REVIEW: HOLLYWOOD CAMERA WORK

The key to getting the best possible film on screen is production value. That’s nothing to do with cost or size of budget. It has everything to do with what you put on screen and that includes the shots you plan to create the screen narrative. It has everything to do with the shots that the director has designed to tell his story.This is the tool to help you do just that, to Hollywood standards.

Hollywood shoots movies relatively slowly and gets things right. They use good screen actors to convey the subtleties of the dialogue. They use cameras with experienced operators to convey all the subtleties of the story. There are hundreds of these camera moves, a large part of the extensive screen craft a good director needs. To acquire this knowledge, you could spend many years of working on set close to camera figuring things out for yourself what no-one will ever have time to teach you.

LEARNING THE EASY WAY

The alternative is to buy the Hollywood Camera Work DVD – a lifetime of learning experience distilled into just ten hours of effective on-screen tuition on six region-free DVDs. An unbeatable way to learn those essential directing arts of blocking, moving camera and staging complex scenes.

Having completed this course you will have learned quality directing, mastered blocking techniques and you’ll have essential understanding of every conceivable camera and actor movement. You will also know how to maximise production value and be expert in dolly and crane camera work. Finally, having mastered all these essential but complex technical areas, you’ll be free to get on with the other side of what directing on set is all about, which is working with your actors! Learn Feature and Network Quality.

ALL-STAR CAST

There’s an all-star cast of characters on these DVDs, all played by mannequin dolls on model sets - for good reason. If you show a camera move to enhance a particular emotion around a real actor, you’ll never be sure if your reaction to the shot was created by the actor’s expression or body language, or by the camera move. If the movement is made around an expressionless mannequin, the feeling it conveys was engendered by the move, not the mannequin. It’s that simple.

It’s worth looking at how this series of DVDs came to be made by Per Holmes, who started out as a young filmmaker, shooting music videos among other things, eventually becoming a producer of platinum-selling groups. At last he could afford to indulge his passion for filmmaking, but people seemed to get in the way of his director’s vision, people got tired, they didn’t obey the rules, they got in the way of the camera moves he was trying. He had to abandon his first plan, to shoot a series of short films using every conceivable camera move, to illustrate those moves and to help him learn those moves until they were virtually automatic.

The great thing about this training package is not just the ease and simplicity of learning a huge number of complicated camera moves. What’s really important is that through narration, it names them all and makes them into a common language that everyone on set can use and know EXACTLY which move the director means. Cinematographers, camera operators, actors, designers, all can learn about camera moves they will meet on set next day, helping them do a better job for the director. Editors too can benefit. When they see all the possible moves in a particular situation using models, they are much better informed about the choice of shots to recommend in the edit suite, to convey the screen narrative in the most effective way.

CAMERA SCHOOL IN A BOX

Hollywood Camera Moves is a top training resource, which anyone working in filmmaking can benefit from and not just for drama. Many of the moves and techniques shown on these discs are equally applicable in shooting documentary films and in animation. This is a director’s tool with the widest possible application. If you are into creating mood and motion in drama, documentary or animation, this is the one for you.

Review by James MacGregor