Table of Contents from A Digital Storyteller's Handbook

A Fast Forward: Who We Are, Why We’re Here

Introduction: Storytelling in the Digital Age

Pre Production

1. Tell a Vision: What’s Your Story? ~ Defining your content, your form, and your audience. Getting to the heart of your idea. Being clear and realistic about your goals. Crafting your story and writing the treatment.

2. Simple Scripting: Flesh on Bones ~ Traditional screenwriting and the cinematic language that’s been in use for over 100 years is still very powerful. But digital filmmaking often works best as a medium of the Now, which leaves a lot of room in your script for something fresh to happen. You need a tight story, but a good script and shot list can also be a road map to discovery.

3. Active Storyboarding: It’s Better than Drawing ~ Using any nonlinear editing system, you can mock up a rough version of your movie’s shots, effects, and dialog that plays in real time. You don’t need to be an editor to use these basic techniques, and you can use any computer with software that’s practically free to design and plan your production, and convey your ideas to your cast and crew.

Production

4. The Script, Your Actors, and the Flow of Time ~ Life on a shooting set is different than anywhere else, a strange parallel universe of stress and glory.

5. Your Crew and What They Do ~ A brief look at some of the people you’ll be working with and what their job descriptions may include.

6. Shooting Stories: Digital Cinema ~ The tools of modern filmmaking offer a lot of choices as to how you capture your images. This chapter looks at what’s traditional, as well as what’s new; the rules, and when to break them.

A Good Composition Contains Content
The Rule of Thirds
Dead Centered
Where’s Your Focus?
Shooting With the LCD screen
Zooming is a “Bad Thing”
Get the (White) Balance Right
Exposing the Truth
The Shape of Things: 4 x 3 and 16 x 9
Appropriate Camera Placement
Appropriate Camera Movement
Lighting for Digital Video
Shooting Green and Blue Screen
Getting to the Point: Shooting an Interview
Running and Gunning: Shooting an Event
Multiple Camera Shoots
“The Rules” of Good Camerawork
Secrets of Time Code
Menu and Other Camera Settings

7. Sound Matters ~ What you hear is what you get, but only if you do everything right. Great audio is hard to achieve, but worth everything you need to do to get it.

Microphone Types
Making the Connection
Digital Recording Systems
Production Audio
Working Solo
Microphone Placement
Solving Problems
Using a Boom Mic
Recording a Voice Over

Post Production: an Overview

8. When Did All This Become Cool? ~ Digital editing is all the rage. But should you do it yourself, or entrust it to a professional? A look at your options, working with an editor, and a peek at the process.

9. Effects, Titles, and Good Taste ~ Effects for their own sake are like overdressing: You’ll get noticed, but nobody will want to hang out with you. If your effects don’t support your story, they’ll work against you. On planning and workflow for effective special effects and titles.

10. Audio: The Other Movie in Your Movie ~ It isn’t unusual to spend more time on the music score, sound effects and final mix than all the other parts of a movie combined. Experienced filmmakers know they need to plan for this, financially and otherwise. Almost nothing can make or break your production like the soundtrack.

11. What Now? Special Delivery ~ Outputting to tape, compression for DVD, the Web, or conversion to film for theatrical release.

12. “Hey, I Saw Your Film…I Hated It!” ~ How do film festivals work? How important are they? What is a good strategy for working the festivals? Handling rejection? And should you even bother …

Addendum: How to Buy a Video Camera

Bibliography

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