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The DV Rebel's Guide
Michael Flynn writes "The DV Rebel's Guide is broken down into chapters that follow the basic timeline of a
film's production. The first chapter covering the overall philosophy of the authors
approach and the rest focused on the making of your film: Pre-production,
Production and Post production. A great deal of the book is focused, to
very good effect, on post production."
Read on for the rest of Michael's review
The DV Rebel's Guide
author
Stu Maschwitz
pages
320
publisher
Peachpit Press
rating
9
reviewer
Michael Flynn
ISBN
0321413644
summary
A` step by step guide to making your own film
Stu Maschwitz is one of the founders of The Orphanage. A
visual effects house with credits in such films as Sin City, The Day After
Tomorrow, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Prior to founding The
Orphanage, Stu had a stint at ILM.
Stu's writing style is very easygoing and at times irreverent. Regarding his short film that he includes on the DVD, he points out "The Last Birthday Card was made on an Apple G3 and took over two days to render. I chose to take these enforced breaks from working on my film as opportunities to strike up a new hobby, one that I still practice today: staring at my After Effects progress bar".
In each chapter, a number of Hollywood action films is referenced. At the end of each chapter, the films that are mentioned are listed so that the reader can put them onto their NetFlix list or run over to the local video store and rent them to see first hand, the techniques that are referenced.
His pragmatic approach to getting the job done and using whatever tools are at hand or that you can build is highly effective. My only complaint is that there are a number of specifics regarding After Effects that are not covered in Stu's book. To his defense, this is not an After Effects tutorial. You are expected to know how to use AE before your dive into Stu's methods.
His suggestions for examining the area around you to utilize as much of what you have at hand is unique and effective. Suggesting the use of glass elevators for simulating crane master shots as well as people movers in airports for dolly shots is exemplary of the approach. Additionally, for the wood working inclined filmmaker, a very nice design is included for building a hand-holding rig for your DV camera (Stu eschews hand holding a DV camera due to the light weight that generally translates to a very shaky image).
The book details adding effects that Stu used in his short film "The Last Birthday Card". The film illustrates a number of useful techniques such as compositing a helicopter into a scene, practical bullet hits and squib simulations. He also includes high quality squib footage on the DVD for the rebel filmmaker to use in his/her own projects.
The last section of the book covers color correction in great detail. It provides techniques for using the color correction tools in After Effects as well as using a layered approach to this process. To illustrate the approaches that he suggests, he provides a number of After Effects projects on the DVD that the reader can use to follow along with the examples.
Stu also, wisely, includes one of the chapters of the book on the DVD in PDF format. This is the camera chapter. With DV cameras changing at such a rapid pace, this allowed him to provide very up to date information on DV cameras that might have been obsolete by the time the book had come back from the printer.
He provides a number of very nice scripts and presets on the DVD for a variety of effects as well as tools for color correcting. The film strip script that allows you to compare a number of shots at once for color/look management is particularly nice.
Finally,Stu maintains a lively message board devoted to the book where folks can ask questions and Stu is very prompt about providing answers. Having read over 200 books on film making, this book is the only one that will end up on the set of my next film.
You can purchase The DV Rebel's Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Stu's writing style is very easygoing and at times irreverent. Regarding his short film that he includes on the DVD, he points out "The Last Birthday Card was made on an Apple G3 and took over two days to render. I chose to take these enforced breaks from working on my film as opportunities to strike up a new hobby, one that I still practice today: staring at my After Effects progress bar".
In each chapter, a number of Hollywood action films is referenced. At the end of each chapter, the films that are mentioned are listed so that the reader can put them onto their NetFlix list or run over to the local video store and rent them to see first hand, the techniques that are referenced.
His pragmatic approach to getting the job done and using whatever tools are at hand or that you can build is highly effective. My only complaint is that there are a number of specifics regarding After Effects that are not covered in Stu's book. To his defense, this is not an After Effects tutorial. You are expected to know how to use AE before your dive into Stu's methods.
His suggestions for examining the area around you to utilize as much of what you have at hand is unique and effective. Suggesting the use of glass elevators for simulating crane master shots as well as people movers in airports for dolly shots is exemplary of the approach. Additionally, for the wood working inclined filmmaker, a very nice design is included for building a hand-holding rig for your DV camera (Stu eschews hand holding a DV camera due to the light weight that generally translates to a very shaky image).
The book details adding effects that Stu used in his short film "The Last Birthday Card". The film illustrates a number of useful techniques such as compositing a helicopter into a scene, practical bullet hits and squib simulations. He also includes high quality squib footage on the DVD for the rebel filmmaker to use in his/her own projects.
The last section of the book covers color correction in great detail. It provides techniques for using the color correction tools in After Effects as well as using a layered approach to this process. To illustrate the approaches that he suggests, he provides a number of After Effects projects on the DVD that the reader can use to follow along with the examples.
Stu also, wisely, includes one of the chapters of the book on the DVD in PDF format. This is the camera chapter. With DV cameras changing at such a rapid pace, this allowed him to provide very up to date information on DV cameras that might have been obsolete by the time the book had come back from the printer.
He provides a number of very nice scripts and presets on the DVD for a variety of effects as well as tools for color correcting. The film strip script that allows you to compare a number of shots at once for color/look management is particularly nice.
Finally,Stu maintains a lively message board devoted to the book where folks can ask questions and Stu is very prompt about providing answers. Having read over 200 books on film making, this book is the only one that will end up on the set of my next film.
You can purchase The DV Rebel's Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Robert Rodriguez made a popular low-budget flick, and then wrote a book about it. Interesting story, though it's for analog films not digital, now he tends to mention how much he loves digital.
... whether it is worth buying if you are not an After Effects user.