The Film Handbook examines the current state of filmmaking and how film language, technique and aesthetics are being utilised for today’s ‘digital film’ productions. It reflects on how critical analysis’ of film underpins practice and story, and how developing an autonomous ‘vision’ will best aid student creativity.
The Film Handbook offers practical guidance on a range of traditional and independent ‘guerrilla’ film production methods, from developing script ideas and the logistics of planning the shoot to cinematography, sound and directing practices. Film professionals share advice of their creative and practical experiences shooting both on digital and film forms.
The Film Handbook relates theory to the filmmaking process and includes:
• documentary, narrative and experimental forms, including deliberations on ‘reading the screen’, genre, mise-en-scène, montage, and sound design
• new technologies of film production and independent distribution, digital and multi-film formats utilised for indie filmmakers and professional dramas, sound design and music
• the short film form, theories of transgressive and independent ‘guerrilla’ filmmaking, the avant-garde and experimental as a means of creative expression
• preparing to work in the film industry, development of specialisms as director, producer, cinematographer, editor, and the presentation of creative work.
Forward Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC Introduction Part 1: Film Language And Aesthetics 1. Renaissance of (Digital) Film 2. Developing Mise-en-Scene 3. Directing the Actor 4. Cinematography: Painting with Motion 5. Sound Underpinning Image 6. Editing: Temporality & Structure Part 2: Film Theory In Practice 7. Reading The Screen 8. Spectatorship and Audience 9. Contemporary Cinema 10. Eisenstein and Bazin: Formalism & Realism, Two Modes of Practice 11. Genre Part 3: Guerrilla Filmmaking: Practice As Subversion 12. Experimentation and the Short Film Format 13. Working with Non-Professional Actors 14. The Avant-garde, Subtext, & Symbolism 15. Documentary as Resistance Part 4: Persistence Of Vision 16. Screenwriting: From Script to Screen John Brice 17. Soundtracks: Using Music in Film Paul Rutter 18. Post Film: Technology and the Digital Film Part 5: Merging and Immerging Media: Developing a Professional Specialism 19. Post-Film: Production, Distribution and Consumption in the Digital Age 20. Mapping a Career Path
Biography
Dr. Mark de Valk is Senior Lecturer in Film & Television Studies at Southampton Solent University. He specialises in guerrilla/indie-filmmaking processes and continues to produce, direct and write productions in documentary, drama, and experimental formats.
Dr. Sarah Arnold is Lecturer in Film & Digital Media at University College Falmouth and is author of Maternal Horror Film: Melodrama and Motherhood (2013).
