Stu Write Book Good

The DV Rebel's Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap

So yeah, I'm writing a book. Hey, pre-order it now, because we expect to sell, like, literally several of them.

It's a book about using digital video and visual effects to maximize production value in low-budget films, with a particular slant to kinetic cinema, AKA action films. I'll cover a bunch of effects stuff both practical and digital, as well as techniques for maximizing production quality using only off-the-shelf tools. A DVD insert will contain a bunch of sample footage and After Effects 7.0 projects.

I'm still working on this thing, so if you have suggestions or reviews of other books on this subject (a few are found to the right), please post them here!

Creative Workflow Hacks

Creative Workflow Hacks is a new blog about under-the-hood tricks to help you do nifty things in your favorite post-production apps. There's a section specifically about After Effects.

On that subject, if you haven't tried out the scripts from redefinery.com, you may not appreciate just how powerful scripting can be in After Effects. Check it out!

My hope is that, in the future, scripts and other user enhancements to AE will not be ghettoized to a submenu, but actually allowed to be a button or palette or menu item just like a plug-in. Sort of the Maya MEL-button shelf idea.

Commonwealth Club

On March 21st I participated in a panel discussion called “The Digital Revolution: What to Expect from Film’s Second Century” at The Commonwealth Club, a public affairs forum in San Francisco. You can listen to a RealAudio (sorry) stream of it here. Also on the panel was John Knoll, with whom I had the great pleasure of working on several projects during my days at ILM.

SIMILO

Less is more generated some great comments. Keep 'em coming!

There were a couple of mentions of other 35mm lens adaptors, including the Mini35 and the Micro35. I certainly don't want my extolment of the G35 to come at the exclusion of these other options. As I mentioned, I've shot with the Pro35 and had a terrific experience. I'm excited to see so many options created by people who are clearly passionate about accessible cinema.

What specifically entices me about the G35 is that it is small enough that it allows a DV camera to be a DV camera. I could see myself taking it with me wherever I brought my DVX.

The G35 came to my attention after I saw an excellent short film that was shot with an early "beta test" unit on a DVX100a. That film is SIMILO, and it was an entry in the dvxuser.com sci-fest competition (although ultimately it was disqualified).

SIMILO official site (a very high quality H.264 Quicktime here)

Filmmakers Zacharias and Macgregor shot this lovely piece totally guerilla-style. Check out this behind-the-scenes still (more like that on the dvxuser.com forum). Anytime someone reminds me it's possible to make images like those in SIMILO with that kind of minimalist setup, I get excited.