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In the cut-throat world of the film industry, you need every advantage you can get to rise above the competition and make a name for yourself. This essential guide combines a practical, no-nonsense approach with a lifetime of insider knowledge, giving you the competitive edge to jump-start your career.

Packed with hard-working tips and advice, this book shows you how to get the best out of your film-school education, how to navigate some of the most frustrating moments in an artist’s life, and how to keep the inspiration going as you battle your way through the filmmaking world.

Responsible for hiring all members of cast and crew from the director onwards, the producer’s role is central to the making of any film and responsibilities can include everything from script development to securing financing to masterminding a film’s marketing campaign. While few film producers are household names, they wield a degree of control that only the biggest-name directors can aspire to. As with all of the FilmCraft titles, this book is based on new indepth interviews and features such greats as Tim Bevan, Marin Karmitz, Jeremy Thomas, Jon Kilik, Lauren Shuler Donner, Jan Chapman, and Peter Aalbæk Jensen.

Mandalas are big at the moment, and we just made them even bigger! Artist and pattern-maker Jane Snedden Peever has created a gorgeous collection of richly elaborate mandalas, each one hand-drawn on a specific mindful theme. Furthermore, these mandalas are supersized, made bigger for more colouring, and making a larger and more impressive addition to your wall. Whether your choice of media is colouring pens, pencils, pastels or watercolour, you will be inspired by the beautiful creations in this book. Giant Mandalas makes an ideal gift or self-purchase for anyone seeking hours of colouring calm.

In this eagerly-awaited new book from the author of the best-selling Nostalgia Nerd’s Retro Tech, Peter Leigh takes a fun, informative and irreverent romp through the history of more than forty pieces of personal tech, charting the successes, failures and oddities from over five decades of our obsession with gadgetry.

From the Teasmade to the TomTom, mankind has been on a constant hunt for gimmicks that make life easier, faster and more entertaining, and as yesterday’s ‘must-haves’ become today’s museum pieces, there’s no better time to take a nostalgic trip through tech’s back catalogue.

Discover the world’s greatest works of art with this ingenious puzzle book from the creator of the best-selling 1000 Dot-to-Dot series, Thomas Pavitte. At first, you see nothing but a baffling tangle of circles – but hidden within each puzzle is a legendary masterpiece waiting to be revealed.

Featuring 20 iconic artworks from the Venus de Milo to Klimt’s The Kiss, Querkles Masterpieces offers hours of creative colouring fun for artistic minds of all ages. Choose five colours, enjoy the surprising results as your unique masterpiece comes to life, and you’ll be rewarded with a striking image that you can easily remove and display.

Do you know where all your photos are? Can you retrieve every landscape shot or portrait you’ve ever taken with a few keystrokes and a click of the mouse? Are you looking forward to processing those hundreds or thousands of holiday snapshots? There’s no reason why you shouldn’t, and this book holds all the answers, and quite a few expert secrets as well.

Learn to take advantage of the processes and features of your software of choice to streamline your photo workflow. With advanced methods, tried and tested by an expert photographer, you’ll be set on a straightforward path to great, reliable results in no time at all.

This arresting miscellany is jam-packed with intriguing and enlightening stories, facts, and trivia about all manner of murderers, miscreants, and malcontents.

The book reveals incredible tales about criminal gangs around the world, such as the Japanese Yakuza, the L.A. Crips and Bloods, and the Italian Camorra. Plus, there are extensive lists of criminal slang throughout the centuries; an exploration of Russian prison tattoos; a confidence trickster’s lexicon; insights into the world’s most audacious crimes-like the the ft of the Mona Lisa-and quotes from the criminals themselves, and the cops who chased them. Inside are gritty black-and-white illustrations and revealing portraits of some of society’s scariest criminals.

The creation of apps for Apple’s iPhone is now a huge, and global business, with hundreds of thousands of developers, entrepreneurs and companies attracted by the potential rewards. But games, functional apps and promotional apps alike depend on attractive, intuitive design for their appeal, and most fail to find a significant audience.

With this book, you’ll be able to turn your great app idea into a functioning design that is ready for coding, or apply graphic design skills to this exciting and lucrative marketplace. You will have a clearly visualised concept and a focused sales plan – and your app will stand out in an App Store that is worth well over a billion pounds every year.

The urban environment offers an exciting array of subjects to photograph, even in the smallest of towns. In the time it takes to walk a street or two, you can photograph panoramic skylines, people up close, at work or play, abstract architectural details, frenetic street activity, peaceful park scenes and so much more. You can capture elements of the past and present through the city’s architecture in one carefully composed street scene, then, within minutes, frame up the most recognisable landmark in the city. This book gives you the practical skills and creative techniques you need to capitalize on the beautiful world right on your doorstep.

Following the huge success of Ilex’s 1000 Dot-to-Dot series, we bring you the longest and most satisfying dot-to-dot puzzle ever! This beautifully designed hardback book concertinas into a stunning frieze of no fewer than 3000 dots, providing several satisfying hours of mindful dot-joining fun. The perfect souvenir of your trip to London, this fabulous original illustration features its most famous buildings and landmarks, including Tower Bridge, the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament. To enable you to enjoy your handiwork to the full, the ends of the design are perforated: you can easily remove your completed masterpiece, and display it on your wall.

Mostly candid and spontaneous, documentary photography serves to preserve a moment in time. In Lens on Life, celebrated documentary photographer Stephanie Calabrese Roberts inspires you to explore, shoot, and share documentary photographs, guiding you as you define your own style.

Illustrated with the author’s striking artwork as well as that of eight seasoned photographers who have visually documented stories all over the world, this book will sharpen your artistic intuition and give you the confidence to take on personal or professional documentary assignments. Full of advice that will challenge you and strengthen your photography, Lens on Life shows you how to capture an authentic view of your world.

With dramatic and exciting stories, Carlos Miller reveals the secrets behind successful citizen journalism.

Whether you’re planning a publicity blitz for your cause, you’re interested in the down-and-dirty practices of the police, or just want to be prepared for the moment you’re the first on the scene, this book has everything you’ll need to know to take newsworthy pictures and get them in front of a wide audience.

You don’t need a DSLR camera – though they can be useful – what is essential for citizen journalism is a cool head, an eye for a great angle, and the initiative to capture the moment: let Carlos Miller show you how.

Discover your drawing and creative skills with this fun-packed book, designed to take your pack of pens further.

There is more fun to be had with felt-tips than colouring. With her trademark vibrant and energetic style, felt-tip illustrator Holly Wales shakes up your humble pack of pens and gives you the best tips on the tips.

Learn how to draw, decorate, doodle and embellish using every colour and permutation of the pen. More fun, more inky and more vibrant than pencils and pastels, Draw ANYTHING with Felt-Tip Pens & Markers is the perfect way to discover your creative talents.

Until just a few years ago, turning a light on and off with a clap was about as clever as technology got.

Today, almost anything can be connected to the internet, and with this connection comes the ability to turn your bedroom lights off from another country, tell your thermostat to create a weather-appropriate lighting scheme, and answer the door without ever leaving your armchair.

This book introduces you to Alexa, Siri, and every major technology competing to smarten your home and improve your life. You’ll learn how to choose between them, how to optimize their function, and how to avoid the pitfalls that cause new adopters to wish they’d never let a computer into their home.

All of us have, at one time or another, taken “the perfect picture” – the one that not only works technically, but which exactly captures the emotion of the moment, evoking delight and wonder in the reactions of all who see it. Frustratingly, though, we all have many more of the “nearly” shots – when you were in the right place, at the right time, but didn’t get the mood you were going for. This book will help you capture the emotion of your subject, and the feeling of that moment. Visually stunning, and unique in its collaborative approach, ‘Expressive Photography’ brings the spirit of the immensely popular Shutter Sisters website to the printed page through the voice and photography of its founding members.

Shooting with any kind of flash whether a simple light on your camera, a remotely-triggered unit, or a complete studio setup completely changes the photographic experience. No longer do you simply need to be aware of light; now you need to know how to shape it to meet your needs.

The Flash Photography Field Guide will show you exactly how to do this, whether you’re shooting models in a studio, live sports events, or something as special as the wedding of a loved one. This book covers the details of setting up and using modern TTL flash systems, and the creative and technical choices you’ll come across, from syncing the flash with the camera to modifying the quality of the light.

Hot photo apps come and go, but the practice of shooting and sharing is universal and is now a fundamental part of the way that we communicate with each other. Photos aren’t printed on paper anymore – they are displayed on screens; and everywhere they are shown, the viewer is invited to like or share. Social Photography will show you how to create photos that will be clicked on, liked, shared, and – if you want – go viral. A must-read for anyone who takes their online presence seriously, this book will show you how to give your photos a fresh look, give you hundreds of posing and shooting ideas, and let you share your life’s most exciting moments wider than ever before.

This is your illustrated invitation to the moments when movie history was made. Photographers’ contact sheets are the permanent record of every shot that they took – and through Hollywood’s golden age, there was often a photographer on set, capturing the scene as actors and directors collaborated to produce classic movies. This book collects the contact sheets from classic movies like The African Queen (1951), Some Like it Hot (1959), Taxi Driver (1976), Grosse Point Blank (1997) and many more. Capturing legends such as Woody Allen, Audrey Hepburn, Alfred Hitchcock, Marilyn Monroe, and Frank Sinatra at work and at repose, these images offer rare glimpses into the art of moviemaking, the science of movie marketing, and the nature of stardom.

Photography is a big part of our lives, and we all take photos all the time. By understanding just a few basics of how your camera – or your phone – works, you’ll find yourself able to take more exciting, stand-out photos.

Within a few pages you’ll be able to speak with confidence to photographers about exposure settings, decide what lighting or lenses will lift a scene, or what tactics you can use to make your subject look more interesting.

The book also covers the basics of managing, editing & sharing your collection of digital images so you’re not at the mercy of the software that was bundled with your phone.

A very special celebration of 15 years of the UK’s premier landscape photography competition, each special edition includes a signed and numbered print by acclaimed landscape photographer Charlie Waite.

The Landscape Photographer of the Year competition attracts global entries from the world’s top landscape photographers in a stunning celebration of the UK’s great outdoors.

Founded by world-renowned landscape photographer Charlie Waite, the competition celebrates its 15th anniversary this year and this book showcases the winners, runners-up and commended entries in each category of the contest.

Beautifully presented, each image is supported by the story of its making as well as the technical details of the shot, in a lavish and visually stunning collection of exceptional landscape photography.

There is nothing quite so satisfying as capturing a stunning wildlife photograph; a good one will reflect practice, patience, careful equipment choice and dedication. Those challenges are perhaps why so many enthusiast photographers aspire to perfect their images in this area; to get their work recognised by the photographic community as well as record their experiences.

This book reveals more world-class images with every turn. More than that, though, it takes a practical approach. It comprehensively introduces natural-history and wildlife photography techniques alongside truly useful tips about what gear you’ll need (and what you can avoid) in your pursuit of perfection. It is illustrated by the author’s professional work; his clients include National Geographic & Time amongst others.

The ultimate exercise book for any original, training the eye, the hand and the mind.

Copying is how we learn. It is the oldest, grandest tradition and essential to an artist’s development. Featuring 20 masterpieces by Michelangelo, Modigliani, Matisse, and more, The Nude Sketchbook is the first in an innovative new series that combines careful study with independent expression.

Each image is accompanied by helpful prompts from iconic artists, critics, and art historians, with plenty of blank space to practice and explore within the theme. Complete with a brief history of life drawing and an introduction to the draughtsman’s toolkit, this guided sketchbook equips artists with everything they need to develop their style and skills.

Gain a fresh understanding of the tools, materials, and techniques necessary to master this most intimate subject.

Crammed full of exquisite art from around the world, with fascinating background stories about the artists, editors and publishers, Erotic Comics: A Graphic History examines how this much maligned artform developed into a publishing phenomenon that spans the globe. Volume 1 delves deep into comic history, from the bawdy English cartoons of the 17th century, through the magazines impacted by the two World Wars, up to contemporary magazine titles such as Penthouse and Hustler. The book bulges with sassy postcards, provocative Tijuana Bibles, salacious pin-ups, shocking ’50s bondage comics, cheeky cartoons and liberated ’60s underground comix. Erotic Comics: A Graphic History is perfect for fans of adult comics, art history and erotic illustrations.

To earn a living these days, your photography has to rise above a lot of noise, so you need all the advantages you can get. Here, Dan M. Lee gives you back-to-back hard-hitting ideas that are proven to make every shot in your portfolio a stand-out image that grabs attention and wins new clients.

Clients recognize and reward creativity. It’s not enough to be competent with a camera: you need to experiment, find new perspectives, and innovate your workflow if you want to stay competitive. Whether that’s using drones for aerial viewpoints, or creating perfect 360-degree real-estate images, this book gives you the edge you need to make it as a professional photographer.