So convinced is Francis Ford Coppola that "live cinema" will become a powerful medium within the larger film industry that he has crafted this instructional book, filled with lively anecdotes and invaluable lessons—a boon for cinema addicts, film students and teachers alike. As digital film-making can now be performed by one director or by a collaborative team working across the Internet, it is a matter of time before cinema auteurs will create "live" films of the highest creative quality that will be sent instantly to be viewed in faraway theatres. Whether recounting his boyhood obsession with film, tracing the origins of "live cinema" through a history of early film and 1950s television or presenting state-of-the-art techniques on everything from rehearsals to equipment, Coppola demonstrates that the spontaneity of "live cinema" will transport film-making into a new era of creativity previously unimaginable.

"Live Cinema is packed with detailed diaried notes as well as other, directorial, observation, as Coppola outlines the concept-to-reality. Worth a skim through, whatever your present industry role." -- Screentrade
"Part technical manifesto, part riveting history of live movies and TV, and part freewheeling artistic reflection, Live Cinema compactly presents Coppola's innovative ideas, depth of knowledge, and enduring passions in the live cinema space." -- Entertainment Weekly
"... the ideas conjured in this brief, filmy volume will interest any movie nut." -- Jonathan Dean, Stage & Screen Books of the Year 2017 - The Sunday Times
"Live Cinema and its Techniques is a short, accessible, vividly personal, defiantly oddball and fascinating book." -- Viewfinder
"Part manifesto, part instruction manual, Live Cinema is a melange of film theory, professional advice, personal history, television history, work notes and Coppola’s assorted thoughts on live film production." -- Times Literary Supplement

Francis Ford Coppola, the Academy Award–winning director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, is creating a four-part "live cinema" movie based on his own family’s multigenerational history. He lives in San Francisco.