"your cat creeping into a paper bag"

Film The book which dragged me through my MA Screen Studies course and especially my dissertation, Film Art has reached its 10th edition and authors Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell have produced a top to bottom rewrite of the text bringing in some of new techniques they've learnt from writing their wonderful blog this past few years.  They've included an extract and the style is a bit more conversational, grounded, but no less clear or inspirational:

"It helps to imagine that we’re filmmakers too. Throughout this book, we’ll be asking you to put yourself in the filmmaker’s shoes. This shouldn’t be a great stretch. You’ve taken still photos with a camera or a mobile phone. Very likely you’ve made some videos, perhaps just to record a moment in your life—a party, a wedding, your cat creeping into a paper bag. And central to filmmaking is the act of choice. You may not have realized it at the moment, but every time you framed a shot, shifted your position, told people not to blink, or tried to keep up with a dog chasing a Frisbee, you were making choices."

The secret of the book's success is to engage the reader with illustrative examples from new films as a way of drawing readers into exploring the more usual canon, Inglorious Basterds as well as The Bicycle Thieves.