A comprehensive, detail-oriented guide to digital cinematography.
Mathias (Electronic Cinematography, 1985) offers perennial strategies for digital filmmaking in this guide.
The author, a veteran cinematographer, is alarmed by a transformation in the film industry. It isn’t the migration from film to digital recording—Mathias was actually a pioneer in what was once termed “electronic cinematography.” Rather, he says, it’s the fact that many people in the film industry have abandoned time-honored aesthetics in visual storytelling. Mathias claims that the disposability of digital technology has led to the production of disposable cinema; filmmakers, he says, lack the patience and experience to carefully craft compelling shots. With this book, he seeks to create a guideline for digital-age film artists, including older filmmakers who may be intimidated by digital technology and younger ones who are less schooled in what he sees as the increasingly lost art of cinematography. Mathias covers essential aspects of the process, including image design, exposure, color timing, lens selection, lighting, and postproduction planning. He doesn’t include references to specific models of digital cameras, which become obsolete at the pace of technological innovation; rather, his goal was to create a work that would remain relevant for all future models of camera, as the fundamentals of cinematography will remain intact. As Mathias writes in the preface, this is not a how-to book—it’s a “ ‘how NOT to’ book. How not to turn a hundred year old visual art form comprised of beautifully lit and emotionally compelling images into an efficient and uncreative digital imaging factory.” He’s a patient, practical instructor, and his prose is clear and conversational. That said, the book is clearly aimed at readers with some background knowledge of filmmaking, and it dives quickly into industry specifics and jargon. The author’s experience and deep love of film is apparent from the beginning, though, and despite all the changes that continue to occur in the world of film production, readers will come away feeling optimistic. The old arts, it turns out, have not yet been lost; they’re simply waiting to be rediscovered by a willing generation of artists.
A comprehensive, detail-oriented guide to digital cinematography.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-943625-14-7
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Waterfront Press
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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