I received my copy of the Night of the Living Dead Collector's Edition Photo Book in the mail today. I give Lulu credit for doing a nice job in the packaging of the book for shipping, but that's about all they did worth praising.
While neither horribly nor brilliantly designed, ultimately the failing of this book is in the poor production values. The glossy external cover is perfectly acceptable for a trade paperback, but the interior pages are reproduced on par with a black and white photocopy. The copy of the book I received appeared to be miscut, as most interior pages are laid out on a black background, and every page has 1/8" of white on the bottom.
For a book that's all text, using photocopy quality reproduction might be passable, but for a book of photographs, in this case key frames from the film, it just doesn't do the images justice.
While no author is credited, there is a synopsis at the beginning of the book and some notes on the film at the back. Upon a quick review, I noticed a few typos and some factual errors relating the history of the script (confusing Romero's comments in The Zombies That Ate Pittsburgh about having written a story in three parts from which Night evolved as the first; claiming that the sequels he later directed were born out of his original Night script), and a rather amusing statement most likely derived from the focus of Roger Ebert's Reader's Digest article, that makes it sound as if children were actually being scared to death, outraging many parents. I would think so!
Sorry to report that this one is for Night of the Living Dead completists only.
While neither horribly nor brilliantly designed, ultimately the failing of this book is in the poor production values. The glossy external cover is perfectly acceptable for a trade paperback, but the interior pages are reproduced on par with a black and white photocopy. The copy of the book I received appeared to be miscut, as most interior pages are laid out on a black background, and every page has 1/8" of white on the bottom.
For a book that's all text, using photocopy quality reproduction might be passable, but for a book of photographs, in this case key frames from the film, it just doesn't do the images justice.
While no author is credited, there is a synopsis at the beginning of the book and some notes on the film at the back. Upon a quick review, I noticed a few typos and some factual errors relating the history of the script (confusing Romero's comments in The Zombies That Ate Pittsburgh about having written a story in three parts from which Night evolved as the first; claiming that the sequels he later directed were born out of his original Night script), and a rather amusing statement most likely derived from the focus of Roger Ebert's Reader's Digest article, that makes it sound as if children were actually being scared to death, outraging many parents. I would think so!
Sorry to report that this one is for Night of the Living Dead completists only.
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