The spirit of the DV indie filmmaker lives...and dominates the pages of this kick a-- book! In the opening pages the book gives you a little quiz to see if this book is for you (questions like, "Do you have a $10,000 editing system sitting on a folding card table?" we had to laugh--we did.) Trust us, it's aimed at those that want to make movies with limited means.
This book gives you the information you need to use less money, less time, fewer tools, and new rules--the rules of the new DV generation. The book covers shooting techniqes, editing techniqes, and techniqes we didn't even know existed (like how to push all your equipment to new extremes--be careful, though! These techniqes are NOT in the manual!!!) It even discusses getting "almost legal" digital footage and how to distort it and use it so only you know where it came from.
We laughed and learned all the way through this book. This guy's got a great sense of humor, he's been through hell on more than a few shoots, and he's managed to live the "true" indie life--learn from him, and save some time and money.
SETTING UP YOUR SHOTS
Go buy this book. It may be the best 20 dollar book I've ever seen. The book is really inspirational. I couldn't help reading it and thinking, "Wow, that shot will work for this scene," or "Wow, I can do that instead of a cut there--how cool."
Practically every page of the book has a different type of shot or camera move masterfully illustrated by Jose Cruz. Each page also includes two very simple sections: "What does it look like?" and "Where can I see it." Vineyard has seemingly watched every movie ever made and managed to pull these shots straight from their guts. He then ingeniously remembered to write the movies down, so not only can you read about the shots in his book, you can go down to blockbuster, rent the movies, and watch them yourself.
While this book may seem somewhat simplistic to those that are used to reading film school bibles that make a person drowsy, it's a great reference for beginners and pros alike. And for $19.95, I say run out and get it. Even if you only pull one shot out of this book (my guess is you'll pull more like a hundred) it'll be worth the production value it adds to you next project.
Of course, you can save 20% and help support Access DV by getting it at the link below! Win win! Win win!!!
REBEL WITHOUT A CREW by ROBERT RODRIGUEZ
Ah, yes, and oldie but a goodie. If you are new to the land of Indy filmmaking, you simply have to follow Rodriguez's account of how he made El Mariachi for under $5000 ON FILM!!! This is an incredibly inspiring story of how a guy with no money, who had EVERYTHING working against him (his teachers, his friends, UPS) shot his feature with NO CREW, NO LIGHTS, AND NO SYNC SOUND! And, he funded his movie by subjecting himself to MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS!
(For those of you that will understand how crazy this is: he would film his actors with an old Arriflex that sounded like a sewing machine. Then, he would have his actors REPEAT their performances into a TAPE RECORDER (!!!!!!) and hope it synced up! When it didn't, he cut away!)
Of interesting note is his last chapter entitled "10 minute film school" in which he teaches you, in a few minutes, everything you need to know about making a film. A great, inspirational read, even if THE FACULTY kind of sucked.
Save some bucks and support us by getting it at the link below.
