PRACTICAL DV FILMMAKING

Practical DV FilmMaking

• Overview
• Inside video
• Films and how they work
• Pre-production
• Production tools
• Production aesthetics
• Post-production tools
• Post-production aesthetics
• Careers and distribution
• Mapping the industry
• Glossary of film and video terms

Inside video

What is digital technology?

To some people the so-called DV revolution spells the end of a certain kind of movie: the end of cel­luloid and all the associations that we have with it - projectors, rolls of film and the romance of Hollywood. To others, though, it is more than a revolution or a change in the industry - it's year zero. To filmmakers who could only dream of committing their ideas to moving images, the DV age is the start of a career, not just a change in one, as the affordability of cameras and editing equipment makes it possible to get involved.

DV is here to stay, is reaching far wider into the mainstream of filmmaking than people thought pos­sible and, in a few years, has affected every part of the video and film industries from Hollywood down to indie features, and finally - and most dramatically - the low-budget emerging filmmaker. In most revolutions of the technological sort (and maybe the political) it is those at the top that seem to bene­fit most financially, but the DV revolution is one that bucks the trend; big money producers agree DV makes a difference to the costs of a film, but to the filmmaker at the bottom it is the deciding factor in being able to make one at all. But before we run off with our winnings, it is worth looking more closely at this gift horse and trying to understand why it works so well and how it offers us what it does.

Digital video

Digital is called digital because it records information by the use of numbers: ones and zeros, which correspond to 'on' or 'off' commands. It has no variables as does the wave of analog; a signal is either one or the other, black or white, yes or no. This means that when the tape signal degrades after copy­ing or playing - which happens however hard you try to avoid it - it alters only the strength of the yes or no, the on or off, the one or zero. It still gets read as one or the other, regardless of the strength of the signal. This is why digital is a better method of storing and reproducing information.

It is the reproduction of it that is crucial, since the ability to edit and distribute without loss of quality is to remain true to a director's original intentions.

Filmmakers used to rely on 16 mm film for their first forays into movies, and VHS tape never really caught on as an acceptable replacement. Filmmakers care about the way a picture looks and digital

Figure 2.1 The digital signal on the right works by attaching a quantity to the wave