Review: Hollywood Camera Work DVDs

Camera work is one of the most important but least understood arts in moviemaking. The camera really is another actor that guides the viewer and tells its own story. For most beginning filmmakers and computer artists though, camera work often comes last on the list after determining locations, actors, computer characters, greenscreen and everything else. Camerawork is something that real film-makers spend literally years learning. It’s something that directors, editors, cinematographers, scriptwriters, animators and actors all need to know about – as well as, of course, the cameramen.

Hollywood Camera Work's "The Master Course in High-End Blocking and Staging" is the ultimate Camera Training Disk for Directors, Videographers, Cinematographers, and even 3D animators who want to improve their camera blocking and staging skills. It's a 6 DVD set (9 hours) on camera blocking. But beware this fantastic reference, not meant to be digested in a single sitting/viewing because your head start hurting and there is no use to move ahead without trying the tips and tricks on the computer or on real camera.

This course was created by Grammy award winner and director Per Holmes. In these DVD’s camera techniques and movements are explained using 3D animation with expressionless 3D characters. Topics are very well explained with the help of illustrations, scripts and dialogues. That’s why some topics becomes very lengthy and need to be edited or explained in a humorous manner so viewer doesn’t loose the interest. One more thing I like to suggest, after explaining the camera movement Mr. Holmes shown the output of that camera movement and that’s good but if he shown the camera movement in the inset with output then much easier to follow and understand.

But still these are versatile DVD’s and must buy recommendation from CGArena. A beginner to advanced viewer will definitely gain something from these DVD’s. These DVD’s are region free and easily played on DVD player or in your computer. All this knowledge doesn’t come cheap at $399.00 but this is much cheaper in comparison to any training from film school.

Details about Volumes

Volume 1 and 2 - The first two volumes deal with stationary camera work and focus especially on shot selection, framing, managing the line for complex scenes, creating a library of ready-made camera-plots, psychology of character placement / movement, and maximizing the use of depth.

Volume 3 and 4 - These two volumes build a comprehensive language of dolly and crane moves, and look at some fundamentally different ways to approach scenes than most of us have learned.

Volume 5 and 6 - Volume V & VI create a powerful blocking method that produces excellent results for the vast majority of scenes. After that, we stage a lot of scenes to use as many techniques as possible.

You can watch the sample clips http://www.hollywoodcamerawork.us/mc_sampleclips.html before investing your money in the DVD’s.