CHAPTER 2 What's First?

John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach, made famous his admonition, “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” This advice is as applicable to cinematography as it is to basketball or any other endeavor. Director Alfred Hitchcock took preplanning to such an extreme that for him the actual shooting of his movies became a very mechanical procedure. At the other end of the spectrum, shooting a movie with the freewheeling approach of an Altman or a Cassavetes takes no less preproduction planning because, interestingly enough, it takes a lot of preparation to be ready for improvisation on the set. All the tools and creative thought must already be at hand no matter which approach the director takes. So how, as the director ...

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