Digital Filmmaking for Beginners A Practical Guide to Video Production

I am writing regarding Mike's Digital Video Production for Beginners. I have read his book and found it to be very clear and easy to understand. He covers every detail in the production process and I anxiously anticipated his personal sense of humour, making this book easy to read. The book covers everything from the creative side of scripting, technical details, shooting formats, and editing. Mike leaves nothing out! I especially liked the pictures and the numbered diagrams for the digital editing process. Mike makes several suggestions as to software products that might work for me. The book helped me to narrow the field on appropriate equipment as well. I also found that learning the 'lingo' of the Video Production business would be helpful when applying for work in this creative business. His "step by step", made it easy to understand. I can hardly wait to get started with my first production!

This book has many helpful and up-to-date tips on getting started in digital filmmaking. Things like lighting and camera angles especially useful for beginners are explained in depth (although some chapters seemed a little too short). If you want to make movies, but don't know where to start, or even if you know a thing or two already, this book will be a good reference to have on hand.

"Digital Filmmaking for Beginners A Practical Guide to Video Production" offers a lot of information in a concise and easy to read style. The book isn't a technical manual, though it does provide technical information on how to create a video. It's primary purpose is to educate the novice filmmaker and home videographer on how a video production actually comes to fruition, from idea to presentation. The book is written in easy-to-understand language and is an excellent launch into more technical reading material.

An easy read for those just beginning in filmmaking. The language and vocabulary is fitting and industry jargon is explained.

While it has some good concepts, this book is 2012. Techniques haven't changed but the equipment has. I'd give it one star for the dated material, however this is not about digital videography with new equipment as much as the process of film making

An awesome, easy to understand guide. A true bargain considering the low price.

Pretty Straight forward to the point information on how to shoot video. I even has examples for some of the critical areas like shot composition and so on. Really good book

Whenever I order a book on a fast-evolving topic (e.g. "Digital Filmmaking") I always check the publication date to make sure I am not buying an outdated text. Unfortunately, with this book I got cheated anyway. The author has a friendly style and is undoubtedly knowledgeable on the topic of television and film production, with long experience. However he offers an an overview of analog and television equipment and stops at digital tape based formats such as DVCPRO and Digi Beta. These formats were introduced in the early 1990s, and are by now obsolete. No word about tapeless or video DSLR equipment. This is not usable information for somebody who is a beginner in digital filmmaking; this is a nostalgic lesson in TV equipment history. Secondly, each and every topic in the book takes 2-3 paragraphs. There is no practical advice found inside - unless suggesting that you edit your own video and write your own music counts as practical. Reading this whole book may make you knowledgeable enough to know when to nod while listening to a conversation about video production, but only if you have had absolutely no prior knowledge on the matter. In my opinion, a "practical guide" is supposed to teach you certain skills and offer you some advice on a particular topic. For example, buy this or that piece of equipment, get this or that piece of software and try to do this and that with it. Buy you will not find such advice in this book. The information is so generic so as to be useless. And as I said before, it is hopelessly outdated. This book may have been published in 2012 but has been written not later than 2002. I cannot imagine anybody who would qualify as a beginner in digital production today and would benefit from reading this book. Do not buy this book.

Bought this as a Christmas gift for my son. He thought ii was awesome! He is now on the road to digital film making.

As a former film student and a student of film making, for many decades, I've found Digital Filmmaking for Beginners to be the easiest and most concise book on making great videos that I have ever read. Mike Hughes's writing style and indepth knowledge of digital video makes his book easy to read and easy to use by the novice and professional filmmaker. Viewing the many illustrations and watching the video tips that accompany each subject will accelerate the reader's learning curve and give them the comfidence to get out and make a terrific film or documentary. I wish I had had this book at the beginning of my film school studies. John JB Krause

Very comprhensive ,not yet used my camcorder much to now due to other pressures but this gives me lots of info and tips for my future projects particularly with our Rotary club events and promotions

Not really aimed at the DLSR videographer this still contains a lot of relevant info for film-makers. I bought Kindle version which works ok on Kindle Fire although diagrams are a little small.