What This Book Covers

As mentioned above, this book is divided into two parts. The first part covers both preproduction (the phase where you’re planning your project) and production (the phase where you’re actually out in the world using a camera). The second part covers postproduction: when you return to the studio (or your living room) to edit your footage and create a finished project. The second part of the book also explores distribution possibilities and ways you can get your film shown to an audience.

This book comes with a DVD that contains original, professionally shot video clips that you can use to complete the exercises in this book, and to practice the editing and effects creation techniques the book covers. The DVD also includes After Effects and Final Cut Pro project files containing completed versions of each exercise. In addition, the DVD contains a short film, titled Big Luca, that was produced especially for this book and employs all the techniques covered in this text. Right now, you’re holding everything you need to learn the art of digital video.

Let’s take it from the top.

Get DV Filmmaking now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.