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

images) effects to handle, Mann had a straight choice between the look of film celluloid and the look of video. In what may be a crucial turning point, he chose video for the way it dealt with city lights in his nocturnal thriller.

DV has also entered the theatre. Many cinemas are converting to digital projection, using digital copies of films or showing movies beamed digitally by satellite. The pan-European CinemaNet agency beams new movies from emerging filmmakers direct to over 180 theatres across the continent.

Being a filmmaker today

In many ways, the changing nature of filmmaking is becoming more and more geared towards the short movie. Features remain - and probably always will - the most profitable pinnacle of the indus­try, but are quickly being outgunned by the sheer volume of other forms of moving image. At the centre of being a filmmaker today is the number of ways the moving image can be viewed: on mobile phones, on laptops, palmtops, on portable DVD players, in screenings in local pubs and bars, on the web, on satellite TV and - most infrequently for many people - in theatres. In practical terms this means that the steps toward making movies involves working in one or all of these various outlets. It could be that seeing a film in a cinema is soon a specialist activity.

The effect of all this is to influence the way that filmmakers use their art. Filmmakers increasingly see features as a chance to experiment further with ideas developed in their day jobs in promos, motion graphics and ads, and it is quite likely that their reputation is sustained and enlarged by this work. Filmmakers going to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry) were overheard rec­ommending the movie on the basis of his experimental music promos. The same could be said of Jonathan Glazer after his groundbreaking Guinness ad and Spike Jonze after his energetic and surreal shorts.

Not long ago, the short movie was a stepping stone to making features and had almost no exposure beyond specialist art centres. Now, filmmakers still expect to launch themselves into feature-directing careers, but the level at which the short film gets seen has massively expanded. The web and phones have made sure that films of just a few minutes or less get potentially huge audiences. The good news for low-budget filmmakers is that this is precisely where most people have to start their careers.