movie making books are mostly nonsense

cyclone said:
I have found that what makes a film look like a "movie" is coverage. If you review the very first post in this thread, it's coverage.
For me, it comes before perfect lighting and perfect camera movement. Coverage - 'nuf said. You don't just open a briefcase...you set it down, look at it, reach in your pocket, select the right key, insert the key, pop the latch, look around to make sure no one is watching...you get the idea.
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Sounds like an intriguing long take. :evil:
 
Expecting a book to teach you to be a filmmaker makes about as much sense as expecting a book to teach you to be a musician. A book can instruct on core concepts and techniques, give you an understanding of the technology, standards, and physics of what you are doing, and break down examples, much like a music method book can teach you to read music, proper instrumental technique, etc. The only way to learn how to apply those concepts is through practice. An encyclopedic knowledge of music theory will not enable you to improvise on an instrument without years of practice. A book can't tell you what notes to play.

Similarly, a book can tell you about three point lighting but can't tell you how to light a scene. That's the difference between science and art. You can learn to work a camera from a book, but you can't learn how to frame well on the fly. You can learn about story structure from a book, but you can't learn how to create compelling characters. You can learn what a producer does, but not how to problem solve.

The idea is that those books save you some trial-and-error time by giving you a little bit of a boost as you begin. Making a film is like traversing a pitch-black maze, and filmmaking books (or classroom instruction) is like a flashlight. It will certainly make your life easier, but isn't going to do anything FOR you.
 
cyclone said:
I have found that what makes a film look like a "movie" is coverage. If you review the very first post in this thread, it's coverage.
For me, it comes before perfect lighting and perfect camera movement. Coverage - 'nuf said. You don't just open a briefcase...you set it down, look at it, reach in your pocket, select the right key, insert the key, pop the latch, look around to make sure no one is watching...you get the idea.
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Ryan Patrick O'Hara said:
Sounds like an intriguing long take.
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Or, in the wrong hands, a s**tload of shoe leather.

For those not familiar with that term (don't know if it shows up in any of those film books!), that refers to chewing up screen time by showing the entire process instead of setting it up and getting right to the other end, skipping the middle. A lot of student and beginning filmmakers get hung up on business of this type because it seems sort of fascinating, but ultimately doesn't propel the story and in the best-case scenario, gets cut out of the film (and in the worst-case, gets left in). A classic example is a person driving up to a house. To show them pulling up (in a long continuous shot), putting the car in park and turning it off, getting out, pocketing the keys and walking up to the door is pretty damn deadly. In most instances, seeing them pull up and cutting to them walking through the door will tell the same story much more efficienctly.

The exception, of course, is if the story IS the business--in the briefcase example above, if the intent is to build tension about the opening of the briefcase, or there is an artistic or rhythmic reason to go into such detail on this action, then it may serve it well to build a sequence around all of those pieces of business. Otherwise, the sequence can be simplified down significantly.
 
Ryan Patrick O'Hara said:
I have found that what makes a film look like a "movie" is coverage. If you review the very first post in this thread, it's coverage.
For me, it comes before perfect lighting and perfect camera movement.
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aha! this is what Im trying to tell folks. Since El Mariachi everyone has tried to copy what RR did, but what we dont notice is how INCREDIBLY good he was at the technique of building a sequence up from a variation of shots and through (almost constant) crosscutting/parrellel editing. The VARIANT closeups, POV inserts, reaction shots, match cuts across ALTERNATE ANGLES of an action- the guy was so good at what pudovkin calls "constructive editing", that he built up automatic weapon fire from a series of shots!

obviously you cant theorize away the need for practice, but these "basic" techniques are barely touched up on in most texts..


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InHgkJhvT_A
 
In the book "The War of Art", the author argues that as an artist you should be allowed to read 3 books on your particular medium, and that's it. Once you've read them, you need to get working. I would tend to agree, and this is coming from someone who has read dozens of books on filmmaking. The fact of the matter is, most of the books out there are trash, but perhaps even more important is that there are just some things you can't learn from a book. It's the same thing as learning music from a book, in the end it's just not as useful as you might think.

That being said, my 3 books would be:

Sculpting in Time by Tarkovsky
On Directing Film by David Mamet
Hitchcock by Truffaut

EDIT: Can't believe I forgot Directing Actors by Judith Weston. I think I would put that one in over Hitchcock.
 
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jghenderson said:
In the book "The War of Art", the author argues that as an artist you should be allowed to read 3 books on your particular medium, and that's it. Once you've read them, you need to get working.
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cool. i dig it.

I'm keeping:

Film Technique by V.I. Pudovkin
Beginning Filmmakers Guide To Directing by Renee Harmon
Video Shooter by Barry Braverman


Sorry for the misquote Ryan, I cut and pasted a quote and it got all wacky.
 
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