Introductory Reading for People Making Films

I’ve been finding a lot of good resources lately, so I thought I would share a few.

First is a great post on HD for Indies entitled Top Ten Things Every Indie Filmmaker Should Know Before They Start. It’s a good first read, or reminder for anyone starting a film project.

Next, a little more basic, and mostly only useful for larger productions is a Glossary of Roles in Movie-making. It’s pretty elementary but still could be useful. They also give you an opinion on which roles are required.

For those of you planning to shoot in HD, here’s a chart comparing various HD formats.

In the offline world I’ve been recently reading Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances for Film & Television by Judith Weston. It’s a great bridge for technically oriented directors to get more comfortable working with actors. I highly recommend it, since of course, the story and the performances will have much more to do with making a good film than the technical details of how and what you use to shoot.

Those are my suggestions for now. Look for an update post on the One Minute Film project coming soon.

Permits in NYC

Yes, I’m back. Yes, you will have to wait a little longer for a real post. For now, I just felt the need to share John August’s post on permits and echo his sentiments. I pretty much agree with his assessment that the difference between a couple people with a video camera and a full on film shoot is an important distinction and the former should not be stifled to protect the public from the later.

Edit: Seems that NYC declined the new restrictions.