$30 Film School

Are you thinking about film school?DONT-at least get this book first, read it, and make some projects.Save literally 10s of thousands of dollars.More is covered in this book than I learned in 2 years of my associates degree in Madison WI.

This book is not all that it could be. It certainly has some weaknesses. Ironically, that is a trait which works in favor of this book. If it were aimed at anything higher than amateur or very low budget indie film production, this book would be a disaster. But it's not.The overriding theme that springs from the pages of this book is that anything is possible, even when you have nothing. Whatever the result you're trying to achieve, if you compromise enough and if you're ingenious enough, you can achieve it. It's jumbled. It's disorganized, but that's okay, because filmmaking at the guerilla level is disorganized too.I did have to deduct a star because the author does tend to go in occasional segues about his sexual conquests, or the circumstances he has found himself in. If these bother you, this may not be the book you're looking for; that said, they do give an insight into the author who recently made the hit documentary "HUBERT SELBY JR: It/ll Be Better Tomorrow" - which is interesting in itself.

Michael Dean takes you through the stages of writing filming and financing and ultimately completing and touring a film.There is a lot of good information and fairly useful information when it comes to shooting, writing or producing your film. A lot of the information is biased towards non-profit funding and trying to establish your project as a non-profit which is difficult to do and wont fit most projects. Likewise a lot of advice is directed towards a documentary project. I can definately see where the information is useful on other styles of projects as well.Aside from a few minor technical errors in reference to computer storage capacity vs. dvd capacity this book is very intuitive and gets right to the point. It's also written in such a way that you dont need to read the whole book cover to cover - you can read the chapters that you feel you need to learn about and skimming over some of the chapters that you are really confident about didn't make me feel like I was missing something. For example, I come from a video editing background and the video editing chapters didn't show me anything new so I skipped past them. I have since gone back and read them to make sure nothing was missed but nothing really was.An excellent book and a definate must buy for anyone interested in learning to put movies together.

Who should read $30 Film School? If you are already an active filmmaker who is getting their stuff out there, you can probably pass on this book. However, if you are making films, but having trouble getting them exposed to a larger audience, this book could offer you some practical advice in that field. $30 Film School is one part tech book and one part self motivation. Michael Dean gives some decent advice on making films, and he relates it to himself making his own feature film D.I.Y. OR DIE.So if you're completely new to film making, and have no clue where to start, read this book. As a broke college student, I like the fact that the book actually bothers to talk about consumer cameras and no budget lighting. Some other film books I have read, that claim things like any budget or any camera, tend to only cover prosumer cameras in any detail. The $30 Film School is truly the any budget film school.Now if you are like me, and you spend all of your time thinking about making movies instead of actually making movies, you NEED to read this book. The one thing that I took away from this book, much more than the basic technical knowledge, most of which I have already learned online, was the mentality of just getting out there and doing it. It's time for me to get up and go make my own movie.

$30 Film School 2nd Edition ReviewOver-Priced, Bloated, and Terribly Written.The author openly admits to not being much of a writer and makes his best effort to write a useful and informative book, though he fails miserably at it. I have seen his "documentary" twice now and have an equal opinion of his ability to write/direct/produce video. This book is full of his own idiosyncrasies that, in no way, share any useful information with the reader. This book should be re-titled "How to survive making a movie with the author; Chronicles of his terrible video documentary: 'D.I.Y. or Die'".Throughout the book, he displays poor judgment and even worse writing:"don't put stickers or tape on your camera, because the sticky stuff on the back can end up gumming up the mechanisms that make it work."The next logical question to the author would be: "Where the hell were you putting those stickers?"The Fundraising section is not worth the pages it's printed on. Obviously, the publishing company was aiming for a page count and they were going to GET IT.He is overly dramatic, to put it lightly, about people who are late to anything. He even goes as far as to provide to you an excerpt from a letter to someone who cancelled a meeting/appointment on him. It is absurd, obtuse, and I won't even bother quoting it here (it's also very lengthy).Another example of campy advice is when he suggests that you should seek out people who "practice martial arts" as a way to "guard the equipment with their lives while you're busy paying attention to other crap."Seriously? This sounds like something out of a Jared Hess movie (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre).In another stroke of writing genius the author suggests that, in reference to location producing, you "Direct your own traffic. Reserve your own parking spaces. Big movie productions screw up traffic all the time...Wearing overalls might help."Is he just looking for a lawsuit from some unsuspecting reader who goes and gets themselves arrested? Oh wait, after a full paragraph of law breaking suggestions, he throws in the caveat "Of course, I would never condone or recommend that you do anything illegal".My question is simple: How did this book ever make it to print? Is there seriously no other person who has the knowledge to write a book like this?This is his example of how to "make the best with what you have, in an interesting way":"For example, I paid 150 bucks to have 1,500 D.I.Y. stickers printed. When I got them, I realized I had misspelled "independent" as "independant" artist.Stickerguy.com was really cool and reprinted them correctly for half price, even though it was my fault. I was really distraught about whether to throw the wrong-printed ones away. I thought about sending them to a friend in Germany, but someone pointed out that the German public school system is so good that kids there would have probably noticed it quicker than an American.I'm sending them to a man in Greece who's gonna give them out there. When he sent me an e-mail that said, "I your film want show Greece soon send plase can you?" I knew I had my answer. Doubt anyone there will notice."...I don't need to comment.The Computers, Editing Images, Editing Audio, and Your Own DVD chapters are dated and utterly useless. Do not follow a single word in these chapters. There is scant advice throughout them and if you are at all interested in these topics, get an actual book on the subjects. They are FAR too in-depth to be covered in this book, and the author's inability to write certainly exacerbates the issue.The book is intentionally fluffed up with useless scene shots, example documents, and other fodder that provides no meaningful information to the reader, yet take up several pages (see pages 148-149) "slating without a clapper"; a page and a half snapshots of a person clapping their hands to simulate a wooden clapper.This book may seem comprehensive, but it is not, in any way, encompassing of the topics set fourth in the Table of Contents. The author's 'stream-of-consciousness' writing style is uninformative and irritating. It is full of his personal quirks, misgivings, and mannerisms. I could continue to cite dozens of examples, further supporting my overall dislike of the book, but I'd prefer to just recommend that any potential reader consider buying separate, individual books for each of the major facets of the film making industry: writing, producing, directing, etc.

Great info on how to make something that looks and sounds more expensive than it needs to be, using that DIY punk aesthetic

One of the best latest & updated book on Filmmaking. Only issue is in ebook downloadable DVD part is missing. Need update regarding this