Reviews
Filmmakers
Handbook - by Steven Ascher & Edward Pinkus
A Comprehensive Guide For
The Digital Age
A Plume Book published by the Penguin
Group
Review by James MacGregor
If visualising your film means
the picture you see in your mind’s eye from reading the script, you need this
book. If, like me, you are not a tech-head and the thought of aspect ratios and
their post implications is a mystery and you would not know a "B"
winding from a pepper fresnel, this one’s for you.
Billed as the authoritative
guide to filmmaking from fundraising to distribution, the book achieves this in
clear, accessible language using current up-to date information. Unusually for
an American publication, it recognises that there’s a big wide world outside
the US of A, where films are also made and where sometimes things are done a
differently. That’s a good indicator of the meticulous research and clear
thinking that has gone into this publication and why it has a 20-year history as
a filmmaker resource.
It’s clear the authors are
practitioners; Steven Ascher is an award winning filmmaker, a Harvard graduate
who taught filmmaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The MIT film
section was founded by Edward Pincus, a pioneer of the personal documentary, who
taught filmmaking there and at Harvard.
Each of the eighteen chapters
is a detailed guide to one aspect of film production, from camera to film image,
through picture, dialogue and sound editing to a full exposition of what goes on
in film labs and why. Each specialist chapter is a handbook in itself, with
explanatory diagrams, photos and sketches that support the text and put it in a
physical context for clear understanding. Nine short appendices form instant
guides in a number of useful areas, easily accessible at the back of the book;
to check on running times of different formats, synchronising rushes, cement
splicing, splitting 16 and 35mm mag tracks prior to the mix and with quick
reference depth-of-field and focal length tables included. A handy bibliography,
a list of must-visit film websites are included and the index makes everything
easy to find.
It is easy to see why a book
like this has been a standard text in so many film schools. Hands-on learning
will teach anyone the "hows" of shooting quickly, what it can’t
teach successfully is the "whys". That is the void this handbook
fills. This latest edition brings the handbook up to speed, with a guide to the
different tape to film transfer systems and recognising that more and more
filmmakers are choosing to originate on video, there’s a careful comparison of
film formats from 8mm to IMAX and video formats from camcorders to HDTV.
This handbook is a gilt-edged
investment for aspiring and beginning filmmakers and it would not be out of
place in the libraries of experienced professionals either.
To buy a
copy of The Filmmakers Handbook click on the link below:
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