DV Filmmaking: From Start to Finish [With CDROM]

Thanks to the digital revolution, film artists now have a spectacular array of powerful, new, inexpensive tools for creative expression through digital film. The once powerful studios can no longer stifle an artist's creativity. With the power of the Internet, film artists are finding once unimaginable ways to distribute their creations worldwide.

DV Filmmaking: From Start to Finish covers all aspects of the new digital video frontier, for amateurs and professionals alike--from the nuts and bolts of timecode and aspect ratio; to framing, lighting, and sound recording; as well as editing, special effects creation, and distribution.

The book is written for filmmakers at varying experience levels--taking an integrated approach to media production, and emphasizing the ways different aspects of the process work together to create a vital work of digital art:

• Hands-on detailed examination of the artistic aspects of film and video production
• Extensive examples use comprehensive step-by-step exercises for advanced editing techniques
• Scenes from successful films illustrate techniques used by professionals
• Includes a collection of professionally shot video clips, so the user can read and follow along with sets of structured exercises
• Develops a highly refined repertoire of advanced skills in editing, effects creation, title design, and more
• Inspires advanced readers to work with the included clips on their own and experiment with new ideas
• Written for both Mac and PC users and covers advanced uses of both Final Cut Pro and Adobe After Effects

Written in an engaging, accessible style, DV Filmmaking provides a solid foundation of tremendous value to a beginner, while addressing the fine points of filmmaking with a level of sophistication, detail, and insight that even the most worldly director or educator can appreciate. The author draws upon his years of experience teaching at the college and graduate level, his extensive professional background as a media producer, and his unmistakable love of cinema to create a text that's not only easy to learn from, but also fun to read.

Ian David Aronson is a media producer and scholar who lives in New York City. He is a 1997 graduate of the Stanford University Master's Program in Documentary Film and Video, and author of O'Reilly's DV Fillmaking: From Start to Finish. Aronson is also the director/producer of digitaldocumentary.org, which produces social issue documentary and educational media in a variety of electronic formats. His current production, Mi Querida America, follows a group of immigrant teens through their first year of high school in Manhattan and is intended for distribution via DVD and broadband Internet. From 2001 to 2004 Aronson served as Assistant Professor of Digital Media at Ramapo College. He is currently earning a doctorate in the highly selective Educational Communication and Technology program at New York University. Before attending Stanford he worked as a public radio producer and a stringer for The New York Times.