By Forris Day Jr.
I had never heard of the 1954 Japanese movie “Seven Samurai” until getting the opportunity to check out a pre-release edition of “Everything I Know About Filmmaking I Learned Watching Seven Samurai” by Richard D. Pepperman. I did a bit of research on the film and found out that it is indeed a very popular film. I apologize to the folks who knew that already but I just want to be honest about my lack of knowledge about this movie. The movie inspired an American remake; a western called “The Magnificent Seven”.
“Everything I Know About Filmmaking I Learned Watching Seven Samurai” breaks down the entire film into little digestible nuggets and teaches you about filmmaking at the same time. The book is divided into two halves. Disc one and Disc two, so if you have the DVD you can follow along. The book is a film class. You will learn about transitions, POV, shot composition and tons of other elements in creating a movie all through the use of breaking “Seven Samurai” down scene by scene, shot by shot.
The formatting of the book makes it easy to follow along and jump to spots in the film to study because Pepperman included the timecode in each chapter title so you can simply cue up the DVD and get to viewing. He then explains each shot in detail, so even if you do not have the DVD you can understand what he is teaching. He describes the camera movement, the dialog and scenery when needed and also includes a screen grab or series of screen grabs from the film to give you a better understanding of each lesson. Each chapter wraps with a “Lesson Learned” segment. This is where Pepperman talks about why the scene works (or not) and how it uses film elements to tell the story such as camera moves, foreshadowing and sound. You can then take this information and incorporate it into your own films or look for the elements in other movies.
I feel by watching the film first you will see and understand what is being taught. Even if you just read the plot on the Wikipedia page, as I did, you will gain enough of an understanding of the story to follow along with the book. Lots of great information in here using a classic film to teach it. The book covers 29 scenes and dissects them into individual shots. Pepperman also includes the list of cast and crew at the end of the book
Pepperman’s book pays homage to “Seven Samurai”, a film made when story was still the main driving force behind creating them. He uses this classic tale to teach filmmakers techniques used in producing a good movie. No talk of special effects here, just good old fashioned story telling.