Arts & Entertainment

Brighton Filmmaker Shares Experience in New Book

Kevin Lindenmuth's third how-to book was released earlier this month.

Ever since he was a child, Kevin Lindenmuth always had a passion for writing and making movies.

The Brighton resident grew up to be a successful independent filmmaker who spent 13 years in the industry in New York before moving back to Michigan.

Now, he's sharing the experience of not only himself, but two dozen other filmmakers in his third how-to book, How to Make Movies: Low-Budget/No-Budget Indie Experts Tell All.

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"This third book is sort of a follow up to the two previous books I did," he said. "With those, it was basically asking all these filmmakers similar questions - how do they go about getting their actors, how do they go about putting together production, getting their music. And a lot of these people don't know each other, but because they all made a successful independent production and got it distributed, they all do things sort of the same way. There's a right way to do something and a wrong way to do something. It's really interesting reading two dozen filmmakers all basically saying the same thing in a different way." 

The book was released earlier this month, more than 10 years after his previous works Making Movies on Your Own and The Independent Film Experience.

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Lindenmuth got into writing the how-to books because he began getting emails - and still does - asking him questions on how to successfully make a film.

"People think it's easy," he said. "They think they can just have a really good camera and script-writing software and they're set. No - first of all, they have to know how to write a script. It's not software that writes your script for you. And you can have the best camera, but if you don't know how to shoot, what's the point?"

The biggest difference between his newest book and his first, which was published in 1998, is money.

"In those first two books, the filmmakers I interviewed made a living doing this or at least supplemented their income," Lindenmuth said. "This book was written a decade later and one of the main questions I asked was 'can you make a living at this now?' And no one says they can make a living at this now. And these are all professional filmmakers. They're just doing it because they love it. It's changed quite a bit."

Each book features different filmmakers, according to Lindenmuth.

"I didn't just pick anybody, I picked filmmakers whose movies I liked," he said. "I like them all. They all have different things to offer."

Lindenmuth began his career producing low-budget horror and science-fiction movies that were distributed to Blockbuster and world wide. He then branched out into documentary film making, some of which were broadcast nationally on PBS. 

Lindenmuth got his love of horror films from his grandmother. 

"When I was 5-years-old, I remember staying over her house and staying up late watching 'Creature Feature' with her," he said. "Even when I was a teenager, when I wasn't old enough to get into the "Friday the 13th' movies, I went with her. All the 80s slasher movies I would see with her because she loved them."

"But he's a big chicken," Lindenmuth's wife, Kate added, laughing. "I can scare him so bad that he screams like a little girl."

Lindenmuth's latest work, a massive, half-a-million word genre film review book titled, Horror Movies: The Good, The Bad and the So Bad They’re Good, will be published later this year by Crossroad Press. 

How to Make Movies is available for purchase on Amazon or Barnes & Noble Booksellers. For more information, like Lindenmuth's Facebook page.  


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