, Reci (Words, Words, Words). Her erotically delightful film, Tram, won the Annecy Short Film Cristal in 2012.
To immediately set the record straight, right in the book’s prologue, the authors state that this is not a book about Hentai, a Japanese term referring to a subgenre of manga, anime, or other media that contains explicit sexual content. What it is, is an exploration of the changing trends in the animation industry since the early 2010’s. As the authors note “There has been a surge in animation projects that have pushed boundaries, broken taboos, prompted discussions, and wow festival and online audiences alike through compelling storytelling and unmatched artistry.
The book’s introduction gives a short history of erotic animation. Starting with hand-cranked mutoscopes, on to the1928 “Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure” which was created by a group of animator pals for Winsor McCay’s stag birthday party, we are introduced to some early examples of 1970s, ’80s, and ‘90s films that were the forerunners to today’s trend toward honesty and openness in animated films that are aimed at an adult audience.
The opening chapter of the book examines the use of animated films for sex education and hygiene-oriented films which dates back to the 1940’s. Chapter two is all about self-discovery, beginning with a discussion of Andreas Hykade’s films. Ring of Fire (2000) and Altotting (2020), like many of his films, draw upon incidents from his childhood and youth.
Woman animators like Signe Baumane, Michaela Pavlatova, and Joanna Quinn are groundbreakers in portraying women’s erotic inner thoughts, often with magnificent touches of humor, who continue to blaze a trail for the next generation of young animators.
The next chapter, The Body, introduces the classic femme fatal, Betty Boop who debuted in the 1930s in her low-cut dress and short skirt. Bill Plympton, the king of independent animators, is also a master of surreal situations and sight gags as in his 1995 How to Make Love to a Woman in which the woman exists in the film as a literal sex object.
No book on sex in animation would be complete without a chapter on lust. It can take many forms as in Shoko Hara’s 2020 film Just A Guy. Her stop-motion animated documentary examines why some women are so attracted to convicted death row inmates, even going so far as to marry them. Hara’s film zeroes in on Richard Ramirez, known as the Night Stalker, who murdered at least 13 people in California in 1984-85. While awaiting execution on San Quinton Prison’s death row numerous women wrote love letters to him and one woman went so far as to marry him in prison.
Finally, in chapter five Mitchell and Cowley get around to the subject of love. From a couple whose relationship is metaphorically adrift at sea in Levi Stoops's 2023 Drift to Chintis Lundgren and Drasko Ivezic’s films such as Manivald, which examines a uniquely complicated relationship, this chapter his chapter explores love in many different forms.
Intimate Animation is a must-read for anyone who wants to delve into the complex subject of sex, love, and relations. The book is well-written, insightful, and a great, fun read. If your appetite is wetted for more after you finish reading the book, The Appendix has a complete list of all of the Skiwigly Podcasts with the name of the animator, the title of the film that they discuss, and the date the broadcast aired.
There is also a QR Code that gives you access to a comprehensive list of animated projects that deal with the themes of love, relationships, and sexuality. Along with a suggested reading list on the topic, there is exclusive Skwigly Online Animation Magazine site content and an excellent table of contents, which make it easy to cross-reference people and films.
The Digital Filmmaking Handbook 7th Edition
By Sonja Schenk and Ben Long
Foreing Films Publishing ISBN: 9781733150217
431 Pages Color illustrations
€58.27 £49.01 $66.72
The Digital Filmmaking Handbook is ideal for someone just starting in the world of filmmaking. The book focuses on how to develop a story, the special challenges that directing a film poses, and how to write a complete story along with many technical and business-related issues. With technology advancing at such a rapid pace the book has up-to-date advice on the latest time and money-saving equipment also.
The 15 chapters cover everything that you need to know to complete a film project. Given that many independent and/or first-time filmmakers will also be writing and producing their films, as well as directing it, the book has separate chapters on each of these major roles. The Digital Filmmaking Handbook also covers in detail lighting, filming techniques, sound, getting started in post-production, and editing plus much more.
Along with suggestions on what films to watch and analysis of films to illustrate important points, each chapter ends with a problem to solve so that you can put your new knowledge to work right away. Throughout the book, there are hundreds of color photographs, still images from classic films, key diagrams, and illustrations. The 25-page glossary covers every term used in the book and the index is extremely thorough.
Although The Digital Filmmaking Handbook is a must-have tool for live-action filmmakers, most of the principles analyzed in the book also apply equally to creating a successful animated film. The book is an excellent addition to any filmmaker's library, and I am sure that it won’t take long for your copy to look well-used.
Premiere Pro for Filmmakers
Sonja Schenk; 2020
Foreing Films Publishing ISBN: 9781733150200
340 Pages Color illustrations
€51.11 £42.99 $58.52
reviewed by Nik Phelps
Premiere Pro for Filmmakers is more than just a “how-to” instruction manual for mastering the intricacies of this Adobe video editing program. The author, Sonja Schenk provides both a comprehensive textbook on Adobe Premiere Pro and a thorough guide to key steps in the post-production process. It is one of three titles in The Digital Filmmaking Handbook Presents, a series of companion books that dive deep into film-related topics of interest to students and professionals alike. Schenk, a veteran Los Angeles-based filmmaker, has crafted an easily digestible text that is useful for both beginners to video editing and videographers who want to learn to work more efficiently with the many features that Premiere offers.
The book goes beyond basic film editing, helping users refine their storytelling techniques. Schenk guides users through workflow processes and command execution, offering both menu-oriented and keyboard-based approaches. Building on The Digital Filmmaking Handbook, it begins with beginner-friendly tutorials that utilize real feature film footage and progresses to advanced techniques, including multicam editing, sound, graphics, visual effects, and color, always from a professional filmmaker’s perspective.
For the tutorials, you are given links to actual raw footage from four feature films – a comedic dialogue scene, an action scene, a multicam scene, and a scene from a documentary. Using these, you are engagingly guided to tackle real-world technical and creative challenges within the raw footage, blending hands-on learning with a fun, interactive experience. Through these steps, you are guided to the point of exporting the final masters of your film, and then given helpful suggestions on distribution topics. For the tutorials, you receive links to actual raw footage from four feature films—a comedic dialogue scene, an action sequence, a multicam setup, and a documentary segment. Using these, you are engagingly guided through real-world technical and creative challenges, seamlessly blending hands-on learning with a fun, interactive experience. By the final steps, you’ll have learned how to professionally export the masters of your film and, to top it off will receive valuable suggestions on distribution strategies. The book is Adobe-oriented, and there are discussions of the use of related apps included whenever appropriate – After Effects, Photoshop, Media Encoder, Audition, Bridge, and other resources like TypeKit fonts, and Adobe Stock. There are even sections devoted to workarounds for bugs that may be lurking in this complex program.
Published in 2020, the book is still highly relevant now, as Premiere’s updates since then have been largely incremental or AI-driven. A second edition is planned for 2026, incorporating all these new developments.
As an occasional visitor to the video editing world myself, I found the book easy, entertaining, and highly educational as I worked through the chapters. I can see it being a valuable reference for any future video projects.
I Got You Covered
Beverly Neufeld 2022
Foreng Films Publishing ISBN 9781733150231
€11.30 £9.70 $12.99
I Got You Covered is a companion book to The Digital Filmmaking Handbook, delving deeply into a single topic. The book is an easy-to-understand guide to script notes, critiques, and writing for screenplays, teleplays, short films, and series. It takes you step by step through the entire process of how to give notes in a tasteful, motivating, and inspiring manner. It also stresses how to remain objective rather than subjective.
There is a section detailing what competitions, executives, agents, and networks are looking for in a script. In this day and age, when Netflix and other pay for view television networks are optioning animation projects, this is an invaluable chapter. If you are interested in getting a job as a script reader, a separate chapter gives you the nuts and bolts of how to get your foot in the door and land your first job.
Neufeld ends each chapter with exercises that build on each other from chapter to chapter. If you do the exercises, when you have finished reading the book, you will be well on your way to starting a script of your own or having a portfolio to show a prospective employer.
Beverly Neufeld definitely knows what she is talking about and she is able to translate it to the written page. After obtaining her MFA in screenwriting at UCLA, she has been a script consultant at Slamdance Films as well as a freelance script doctor. She is a professor at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in their writing division, teaching script coverage and screenwriting, as well as teaching online coverage classes.
As a seasoned journalist, I read I Got You Covered with great interest. The book made me think about my writing, and I learned some things along the way. Anyone who plans on writing a script will do well to read this book.
