Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(73)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm a person who has directed / produced a number of short films, all shot on DV. I own a lot of books on the subject. I can easily say that this guide is my favorite one! It simultaneously confirmed to me that you can make pro-quality imagery and effects, and it flipped my world upside down on how easily it can be done.

The guide illustrates to you how to make your DV or HD content look professional. More that that: it shows you how to set yourself up for success so that you can later incorporate visual effects.

The guide explains in plain English what a lot of complex terms are, and why you should care. It shows you how to shoot miniatures, how to edit FX footage into your live-action plates, and how to color correct your stuff. Actually, the author gives you some useful tools for doing the color correcting! (In the form of After Effects plugins)

This book isn't going to teach you After Effects or any other program. (But he lists books that will). If you are a filmmaker already familiar with these tools, then the guide will help you take the next step in polishing your content. It also gives you a simple step-by-step process for how to build your production pipleline. This pipeline might be the single best part of the book!

One other cool aspect of this book is that nearly every page has tips on how to save yourself time, or money, or both. Little things like the Google Maps trick. Or how to make convincing gun-fire. Or how to save your movie in a single format to be transformed later into any format: DVD, iPod, online streaming, etc.

Ultimately, I have found this book to be one of my "core" go-to books for making movies. It's goal is not to teach you tricks per say, but rather to empower you to make a great film using easily-accessible tools and modest budgets. It isn't just theory... it's practical guidelines that you can apply to your next DV or HD movie.

I don't plan on making any low-budget action epics, but this book is a delight anyway. Stu Maschwitz knows his business, writes well and has a highly developed sense of humor. As a bonus, he also provides a list of most of the best action movies made over the past several decades.

Be forwarned: if you intend to make full use of the numerous examples in the book and on the accompanying DVD, you will need a copy of Adobe After Effects.

Even though I don't intend to be making any action movies, I really appreciated Maschwitz's insights into how to make such movies on low budgets. There's lots of insights into movie making in general in this book and the knowledge can't help but make you a better videographer even if all you shoot are your kids and family picnics.

His dissection of classic action sequences from films like "La Femme Nikita" are more than worth the price of the book.

For the serious hobby videographer, the chapters on color and color correction are also very worthwhile.

Overall, an excellent book for anyone interested in video in general, making low-budget action movies or simply gaining a greater appreciation of what goes into making a good action movie. A lot of fun between two covers.

Jerry

Stu's writing style is both infectious and inspirational. This sits alongside Robert Rodriguez's Rebel without a Crew as a mainstay for any Rebel filmmaker. The book teaches, no preaches, for the first time (aside from Rodriguez) that its okay to think big visually in your storytelling, that you can have action and special effects. I wouldn't want to count the number of books written on digital filmmaking that tell you to steer clear and stick to talking head three location features - boring.

If you've gone down the DV feature path before or if you're just starting out, Stu has tip and tricks for it all. From prep and pre-prod, to shooting, and post. Oh, the resources on the DVD are worth the price of the book alone.

Digital production is all about workflow and Stu has mastered this arena with great adeptness. He is himself a digital pioneer and never seems content (which is a good thing) to accept or constrain his creative vision due to budget or other reasons. He is a true Ninja - and for that we salute you.

Have waited a long time for a book like this. It takes pride in my library - though it has spent more time off the shelf than one since its arrival.

I found this book to be a good read for the most part, however a few things did hurt this it's overall usefulness as a resource for filmmaking. First of all the author uses Adobe After Effects Pro edition exclusively, he does admit it early on though. If you use some other software to do your special effects, then this book maybe of little use to you. Next some of the computer generated effects he used for his short film that appears on the included DVD, looked like they were computer generated, I mean they looked kind of choppy or jagged, much like a video game, and this really took me out of the story he was trying to tell with the film. Would I recommend this book? Yes, if you would really like to learn to use After Effects Pro to do your special effects on your next movie. For all others I'd recommend purchasing used or checking out your local public library for a copy.

This book contains everything you need to know to produce an excellent action movie with limited resources. It shows you how, using the tools available to everyone, you can create exciting, professional-looking work that will have your friends oohing and aahing. Even if your intention is not to make an action movie there is still a wealth of information that will be invaluable to anyone hoping to go beyond home movies. These are tips, tools and techniques from someone who is actively involved in filmaking at the highest levels - but these are things you can put into practice RIGHT NOW. This is easily the best DV guide I've read - and I've read a lot.

This book is a MUST have for anyone who wants to make action movies with almost no money. Well written textbook style handbook made small enough to carry around yet perfect to see and read with no problem. I book the book and didnt put down it gave me the passion to want to make movies. This book covers everything and mean EVERYTHING you need to make an action film. Even the Hollywood FX people can learn from this book.

I'm a professional compositor/visual effects artist and aspiring filmmaker, and this book combines those two fields better than anything I've ever read! If you intend to make a movie digitally, there is absolutely no better book you could possibly buy to get the absolute most out of the footage you shoot.
Stu teaches you things most indie filmmakers didn't think was possible, such as actually recovering information in parts of your captured frame that maybe you thought were too bright or too dark, and why you'd be better off using off-the-shelf After Effects than a $$$$$$$ Da Vinci Color Grading suite or some other super-high-end (read:expensive) color correction program. There is so much valuable info in every page of this book that you will want to go back and re-master every digital short you've ever made.
And on the DVD is a set of After Effects tools that are worth ten times the price of the book by themselves!
If you're even reading this, you obviously have some interest in filmmaking, and there is no way in a million years you would regret buying this book. If you're into the processes that help make your movie look it's best, this book will absolutely blow your mind! Stop considering buying it and just get it! :)

Enough good things have been said about the Guide and they're all true. Having said that, the technical chapters on the book may seem to you (at least they seemed to me) as a conversation between two experts on the matter. In all fairness, the book is tagged as an Intermediate, Advance one and the author does advise early on the first chapters that the book assumes the reader has some background knowledge. Well, I don't consider myself as a beginner and I have more than some background knowledge (including After Effects) and I had (and still have) a hard time understanding some topics. You see, when I buy a book (specially a book that's advertised as having all the info I need), I expect the book to open my eyes and my mind and provide me with enough information so that I can be on my way. I don't like it when I have to supplement my reading with lots of other resources to understand what the author is saying. Also, books that refer to a certain software sometimes recommend that you be able to run that software in order to gain a better understanding of the topic; this one does this. However, most books with this characteristic can be read and understood without the software. Not this one. The way I see it, this book costs around $1030.00 if you don't have the After Effects. You need it to be able to grasp about 50% of the book's information.

Also, if you're looking to understand workflow, image optimization and effective editing techniques but action is not really your cup of tea, meaning that you are driven mostly towards making visual stories without the action element, you'll feel that you're using about $15.00 of the $30.00 price tag of the book. Topics like special effects, color correction and onlining are covered with a subtle assumption that your film is about action (I guess that's the reason for the title).

In general, the book's benefits outweigh its flaws. I would say that if I go into a set of an independent movie or if I meet the director of a short film being made and I see this book among his resouces, I would think that the guy knows what he's doing. I suggest suplementing the book with the DV Rebel's Cafe (forun) and other entry level books on DV and HD workflow.

When I first saw this book I rolled my eyes and thought, "Yeah, another book by some wanna-be filmmaker",
but then I saw the author's credentials (as a visual effects supervisor on some big movies)
, and read some of his axioms, like "Real is always better than CGI", or "Green Screen sucks", which are pretty much dead right. This sets it apart from the other books that tout Digital as the all encompassing solution.
The author gives a great crash course in filmmaking with tips on storyboarding, editing, and image composition. He also explains why good action movies have pretty much died out, which I haven't seen in any other books.

I'm a digital effects animator so I liked the technical info on creating nice, cheap digital effects, which is explained clearly and not dumbed down.
If you don't have a background/interest in CGI/compositing this probably isn't the book for you.

The one criticism I have is the author's short movie, "The last Birthday card", while technically impressive,
could have been a bit better. But he's young and smart, so I'd expect great things from him in the future. Also he doesn't pretend to have all the answers and stresses that you have to learn from experience.

Some of you probably know me, I wrote Action Filmmaking: The Guide to Producing Kick-Ass Microbudget Action Films, but this is definitely the next step. My book basically talks about how to get the film off the ground when you don't have a ton of money. But what do you do to get high end effects and slick Hollywood style when you don't have a lot of money? Stu has the answer.

In the interest of full disclosure Stu and I are both members of [...] a filmmaking forum. While I don't think we've had any major interaction (if any at all) I felt I should mention that. But I cannot speak more highly of this book. I wish I had it earlier.

The thing to keep in mind about this book is it's an advanced book. He's not playing around here. Let's put it like this, Stu's the kind of guy that doesn't rent a helicopter for a scene he simply pulls out a 3D program and makes it, then pops it into the scene and low and behold he has a helicopter shooting high powered ammo at characters in the film and it looks good. I know he said it was 3D, but seeing it on screen you wouldn't have known it. Then he does a scene with a fake gun. It's a toy, (literally a green toy gun). But the crowd sees people running and a guy with a green gun running after him and they react just like if the guy had a real gun. When Stu digitally replaces the fake gun with a real one the scene looks incredible!

Before you buy this book you should have a Mac or PC, with a nice amount of RAM because you will be using After Effects. This is like an After Effects manual specifically for action films, plus it has basic shooting tips for making action films that come off as really advanced, but when he breaks it down it makes all the sense in the world. And remember, he's still talking about doing this at the low-budget level so he's not spending millions or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Finally, the writing isn't overly techy. If you've done digital filmmaking for awhile you can follow along. The book is down to earth and he explains what he's talking about. So if you're ready to move up from basic low budget action flicks to some really bad assed movie making, This is the book for you. I can honestly say I'll be using some things from here in my next film. If you buy my book, buy Stu's along with it. You wont be sorry.

-Nate