It’s the making of the movie based on the book that is now referred to as “The Twilight Phenomenon.”

It’s a small hardcover book that is written in the style of a scrapbook, including photos of the set, scenery, cast and crew, news clippings, sketches done both by the storyboard artist and Catherine Hardwicke herself, and tons of side notes and facts.

You get to learn all the dirty little secrets of the director and how she made this movie come alive.

It’s very similar to the “Twilight: The Complete Illustrated Movie Companion” in it’s sense of technical style and photos. The difference is that the Movie Companion is physically bigger and thus the photos are much more distinct, but on the negative side, it’s far more detailed from a technical perspective. Unless you’re in the movie business, it’s just a bunch of boring jargon. See the review here:

http://justkickinit.ca/2008/12/31/twilight-movie-companion-by-mark-cotta-vaz/

In this way, I prefer the Director’s Notebook. Hardwicke tones down all the technical aspect leaving in only what’s necessary. Plus, there is something better about reading it directly from the director’s mouth.

All of the words are written in “hand-writing” and at times I find it illegible. I had to take breaks otherwise my eyes would get a bit sore from struggling to read. It’s very unique to anything I’ve ever read before, and I liked the difference. It just took some adjusting.

I’d recommend this book to all the Twilighters out there. You just can’t go wrong!
If you have to choose between the Companion and the Notebook, I’d choose the Notebook. It’s got a lot of the same information and pictures so you’re not missing anything.

If you’re only looking for the pictures, choose the Companion – bigger is better, right?

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If you are not interested in the movie business, or Twilight in general than this is clearly NOT the book for you. I, on the other hand, found it very interesting to see just how many people it takes to do certain tasks. Because there are so many jobs involved, from this point on I will refer to each person as ‘the crew’, this way I do not confuse any job titles and accidentally offend anyone.

No one ever assumes that making a movie is easy, but when it seems that everything is against you to start with, it’s far more complex. The entire cast and crew had to work with the weather. The movie takes place in a small town called Forks, which is the cloudiest place in the Continental U.S. and is probably known best for it’s rain. The crew found a place resembling Forks in New Jersey and filmed most of the movie there. They had to deal with hailstorms and other severe weather conditions, but as they say in showbiz – the show must go on.

To be honest, I didn’t understand a lot of the language, or maybe it just didn’t interest me for long enough to retain anything. I started reading this book before the movie came out and I loved to look at the pictures but other than that, the information was lost on me. Then I saw the movie and things made more sense.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants a future in the movie industry AND likes the Twilight movie. Or perhaps like me, a collector of all things Twilight, the pictures are enough to get you by.

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I am all for people making comic book scenes, drawings to music, or pictures in slide show format. I think it’s great that people are as passionate as I am, more creative, and are willing to share their work. But alas, here is where I start venting. If you put together a slide show of pictures of a movie (Twilight) to a song (any song of your choice, but say one that’s in Twilight also for argument sake) then please do NOT add pictures of other movies.

Rob Pattinson plays Edward Cullen in Twilight. Fabulous. He also played Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter series. Equally fabulous. Putting a slide show together called “Twilight”, featuring music in Twilight, with clips of Edward and the other characters, is excellent… Throwing in random shots of Cedric – well now that is just a slap in the face.

Cedric Diggory does NOT equal Edward Cullen. Yes, they were both done by Rob Pattinson but really folks they’re different. If you want to put together a slide show of Harry Potter vs Twilight, by all means – but at least label it accordingly.

And another thing – amateur spoof films – they are not remotely funny and no one is interested. You want to make that on your spare time, go right on ahead – don’t waste my time by posting things like that on the Internet. They only get hits because of how it’s labelled and people are royally disappointed with what they see… disappointment followed by venomous rage.

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