Digital Filmmaking: The Changing Art and Craft of Making Motion Pictures

Digital Filmmaking is the professional ¦bible¦ of the new era in filmmaking. This book details the procedural, creative, and technical aspects of preproduction, production, and post-production within a digital filmmaking environment. Readers will understand not only what new digital methods and techniques are redefining the filmmaking process, but also how the evolution into digital filmmaking can be used to achieve greater creative flexibility as well as cost and time savings.


Digital Filmmaking: The Changing Art and Craft of Making Motion Pictures thoroughly explains vital concepts, including digitization, compression, digital compositing, nonlinear editing, and on-set digital production and relates traditional film production and editing processes to those of digital techniques.

By far the most comprehensive book on the subject, Digital Filmmaking details how each stage of the traditional filmmaking process is being augmented by digital processes. Featuring interviews with leading filmmakers, including James Cameron and George Lucas, this book details how today's filmmakers are using digital techniques to enhance their creativity and to realize their imaginations.

Thomas A. Ohanian has worked on award winning commercials, documentaries, feature films, and television shows during his 17 years as an editor. A 1993 Emmy winner for the co-invention of the Avid Media Composer, a digital nonlinear editing system, he is also a winner of a 1994 Academy Award for Scientific and Engineering Achievement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Mr. Ohanian lectures extensively on digital nonlinear production and post-production techniques, is a visiting editor at The Edit House, and the author of Digital Nonlinear Editing (Focal Press).

Michael E. Phillips owns and operates The Edit House in Boston, a digital post-production facility that offers the latest technology to independent filmmakers. He has served as digital editing consultant for the Columbia released film The Professional. He is also the film production specialist for Avid Technology where he helped develop the Film Composer; for which he was the co-recipient of the 1994 Academy Award for Scientific and Engineering Achievement from the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences. In 1987, Mr. Phillips was a winner at the New England Film Festival with his film The Chair.

Digital Filmmaking provides a clear overview of the traditional filmmaking process, then goes on to illuminate the ways in which new methods accomplish old tasks. It explains vital concepts, including digitization, compression, digital compositing, nonlinear editing, and on-set digital production and relates traditional film production and editing processes to those of digital techniques. In the "Industry Viewpoints" sections in each chapter various filmmakers discuss their use of digital techniques to enhance the creative process.