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Men from the UN allow Ishmael to come to the UN in NYC and tell his story, he does so and be-friends a story teller Laura Simms. He is then returned back to Sierra Leone where he is re-encountered with war, his uncle who has been watching over him dies and he decides he has to leave now or he'll fall back into the grasp of war. He calls Laura, and he is brought to the embassy where is brought to NYC to live.

The boys are taken by UNICEF soldiers, where they bring them to a rehibiliation center to return them to a regular mental state. The boys fight and attack each other since they're bascially animals. After one night of brawling and stealing, Ishmael begins bleeding badly, and is brought to the hospital. Ishmael finially begins returning to normality, through kindness and AAA like circle chats with other soldiers.

Ishmael has turned into a killing machine. The army raids rebels and civilians for supplies. To stay amped for the raids, Ishmeal begins doing drugs, like smoking weed, snorting cocaine, heroin, and more white tablets. He is selected to particpate in a "throat slitting competition". He wins by slitting his prisoners throats in a zig zag shape. He now only finds happiness in his drugs and action movies.

The group is then captured by the military, they're given easy jobs until told that they're surrounded by rebels. They are trained on how to fight, and then thrown into battle, Ishmeal is given some "white tablets" to ease his headaches and amp him up to fight. He kills a few men, and watches some of his friends die. He returns to the camp were he is scared and is given more drugs to calm him. He goes to fight more.

The group goes to the village where Junior is said to be, they run into a old friend of Ishmeal, Gasemu, who runs a banana farm. They help carry some of the bananas to the village, but as they approach it figure out its under attack, they hide and wait for the invasion to end. They then go into the hut that is said to have had Ishmael's family in it, theirs no one, but also no bodies. This pisses Ishmael off.

The pyschological aspect of the whole situation is now heavily affecting Ishmael, he thinks a lot about his brother, family, and all the terrible things that are going on. They start to tell all of their individual stories of the raids on their towns. They then get to a nearby town where someone gives Ishmael news that his brother was just recently here, it gets Ishmael very excited.

Ishmael is now by himself, he is walking through the farm/village area after the raid and see's the destruction. He then goes into a forest where he is chased out by a pack of wild pigs. He then runs into a group of boys, some of which he remembers from before the rebels attacked. They go to a town were once again they are believed to be soldiers, however they are soon found to be just a group of innocent boys.

Really had to marathon read the rest of it to finish it up. The boys are able to escape being captured, but are captured by a group of guards, since they are believed to be rebels since they travel as a group, but an old friend reveals their not rebels. They then go to work at a nearby farm, where the group is seperated during a raid, Ishmael is seperated from his brother (never sees him again). (Rest on

So at this point the group has been traveling for quite some time, they're exhausted and hungry. They try to mug a little kid of his corn, but the kids parents come out, and actually understand their struggle and offer them some food. That held them for a bit, but they need more and head to a nearby town, but they end up getting caught by a bunch of rebels are are forced into a group by gun point.

Now, it goes back to the group simpley wondering around, curious if their family and friends are okay, and scared about what could happen next. They are approached by a messanger with a mark carved into the him with a bayonet. He warns that the soldiers who did that will be heading this way soon, and plan on snatching a few kids to serve for them. Soon they do attack, but they are able to evade the rebels.

Ishmael has now started having a nightmare, of which he wakes up form, to for the first time, has him be in NYC instead of Africa. Although it quickly goes back to him in a village, now a child soldier. They attack a village for supplies, they massacure the remaining villagers, and shocking of most, are celebrating by eating the stolen food and such while sitting on the people they've killed.

At this point, the group has now tried to return to their town, but in a town that was between where they where, and their home they say the refuges from their home, bloody, beaten, people carrying their dead babies and cars driving by with dead, shot up bodies in the back. They decide its far to dangerous to return to their home, and debate about what their next actions should be.

The story is about a kid named Ishmael Beah who at the age of 12 was exposed to the rebellion/war occuring in his country of Sierra Leone. The book starts with him, his brother Junior, and his friends Tallio and Mohamed. They're going to a town 16 miles from their home to perform in a talent show, a rap/dance act. When there they find out their home got attacked by rebels.

At the end he just summarized the rest of the story, finishing with selling his buisness to his son, and then just settling down .

This part goes over how Phil and his brother Si started their duck-call buisness, and what it turned into, and how it eventually expanded to become the buisness it is today after his son Willie bought the buisness from him.

Phil has now started his family, with his wife and has had 2 of his kids, he actually become divorced for a bit due to his intense drinking, but with him finding his ways and Christanity, he's began trying to change and get his family to forgive him.

This book is about the life of Phil Robertson, the grandfather on the show Duck Dynasty. Now I had heard a lot about this book, since its about a person on a funny show, you would think it'd be funny, however its quite the opposite. It shows the grandfather's expirences growing up, poorer then you'd imagine, who'd literally have to hunt to feed himself. He also played football in college which was ruined by drinking.

For the last part of the book, it goes into Color Correction, which is the 4th/Final step of Post-Production, and it went more into detail here then any other step of "Post-Pro" and luckly that's the part of Post-Pro that I know the least about.

It finishes off the Production section with the last bit of stunts, including cars, and how to now die while doing stunts with them (It was actually pretty helpful). It then starts the last stage of film-making, Post-Production (Editing, VFX, Sound, Color). It doesn't go to deep into each part, something I didn't like, so this section didn't really teach me anything new, but its still always fun.

In this part of the book, Stu goes over Matt Paintings, a technique where you digitaly replace a background, so that the setting seems like it's in a differnt place. He then goes over guns, how to use them, using fake/toy guns vs. real guns and the benifits of using one or the other. He then goes over "debris" effects, which are effects like squibs (Blood hits on bodies), ricochets, etc.

So now, its gone into the how to's of effects, both practical (Real) and visual (CGI). He goes on how, pretty much in effects, like much of film making, its all an illusion, and some of the basic stuff film makers will do to trick their audience. He goes on how to do miniatues, which is actual one of the few things so far in the book I really had no idea how to do.

So now, Stu (the writer) has finished his part on pre-production, with the last bit of planning and then choiceing you camera, lenses, and any other thing you may need for your camera. He then began to get into Production (Filming of the film). He went over ways to stabalize your camera with dollies, sliders, jibs, etc. Simple ways to light your scene without spending 100s of dollars.

The book is about the basics of making an action video. So far a lot of the stuff is review, thats why I've avoided this book for so long, but its always nice to hear how other people handle certain things, since there is never only 1 right way in film making. So far it has gone over the basics of Pre-Production (writing, storyboarding, planning, casting, etc.)and how to plan a budget.

Rodgiruez has now released his film El Mariachi to the theaters with incredible suscess. It's weird how when he originally made it, he was planning on simple making it for $10,000 and selling it to this Mexican DVD retailer for $15,000 and now its getting the recongition of a AAA movie.

At this point Robert Rodgiruez has finished his film El Mariacai and has now got in contact with big companies like Mirmax who saw his film. They're debating between maybe just selling the original version or re-making it to release in theaters,, but to re-make it because the original one was made for only $7,000.

Robert Rodgiruez is now in post-production (Editing/VFX/Sound/Color/Etc.) for his film El Maricai, so far its a pretty intresting book, one of the big reasons I read it was to learn from these people experiences and tactics of film making, and I have learned a few things from it.

The book is pretty good so far, its a biography about the director Robert Rodgiruez. So far he had talked about how/where he's grown up. Things he did in his pre-directing days for money, like being a test subject for medicines. He's also began his first feature film, El Mariaci, the movie that'd make him famous.