Digital Video Production Handbook (ePub)

Do we really need another video book? Aren’t there enough books about this topic on the market already? Yes, there are excellent books about videography available. However, most of them are totally amateurish, some are too technical, and others are really outdated.

If you are not an engineer or a technician – and if you want to break out of the boring amateur video status, you need a new “How To” book for video-makers with professional ambitions.

Most photographers are not pure still-photographers anymore. Many journalists no longer work with words only. Advertising, marketing, public relations and communications people work nowadays more with video than ever before - in addition to workers in education, training and all kinds of instructional areas. And then there are colleges and universities teaching students who want to become professional media experts. Journalists, reporters, editors, camera operators, photographers and others belong to them.

The “digital explosion” requires a new kind of thinking, a new style of presentation, and a new format of books. In the digital age, you can’t teach video the same way you did it ten, twenty or thirty years ago.

This is a didactically new, learning-focused approach to present all “standard knowledge” you need to know in order to write, produce, shoot and direct digital video. In addition to all technical and theoretical aspects of “How To”, the most important thing is the creator’s ability to “tell a story”. This starts with a verbal version – and ends with the final video product. If you can’t tell your story – you can’t do a convincing and impressive video (of your story).

After teaching “Filmmaking and Television” fourteen semesters at a German college, my “Textbook of Filmmaking” (MediaBook Publishing) was first published 1978 and became - with the 7th edition in planning - the most successful textbook of its kind. The success of my book – after thirty years still used at European Film Schools - taught me what is most important for your and what is
not.

This is not to want you to do “everything”, not to be too technical and too detailed, not to want to “impress” people what you know. What I learned through my teaching and this book, such a book must contain “everything you need” for your job - but not more. If you want dig deeper into this matter, I offer you the literature they need. See chapter Recommended literature.

This is especially true for most technical aspects of “filmmaking” with digital video. Digital technology changes virtually every six months, and so do gadgets in use. Therefore, I am not introducing specific camera models or post-production equipment. Manufacturers can do this job. This handbook introduces a general technology on the basis of specific equipment currently in use. As important the technical equipment is for the actual quality of the digital video product, it is just a tool in the creative process of a film or video. You must be able to use it to the last extent, but it is never the journey, it’s just the vehicle to bring you where you want to go. Period.