Showing posts with label camcorder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label camcorder. Show all posts

Grammar of the Edit, Second Edition Review

Grammar of the Edit, Second Edition
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Grammar of the Edit, Second Edition ReviewLike Roy Thompson's original guide, this second edition focuses not so much on the how of editing but the why. There are lots of technical guides out there for editors, that tell you what you can do and how to do it, but what good editors really need is understanding of what works and why. An editor who understands what to do and why to do it can easily apply that understanding to this or that editing technology. For understanding basic principles of an edit that "works," I don't think there is a better guide than this one (which, for contemporary readers marks a valuable improvement on the previous edition).
Basically, what you can find here is a set of simple rules for what will "cut well" together. The book clearly describes several basic guidelines or principles for how to put shots together in ways that flow and effortlessly convey simple meanings. Of course you can break these rules, and some very good editors have broken them. I think, however, that the author is right to suggest that in such cases the power of such effects rests upon the fact that the editor was well aware that he or she was breaking the rules and wanted the effect upon the audience that would result from the jarring or unsettling (or novel) feeling of something not quite natural (or at least distinctive) being done.
The book in fact identifies several cases in which there would be an exception to the rules and how to solve such cases. The second edition appears on the surface to be significantly different, and it has been updated significantly with illustrations and vocabulary that will speak more directly to readers who will edit almost exclusively on the computer. While the picture on the cover shows a pair of scissors slicing through a piece of celluloid, the book speaks exclusively of editing rather than "cutting" as did the earlier edition. Still, in its essentials, the book remains as useful as always, and as focused on "principles" rather than "techniques." Like the previous edition, the book also emphasizes that editing is a role within a complex production process, and that the editor has very specific professional expectations that are distinct from those of the director, or writer or cinematographer, even if (as in some independent or non-professional projects) the same person happens to be performing some or all of these roles.
Highly recommended for filmmakers at all levels: it will be useful for cinematographers and directors (and home video enthusiasts) as a guide in shooting elements that the editor will be able, later, to put together into a coherent story form. It will also serve for the beginning editor as a convenient distillation of the principles they should take into account in order to avoid jarring the audience and taking them out of the story.Grammar of the Edit, Second Edition Overview

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DSLR Cinema: Crafting the Film Look with Video Review

DSLR Cinema: Crafting the Film Look with Video
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DSLR Cinema: Crafting the Film Look with Video ReviewThe book seems ambitious in its scope -- HDSLR gear, camera techniques, sound, lighting, editing, software, etc. -- however the knowledgeable author, Kurt Lancaster, succeeds in providing a well-developed conceptual framework AND pragmatic specifics to help his readers to understand and achieve success with the complexities of HDSLR filmmaking.
Lancaster offers VERY specific advice about essential gear for a range of budgets. He dissects techniques used in specific examples, citing HDSLR videos for readers to watch at Vimeo and other sites.
I drank the KoolAid some time ago and do share the author's delight at how enjoyable it is to watch well-produced DLSR footage. Although I recall feeling impressed by Vicent Laforet's very clean, professional "Reverie" about two years ago:
vimeo (dot) com / 7151244
But it was the intensity and immediacy of one short piece about the 2010 Nashville flood, shot by Michael Deppisch using a handheld Canon 5D Mark II that really made a deep impression and triggered my deeper interest in learning HDSLR filmmaking:
youtube (dot) com / watch?v=vwCGz1vSh_M
To distinguish the image texture of "conventional/normal video" from "digital film", Lancaster explains in his introduction that the "film look" is a result of the overall image quality and "cinematic approach", not a particular technical spec on the camera or sensor. He also further distinguishes the look of cinema film from the "HDSLR cinema aesthetic".
I'm very new to digital filmmaking (fiction or documentary), but have worked with video for art and for marketing for over 20 years. Over the past four months, I've invested a good deal of time researching everything I could find online about shooting DSLR HD video from:
cinema5d (dot) com
vimeo (dot) com
cheesycam (dot) com
nextwavedv (dot) com
philipbloom (dot) net
blog (dot) vincentlaforet (dot) com / mygear
Lancaster links to some of those same sites from his blog at
kurtlancaster (dot) com / dslr-cinema
Lancaster continues to regularly add blog posts, which I've found helpful as I learn how to get professional sound and video from a Canon 60D.
"DSLR Cinema" covers most of the practical advice I was able to find in those several months of research, and he adds a great deal more applied knowledge which I doubt I could have ever found online, even after many more months of effort. The author seems to genuinely desire that his readers would be successful with these tools and it seems important to him to share both his delight and the wisdom gathered from his and others' experiences.
Because DSLR represents a convergence of video, film and photographic techniques, this book may not be helpful to every type of HDSLR video filmmaker (beginner to pro), but it does exactly meet my needs as I develop a list of gear to pack for my own journey into this exciting, new territory of DLSR film making.
Of course, pro DSLR photographers (like Laforet) are NOT the first to discover the landscape of cinema, much of which was settled long ago by highly-experienced filmmakers, directors, and cinematographers -- it has been over a hundred years since the Lumière brothers began to explore the realm of moving images:
youtube (dot) com / watch?v=4nj0vEO4Q6s
Lancaster works hard at being a native guide in this land and I'm grateful for his experience as I begin to learn how to shoot efficiently and effectively with these new tools.
[My apologies for the spelled out URLs. Amazon strips any URLs from the review, but oddly not from the Comments. I've added the complete review again as a Comment, below. Thanks to Pablo for the suggestion! - Jonathan]
DSLR Cinema: Crafting the Film Look with Video Overview

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High Definition and 24P Cinematography Review

High Definition and 24P Cinematography
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High Definition and 24P Cinematography ReviewThis book almost exclusively discusses the Sony F900 (now superceeded). The author is employed by Panavision and, at the time of writing, has no experience with other cameras.
Particularly when post-production fx are required, one of the most important aspects of any electronic aquisition format is the compression ratio it employs. So I found it somewhat disturbing that this issue was entirely ignored except when critisizing the Viper for having to have a hard-disk recorder because it can't compress the image (and yet the F900 is 4:2:2 with high compression).
However, the author did mention Star Wars II as an example of the quality of the Panavised camera, yet this production employed a hard-disk recorder because of the problems caused by HDCAM compression.
I think the book shouldn't have such a general title when the contents are dominated by something so specific and reads like a sales brochure.High Definition and 24P Cinematography Overview

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