Digital Moviemaking: All the Skills, Techniques and Moxie You'll Need to Turn Your Passion Into a Career (The Filmmaker's Guide to the 21st Century) [Paperback]

Scott Billups (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Filmmaker's Guide to the 21st Century | Publication Date: July 2, 2004

Geared to professional-minded people who have had some prior experience in production and understand the fundamental difference between a hobby and a career.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

This is not another 'how-to-make-a-movie' book. This book is about how to be successful at making your movies sell in a very competitive market. This book will kick your professionalism, tool set and image quality up a notch so that you can compete in the real world of cinema.

This book is geared to professional minded people who have hopefully had some prior experience in production and who understand the fundamental difference between a hobby and a career. There are no simple solutions, secret tricks, or instant remedies that will turn you into a moviemaker, but this book will help point you on the path to professionalism.

Scott Billups, who lives in Los Angeles, is an award-winning director/producer who has produced, directed and written countless feature films, television programs, and commercials.

About the Author

Scott Billups, who lives in Los Angeles, is an award-winning director/producer who has produced, directed, and written countless feautre films, television programs, and commercials.

Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Michael Wiese Productions; 2nd edition (July 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0941188809
• ISBN-13: 978-0941188807
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,802,193 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Even better than the 1st edition, June 3, 2003

By 

David A. Anselmi "taijidave" (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Digital Moviemaking: All the Skills, Techniques and Moxie You'll Need to Turn Your Passion Into a Career (The Filmmaker's Guide to the 21st Century) (Paperback)

Billups' first book was a significant endeavor. Beginning w/ the film industry itself (read: Hollywood), Billups explained, enlightened, entertained, & debunked the "Hollywood Myth". "Whoever has a camera is the new Hollywood", he said, & proceeded to show you how to (a) make that miniDV camera cough-up an excellent image, (b) corral enough like-minded ppl to put a Production together, (c) Direct those ppl & Produce a completed project, & (d) Edit your image while keeping maximum resolution for film-out (printing to film).

Well, he's got a new version of the book.

Few books add significant value in their second edition -- fix a few errata, add a new chapter, walla. Instead, Billups has extensively reviewed/updated the WHOLE DARN BOOK, & it's amazing. Now, if you're a frequent visitor to his web site (or read his articles in DV mag, etc.), a lot of the new material you'll have seen before -- albiet it's integrated well w/ the first-edition material.

You'll find LOTS of good, practical advice both on how to use digital cinema, & when *not* to. The recommendation to NOT buy anything over miniDV (& rent instead) is particularly refreshing, as-is the debunking of the "HD is cheaper" school.

Billups is at his best when he gives the technical overview of the Industry, as well as a state-of-digital-hardware... but [again] he goes further & expands his quite-good sections on Cinematography, Production & Directing... all w/ emphasis on digital [ie, small-scale] production.

Only 3 quibbles: (1) some of the pictures from the first text are so small now as to be nearly useless (ie, frame comparisons of miniDV vs HD, of CCD image vs image-on-tape, etc. don't work when they're too-small to see a difference), (2) the highly-useful color plates are gone, & (3) a teensy technical quibble. Billups tries to be objective about hardware, but really isn't when it comes to the XL1/s unit. {techie alert} Sure, it's got a manual lens... but it's crippled by the lower-quality ccd imager (ask DVfilm, etc. about comparisons of film-out w/ PD150, etc.), FAKE "progressive" mode which is death on film-out (he admits this), & non-ideal anamorphic 'squeezing', which again is not-great for film-out. Similarly, the DVX100 is highly-recommended in the book, but it has no 16:9 anamorphic lens available, so you have to lose res. by using the internal "cropping" method. As the book emphasizes "miniDV for film-out", these oversights are a tad glaring. A manual lens that doesn't "never stop spinning" might be absolutely mandatory for high-end production, but quite a few InDiGent features (for example) have used the PD150 PAL + anamorphic via film-out to non-insignificant theatrical release, Sundance Awards, etc. Billups himself used a similar unit for the David Lynch Playstation2 commercial.

Regardless, all is forgiven, however, if the XL2 is as promised, & under $6k. We all want Sony-quality HAD 16:9 ccd imagers coupled w/ Canon manual lens & true 24p/30p operation. Now, about that low-light capability....

I *highly* recommend this book, to be read & re-read. You absolutely *can* make miniDV look *better* than BetaSP, using his methodologies (as I've found-out myself). Thanks, Scott!!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A great source on color space, but that's about it, April 5, 2005

By 

E. C. David "Hack" (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Digital Moviemaking: All the Skills, Techniques and Moxie You'll Need to Turn Your Passion Into a Career (The Filmmaker's Guide to the 21st Century) (Paperback)

Billup's book is creative, fun read. But looking back on it, it's not one of those essential film books. The book's greatest strength is explaining color space and color depth, which are Billup's profession as he works on the technical side of HD production. He explores these rather dry issues in a fun and witty way. And he also explores working in Hollywood in a new, positive way. But beyond that, the book gives a very, very, very broad look at every other field of digital moviemaking, making it seem in the end too darn general to be effective. A better book for breaking into digitial filmmaking: $30 Film School by Michael Dean. It does a much better job of covering all the bases and is just as fun.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book on the subject, April 1, 2004

By 

Mr. T. Flaxton "trflaxton" (UK Somerset) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Digital Moviemaking: All the Skills, Techniques and Moxie You'll Need to Turn Your Passion Into a Career (The Filmmaker's Guide to the 21st Century) (Paperback)

I reviewed this Book for High Definition Magazine in 2003. I was so impressed that I thought this information should be available generally.

Back in the 60's Scott Billups would have been known as a video freak. The subtitle of his book Digital Moviemaking: "All the skill, techniques and moxie you'll need to turn your passion into a career": also betrays his understanding that digital moviemaking is a business as well as a technicians paradise - and I have to say right here right now, what this man don't know about video - ain't worth knowin' !

"Those who know will always have a job, those who know why, will be in charge." From Chapter two.

Digital Moviemaking is a very readable book and there are a plethora of technical details for all but the most seriously anoraked of our readers. Scott's approach to High Definition is to take you on a journey of understanding through the underlying principles of the digital realm.

There are many many technical descriptions that allow the reader easily into a highly complex digital world - He begins with a basic description of the fundamentals of analogue to digital conversion, through the systems of compression, up through DV all the way to High Definition. This is a necessary path because the understanding of High Definition issues lay within the undergrowth of simple digital encoding and compression. I haven't come across a book as clear as this one before.

Scott is the Richard Dawkins of digital technicalities - he can make even the most dense technical information fun:

"While RGB theoretically creates the most robust ITU-R 601 signal, the most common reference to 601 as colour difference, component digital video, sampled at 4:2:2 at 13.5 mhz with 720 luminance samples per active line, digitized at either 8 - or 10 bit.

Whew, it hurt me to write that too".

This fundamentally technical book actually made me understand and laugh out loud ! What's more, it's an energetic enough book to begin with image capture, work its way through the editing process, then out and onto film - and beyond. At the end there's a reference section in which you'll find an extremely concise guide for the newly fledged HD Cinematographer.

But this book is also a rant against Hollywood which is fun in itself and Scott is on a mission to re-educate and re-inform his audience who he sees as enthusiastic but slightly wayward idealists who want to invade Hollywood's hallowed avenues without the right information.

"Just imagine if the snakes that slither through the gutters of Hollywood actually had a say in matters. They'd glut the market, take their booty, and retire in a heartbeat. You know it, I know it, and they know it."

Scott has worked with many great filmmakers, including David Lynch, and he was even assistant to the great James Wong Howe, so you know that what he's got to say has real authority, though I get the feeling he'd poo poo that suggestion himself. He's also at the very cutting edge of invention - he'll think nothing of capturing bits of a movie he's shooting on 35mm, on his laptop from a small digital camera for later compositing at the edit with the 35mm footage.

Digital Moviemaking is a great way into digital video and High Definition in so many areas, and Scott insists you understand why you're making the choices you're making, and why you should let craft and technique lead you in the end.

As Jerry Rubin, and possibly Scott too might advocate - read it, even if you have to "steal this book!"