Survival Film

Kelley Baker is the Angry Filmmaker. But his independent films are not angry - they're honest. He's angry at the state of independent film. For Baker, it's about telling the story, not what actors are starring in it. Here, with all his attitude, is the wisdom of an Angry Filmmaker, gained the hard way, through experience.

Jim and Elaine Larison spent years studying, exploring, and living in wild places, making more than 30 environmental films, most for the National Geographic Society. These films won more than 40 international awards from leading environmental and broadcast organizations. This memoir tells the story behind the adventure and describes the rather substantial personal costs of this career.

Ejnar Mikkelsen was devoted to Arctic exploration. In 1910 he decided to search for the diaries of the ill-fated Mylius-Erichsen expedition, which had set out to prove that Robert Peary’s outline of the East Greenland coast was a myth, erroneous and presumably self-serving. Iver Iversen was a mechanic who joined Mikkelsen in Iceland when the expedition’s boat needed repair.

Filmmaker Tom Opre dedicated over three years to documenting the lives of a remote community in Zambia led by a woman chief who dared to break the bonds of poverty by waging war on wildlife poaching.

It turns out Addison was right: The world as he knew it did come to an end by means of a killer virus. He’s by himself now, near what was Sicily, Oklahoma, tending to a wilted vegetable garden, foraging for rabbits, and eking out not quite enough water from a dried-up well. It’s time to move. Uncle Izzy, whom he’s decided to seek out in his survivalist cabin hundreds of miles away, had prepared him well for an apocalypse - all but for the loneliness. But the virus didn’t quite kill everybody. And humanity isn't all that humane anymore.

Writers’ rooms can be a heaven or hell, depending on a few things. The best rooms foster inclusive and productive creative flow. The worst create a toxic stew of bad feelings and doubt. Both kinds, and all the ones in between, require basic knowledge of how the room works. These fundamentals are best learned before you go in. The mystery box of the writers’ room need not stay sealed shut forever. Consider this audiobook your crowbar.

Ego, Fear and Filmmaking is a survival guide for artists and a must read for content creators! Learn about getting what's in the script, not a version of it. Pro advice on the best investments in cameras and lighting. Managing your business side and your creative side. How creativity works and trusting the process. Powerful scheduling and budgeting strategies.

My Journey Through War and Peace: Explorations of a Young Filmmaker, Feminist and Spiritual Seeker is based on Melissa Burch's experiences as a war journalist for BBC, CBS, and other networks. Her team was one of the first documentary crews allowed in the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, and she was featured in a New York Times story about her time in Afghanistan. She was just in her 20s when she traveled with the moujahedeen, filmed an attack on a Soviet convoy, slept with an Afghan commander, and climbed 14,000-foot mountains in the Hindu Kush.