Rating: 6.8/10.
A short self-published book about the basics of filmmaking. Before making a film, you need to decide on the story you want to tell, who is the target audience, and what you hope to accomplish with the film. Write an outline first, then progress to a more detailed storyboard and script, making notes on what each shot should include.
The book discusses filming equipment, selecting locations, lighting and composition techniques. Overall, I don’t think the format worked well for the material: the material lacks depth considering its large font size and is only 200 pages. Considering the visual nature of filmmaking, there are no visual examples at all so all the examples are explained purely through words. Furthermore, it focuses on filming and neglects many other aspects of video making, for example it discusses a lot about lighting and composition and camera movement, but there is nothing on screen captures, animations, using stock footage, inserting text and images, optimizing videos for YouTube, etc, and only briefly talks about editing.
