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Book Reviews Books Media

The DV Rebel's Guide 51

Posted by samzenpus from the making-movies dept.
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.
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The DV Rebel's Guide More

The DV Rebel's Guide

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  • Talent? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Were's the chapter on "talent"?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by AK Marc ( 707885 )
      That hasn't been used in movies since the 50s.
    • It's covered in the chapter "arrogance".

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by iSeal ( 854481 )

      Were's the chapter on "talent"?

      There's talk about directing actors in general (with the author recommending "Directing Actors" by Judith Weston), but face it - if you're a DV Rebel (low-budget-indy-filmmaker), you don't really have the funds whereby a chapter on this would be relevant. Your talent consists of a roster of friends, theatre/filmschool buddies, and family.

      I own this book, bought it a weeks ago after listening to an interview with the author. Frankly, what a great purchase. It's one of the

  • Ok, I'm kidding, but...

    If I were a DV Rebel, wouldn't I go all analog?
  • I've always tinkered with the idea of making a low-budget film. Anyone seen Clerks? I wonder what Kevin Smiths take on it is, or it would be nice if he would write a book like this. I'd buy it in a heartbeat :)

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Null537 ( 772236 )
      Robert Rodriguez made a popular low-budget flick, and then wrote a book [wikipedia.org] about it. Interesting story, though it's for analog films not digital, now he tends to mention how much he loves digital.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by HungWeiLo ( 250320 )
        Robert Rodriguez made El Mariachi [imdb.com], later quasi-remade into Desperado [imdb.com], with a budget of only $6,000. He did everything from selling his own blood for fundraising to casting his own family members in the movie.

        On the El Mariachi DVD, there was a special feature called something like "The 10-minute film school of Robert Rodriguez". It probably talks about some of the stuff in his book, like how not to waste film. For example, if somebody throws a gun up to a balcony, but misses the balcony - don't throw the f

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by gobbo ( 567674 )

          On the El Mariachi DVD, there was a special feature called something like "The 10-minute film school of Robert Rodriguez". It probably talks about some of the stuff in his book, like how not to waste film.

          I regularly show this to my students before they undertake a week of guerilla-style indie videomaking. It's a review of some raw footage from El Mariachi analysing how he pulled it off. It's full of tricks that translate from 16mm to DV, because they're about being cheap, cheap, cheap. As he puts it, "once you start that money hose flowing, it's hard to shut it off." The main thing is to be able to shoot with the edit in mind: the same scene from multiple angles to make it look like you have more cameras;

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Apotsy ( 84148 )
          For example, if somebody throws a gun up to a balcony, but misses the balcony - don't throw the film away. Just cut the part after the gun misses the balcony and paste other footage which shows the gun landing on the balcony.

          Good lord, do you realize how obvious something like that is?

          When I was a kid, I used to make silent Super-8 movies without the ability to edit. Think about that. Not only does the movie has to be shot in sequence, but every shot has to be correct. You get one take, and that's all.

    • Robert Rodreguiz wrote the forward to this book.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by penp ( 1072374 )
      you do know Kevin Smith maxed out a bunch of credit cards to make Clerks, right?

  • $30 Film School (Score:3, Interesting)

    by markbt73 ( 1032962 ) on Wednesday April 04, 2007 @03:55PM (#18610697)

    Another great reference, if you're interested, is $30 Film School [amazon.com] by Michael Dean. I bought it a couple years ago when I was going to make a short film (I still am; it's just on the back-burner right now).

    This is the best way I can think of to stick it to the MPAA, though: Go make your OWN movie! You won't make any money, but DIY stuff always makes you feel good.

    • There should have been a burst of new independant films, new independant music, new independant books, all from the Personal Computer.

      Too bad IBM trademarked PC and the population went to sleep. Next thing I knew the PC was lost in the corporate dungeons and the tubes of the internets.

      There was a brief moment, when Babylon 5 was using the Amiga to create it's Computer Graphics, that I thought the breakout could still occur. New sound cards were coming out, and I thought musicians would take advantage of

      • It's not a question of corporate dungeons etc. etc. I know people who were doing computer generated music 30 years ago when that idea was really new and you had to have access to a really serious machine (for its day) to do anything... problem is most people didn't really want to listen to it. Most people still don't want to listen to anything drastically different than what they were exposed to growing up. Take Sitar music or Gamelan... age old music, very popular from whence it came, but most North Americ
        • Very interesting post. Too bad no one modded you up.

          I think you're right on a lot of points. For instance I was reading a few weeks ago that the top CDs sold 30,000 copies recently. A few years ago that wouldn't have been enough to land a CD in the top 30. So sales, and the money, are dropping. Like you, I see hope in this for an independant future.

          The computer is such a powerful tool and its cost is steadily dropping. I think of characters like Gollum from Lord Of The Rings and the backgrounds from

      • Unfortunately only Rap musicians seemed to take note.

        If you think rap musicians are the only ones who took to the computer to create music, you could not be more wrong.
        • You're probably right, but rappers have the visibility where I live. I really don't see any other type of music being sold on the streets of Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, or even Sausalito. All of those cities are in California in case you're not from the US.

          I believe you, I just don't see much evidence here. What are you seeing and in what locations?

    • Actually, you can make quite a bit of money on an indie film that is freely distributed. If the film is relatively popular, an embedded advertisement such as a scene in a local restaurant, or someone using the advertised product can bring a film maker a lot of revenue (especially if he is the seller of the advertised product). You also stick it to the MPAA. The media cartel hates competition, but they can no longer do any thing about it. The garage studio is going to put the media cartel out of business

  • It's really not clear from this review... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Angostura ( 703910 ) on Wednesday April 04, 2007 @04:03PM (#18610821)
    ... whether it is worth buying if you are not an After Effects user.
    • The book is really a-z from acquisition to delivery. If you're looking to shoot on prosumer cameras and edit on prosumer gear, there's something in here for you.

      If you're not using After effects, what are you using? The book concentrates on getting professional level finishing and effects out of prosumer level tools. Basically, with the finishing chapter, he's showing you how to replace a Smoke with AE and some elbow grease. If you're using something higher end (Flame/Nitris/Nuke/etc), it probably got
    • Yes, it's worth it. Although AE is the best generalist compositing tool out there that produces professional results (important, since "rebels" are likely to not have Nike Ad(TM) budgets).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by stripes ( 3681 )
      I have read a few sections of the book and there is a lot in it that isn't After Effects specific (or even DV specific). Things like filming from the bed of a pickup truck to avoid the need to get a film license from many local governments (most places - apparently - only require a license if you put your tripod on the ground -- so you can do handheld and get that shaky "this ain't hollywood" feel, or you can put your tripod in the pickup and roll). I haven't read many books on making a film though, so I
  • Is this a book on post-production or filmmaking? There is a huge, huge difference. If this is a book mainly focused on technical details of production, and you're looking for something about how to *make a film,* please look elsewhere. Filmmaking is a state of mind. It requires loads of thought, introspection and *creativity.*

    The only way to make a film is to have an idea. Anything else is just a waste of time.
    • How insightful... The book covers pre and post as well as production.
      • My point was that focusing solely on production (any and all segments) does not constitute a book about filmmaking. It constitutes a book on film production. Anyone can learn how to plan, stage, light, shoot, etc.; it takes an altogether different mindset to actually come up with a film. Too many "filmmaking" books leave out the crucial fact that you need an idea or *gasp* a story.
        • You're right. This is not a Linda Seger or Robert McKee book. It focuses on getting your story made into a video.
  • If I were to buy a camera this year, what format should it be? I read widely that miniDV is being phased out.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DrSkwid ( 118965 )
      MiniDv cameras are probably going to be replaced by HDV cameras, same 25Mb/s tape transport but mpeg2 encoded.
      They are HDV/DV switchable (or at least the one we have at work is; Sony Z1)
      MiniDV is okay but the sound isn't locked (1/2 frame of drift is the permissable error in the spec.)
      Trouble is that downgrading from HDV to DV can look a bit weird.

      We think that HDMI will replace IEEE1394 to harmonize equipment connectivity (not many IEEE1394 TVs around).

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by daverabbitz ( 468967 )
        I can't see HDMI ever replacing 1394, as they are two completely different technologies for completely different purposes.

        HDMI is a lossy (loss tolerant?) uncompressed digital transmission system for consumer displays with no error correction and no clock synchronisation, from which it would be quite difficult to reconstruct the exact same frame as was transmitted, it also (AFAIK) has no form of time-code or playback control system.

        IEEE-1394 is a multi-peer bus architecture, which supports lossless transmis
    • Get what you like and what you can afford. For my home stuff, I use the video functionality of my Canon Powershot still camera way more than I ever used my miniDV camera.

      If you're really planning on making a movie, or need to shoot long form stuff,, get an HDV camera. The new cameras (like the canon HV20) are around $1100, small and have HDMI ports , so you can plug 'em right into your plasma/whatever, but of more interest to pro video folk (and most likely nerds) you can capture right off the sensor via

  • I think one of the most overlooked tools for an amateur filmmaker is Martin Hash's Animation Master [hash.com]. $300 (cheaper for students). True, it's sold as an animation product, but you can load up your video as a rotoscope and animate (or just plain tinker) over the top of it. People sell "titling" software for more than that, and you can assuredly do the most whizbang titling you can imagine with this feature-jammed package, plus a whole lot more.

    On the downside, any full-featured animation software is darn co

  • D. B. Gilles' The Portable Film School is both more accessible and more insightful. Michael Dean's $30 Film School has a better look at pre-production. Richard Pepperman's The Eye iS Quicker is better for post.

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