Others say...

"A strong reference for digital film making process"
DV Filmmaking for Ian David Aronson gives you in 18 chapter a coverage for the production, post-production and distribution process of the digital film making.
The book starts with basic digital Cinematography principles. It covers he process stages such as composing shoots, lighting, shooting, working with cameras, audio, still images and titles.
This book doesn't give you a specific software tutorial, but if you are working learning with video production and video editing program, you should get a background about the whole film making process. However, this book gives you a strong background in this industry. I find this book useful for animators, multimedia designers and creative directors.

The two appendixes in the end of the book gives you a tips about getting your work in various media and selling your products.


"Great Resource, Great Job!"
DV Filmmaking- Start To Finish has been a great resource for my own first feature film Hot Rod Girls Save The World.
I had checked DV Filmmaking out from the Seattle Public Library last week, now I must buy one for my personal library. I find myself refering to it again and again.
Great Job!
D.A. Sebasstian
Go-Kustom Rekords & Films

"A great book that gave me the answer !"
A great book!
"DV Filmmaking" is an excellent book for anyone who wants to go beyond the basics of digital video.

I recently completed a video-based project for my M.A. thesis, and used this book as my guide. Each time I encountered problems, this book gave me the answer. For example, after I shot, I noticed some severe lighting trouble in a few very important interviews and I started to panic because I didn't have enough time to shoot them again. I had more than three hours of interview footage that looked pale, shady, and just plain depressing. Frustrated, I opened this book. The solution was there, in the section on color correction!!! I could fix my footage so that it was not only usable but looked really good.

I also relied on the section on compression and encoding to make
professional quality video for the Internet (something I would not have been able to do otherwise).

This book covers all aspects of the video production process, from planning, to production, and distribution. I'd like to
recommend it to anyone who is new to the world of digital video, as well as people who want to take their work beyond the level of
point-and-shoot to make something really creative.

"Heavily weighted towards post-production"
Up front: I liked this book. However, I don't think the blurb or other reviews give a very accurate picture of it.
Good points:
- The book gives a very good general overview of all the steps involved in a DV production.
- It goes into quite a lot of detail on the editing and post-production side, especially for green/bluescreen projects.
- It's recent (pretty much current at the time of writing this review).
- Great layout, easy to read, good included materials.

On the down side:
- On the production side, it's too general for anyone but the absolute beginner.

Personally, I was more interested in the hands-on aspects of production. Things like setting up good three-point lighting, framing, camera and boom handling, shock-mounting and wind-gagging mics, balancing a tripod head, and so on. The type of things that pro's learn with experience, and would be valuable to hand down to relative beginners. Things like essential gear lists for different types of shooting, and what to look for in tripods, mics, filters, etc. specifically for DV cameras, would have also been very useful to me. You will find very little of the above in this book.

As I result, I think the "From Start to Finish" subtitle is a bit of a misnomer (hence only 3 stars). The "Start" and "Finish" parts are fine - it's the middle that is lacking depth. If you're coming to the field absolutely cold, or are more interested in editing (especially with alpha-channels), this book is very good.

However, if your needs sound similar to mine, you may want to investigate more production-oriented titles.

"Great book! Lots of fun!"
Are you an aspiring filmmaker? Do you want to create films, but aren't sure where to start? Are you currently an amateur filmmaker, but need to tune some of your skills? This book doesn't just show you how to be a filmmaker, it lets you follow along with sample projects on the included CD.

Most of the book concentrates on producing good video. The author discuss topics including lighting, special effects, sound and sound editing, nonlinear editing, compositing images, and color correction. I was most impressed with the examples in the book, which illustrate many of the concepts with a sample movie project (which can be found on the accompanying CD-ROM), or discuss how a familiar movie utilized the concept (e.g. color matching in Open Water). These types of illustrations really make the filmmaking concepts come alive.

The last section of the book discusses how to release your finished product. Once the film editing is complete, the book discusses how to distribute your film-perhaps on DVD, perhaps with 5.1 sound-and what some of the ins and outs of each option are. Finally, the author discusses the basics of negotiating a distribution deal for your film.

I was very impressed with the depth and breadth of content in this book. I would highly recommend it to any aspiring DV filmmaker.