World War Z: The Art of Film Book Review

Screenplays have always been an obsession for me. I have quite a collection of scripts, whether it is in the book format sold in stores or found online, printed out and bound together. I just love to read them. This made the new World War Z: The Art of Film book a special treat for me.

Basically, the book is the screenplay with some amazing behind-the scenes photographs from the movie included. As a big fan of the World War Z movie, it was really nice to read the script format, and just to clear things up, this is the final shooting script so it includes all the re-writes and doesn’t really mention the script problems that delayed the release of the film.

Even if you are not interested in the screenplay itself, this book has so much more than that to offer.

Other than the shots from the film (the first large scale photos from the movie in the book is the planes bombing the bridge), there are also a ton of photos and drawings that prevent a nice making-of for those fans who love the creation of films like this. On pages 14-18, there are storyboards showing the setup to the scene where the fighter jets blow up the bridge. This gives you a chance to see how they planned out the scenes (in amazingly detailed drawings) and then see the actual photo from the film of the event happening.

On page 23 is another example of what this book excels at. There is a shot of Glascow, taken by the production crew before filming. Then, we see step-by-step how the CGI team added buildings and landscaping to turn Glascow into Philadelphia. These photographs and images are accompanied by quotes by members of the production team, talking about what they did and how the accomplished these feats.

There are also quotes from the movie captioning some of the photos, and at other points, quotes from the cast and crew talking about the story and movie in general. Basically, what you get here is a mini commentary, similar to that from a DVD commentary track, but in book format.

The script ends on page 129, but there are 31 pages left after that which focuses on the zombie makeup, effects and CGI, and these photos are amazing for anyone who loves zombies. There is commentary here also from animation consultants, costume and makeup designers and more, as they talk about how each zombie has to be unique and different than the others around them.

The book ends with a look at the tools they used in the movie and finally a look at the green screen shooting.

By the end, World War Z: The Art of Film is an exhaustive book that lets readers know a ton of information about World War Z as well as including the full screenplay and some amazing photographs. If you are a person who loves watching how films are made, as I am, this is a book you should check out.