4 Essential Books for Filmmakers

Reading is an essential part of learning and filmmaking.  Here is a list of must reads for aspiring and veteran filmmakers alike.  It is by no means extensive or complete but just a few of my favorites.  

1) The Illiad & The Odyssey - Simply put, the best.  Amongst the oldest in Western Literature, once read the two pieces you realize the human condition has not changed in thousands of years despite our technological evolution. We are all flawed, mortal beings just trying to get the biggest piece of the pie we can before we wither and die and spend an eternity in darkness (A bright and cheery outlook, no?) All literature coming after The Illiad & The Odyssey  owes them a great debt. No better read in my opinion for anyone and everyone.  How unfortunately relevant is the story of Odysseus trying to come home after long, weary wars yet unable to find his way home and once found, realizing it is utterly unrecognizable.  There is a reason these stories have been in the cultural fabric since their first utterance by the blind bard.  Purchase at Amazon, for free at Gutenburg

2) Easy Riders, Raging Bulls - Easily one of the most entertaining books about the craziness that is New Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls  really humanizes the glamour of how Hollywood deals are made, how people got into the business, and how filmmakers learned their craft.  Filled with all the sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, that is behind the movie business, it is an enlightening read on how business is done and perhaps most importantly, what not to do in a career in the movies. Purchase at Amazon.

3) The Art of Film Funding - Authored by Carol Lee Dean of From the Heart Productions Art of Film Funding  gives readers an honest view of what it takes to create a sustainable career in filmmaking. Dean shows that it takes, years of long hours, hard work, networking like crazy, asking everyone you meet for money to fund projects, and the absolute dedication to your projects and relationships.  Simply indispensable.  Purchase at Amazon. 

4) Making Movies -  Penned by Sidney Lumet, Making Movies shares the insights straight from the mouth of one of the great American film directors.  If Roger Ebert says it is in valuable, that is all that can be said. Read it.  Purchase at Amazon.

What books have you read you find imperative for filmmaker?

5 Essential Websites for Filmmakers

As a filmmaker, it is of the utmost importance to have life experience, knowledge of the world around you.  How can you have a viewpoint on the world if you know nothing about it.  After life has kicked you around a bit you can start you filmmaking education.  Here are five great websites that I use frequently to educate myself on various aspects of filmmaking.  

Cinephilia and Beyond - http://www.cinephiliabeyond.org - An utterly fantastic website for the true cinephile. Comprehensive, educational, unparalleled. Also, they are donation based so show them some love and throw some dollar bills their way.  They often have screenplays from some of the greatest works in film available for free. They dig up other content that you simply would not find otherwise.  A favorite piece of mine C&B did on Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975). http://www.cinephiliabeyond.org/stanley-kubricks-barry-lyndon/

Filmmaker IQ - http://filmmakeriq.com - Another website that scours the internet for juicy film related material and puts it all in one nice place.  There are also handy lessons on topics from color temperature to the history of aspect ratios.  I have spent a lot of time on this site.  

Roger Deakins Forum - www.rogerdeakins.com - Not only is Roger Deakins one of the best cinematographers to have ever worked, he is incredibly generous in sharing his knowledge and experience.  He answers questions on his own work and the work of others.  I have lost myself for hours on end scrolling through the nearly limitless knowledge.

YouTube - www.youtube.com - This one may seem obvious and it is.  There is so much information on youtube, one really has to comb through it.  Take all opinions with a grain of salt and use a little common sense and you will be able to find valuable tutorials, behind the scenes, reviews, and lectures on YouTube.  

Hurlbut Visuals - www.hurlbutvisuals.com - For those interested in camera, grip, or gaffing work this is another great resource. I have not yet taken part of Shane's Inner Circle educational service but I hear good things.  Shane is really good about sharing his thoughts on various tools.

What websites do you find valuable for continuing your filmmaking education?

Recording an Audiobook Using Adobe Audition: 4 Tips to Make Your Life Easier

Our most recent work has made us really happy.  We have been building websites, making short videos, designing coloring pages, and marketing for the Robert P. Rabbit book series.  It really makes us feel right about the decision to form our own company and do the work we love on a daily basis.  It is a real added bonus when you feel your work is really making a difference in people's lives.  For those that do not know, Robert P. Rabbit: Book One, Katie, Will, and the Global Detectives is about the incredible adventures that Katie and her brother Will have with a magical rabbit, Robert P. Rabbit.  Katie is ill with cancer and has to be confined to either a hospital bed or a wheelchair a lot of the time, but she does not let that stop her from helping others.  

The Robert P. Rabbit stories came about when the real life heroine, Katie, was diagnosed with brain cancer. During her treatment, her GrandDad would read to her for hours but eventually realized the books made her sad because she could not do the things in the books the other children could do.  To remedy this, GrandDad looked for books where the heroine was a young girl in a wheelchair or who had cancer. He could find none. Instead of waiting on someone else, GrandDad made up his own stories and told them to Katie as she lay in her bed.  Katie, Will and their magical rabbit friend could go anywhere and solve mysteries together.  Katie loved it.  

Eventually GrandDad was asked if he would like to publish the book.  He said, "Sure." Now that Katie, Will, and the Global Detectives is published, the main goal is to give all the books away to children's hospitals or any kids that need a little wholesome entertainment.  On top of giving the books away, we loved the idea of having an audiobook that kids could listen to. Families cannot be there 24/7 in a lot of cases, so we figured, we will read to them!  So over the course of three days last month, we recorded an audiobook here in the office.  

I do voice-over work on occasion and have experience recording and editing audio but this was definitely the longest piece I had worked on.  Here are a few of the things I learned from my experience.  

• Despite whatever recording program you use or what your setup is, make sure whomever is doing the reading can get you what you want, as fast as possible. The more the reader stumbles, the more tired they are as the day wears on, the more disk storage you will need, and the more time you spend editing. I was lucky and had a fantastic reader! Katie's mom, Wendy. Meet her on Facebook!

• This is perhaps my second biggest thing. When using multitrack recording in Adobe Audition, make sure your razor is set to Selected Clip and NOT All Selected clips.  This may sound obvious and if you are an avid user of Audition, it is. I simply did not realize that as I was editing one track, I was cutting every other track beneath it.  I finally realized what I was doing and moved the tracks down the timeline, but for some reason I was still getting cuts in strange places. Upon much cursing and frustration and a quick Google search, it dawned on me that I was just using the wrong tool.  So...this one...

  Not this one...

• I was running Adobe Audition (2014 CC, BTW) on our old MacPro with M-Audio's Mobile Pre interface and M-Audio AV 40 Monitors.  The MacPro is an 8 core, 26 GB RAM, and 2 GB VRAM, but after a few chapters was having a real problem with playback.  It sounded like there were dropped samples all over the place, making it sound like we had recorded a metronome alongside Wendy.  I ended up having to split the project into smaller incremented project files and moving all the tracks that I was not working on down the timeline, and solo the individual track. This seemed to work but also seemed a bit unnecessary.  It did not affect the recording but I had a brief heart attack as I thought a day and half's worth of work had been all for naught!

• We use a good deal of the Creative Cloud Suite on a daily basis but navigating through Audition is a bit different.  I highly recommend looking at the Keyboard Short cuts menu to learn them and adding a few of your own is really simple.  Click Edit on the menu bar and go toward to the bottom to find the Keyboard Shortcuts Menu.  A couple that I found highly useful when I needed to add just a couple seconds to the pause, hold command+option+T. This will highlight everything to the right of the playhead and I could then hold option or option+shift to nudge the selected clips left or right.  

All in all, it was a fun experience and we had a good time doing it. The only complaint I would have about Audition for my purposes is that it was almost too complicated.  There were some definite bugs alongside user error.  However, all is well that ends well, and the audiobook came out great!  Take a listen on the Robert P. Rabbit website, Soundcloud, or iTunes! Make sure to go to our Facebook page and like us so we can keep you up to date on all things MADLAWMEDIA and Robert P. Rabbit. Our main goal is to give away as many books as possible so if you want to take part, donate, buy books to give away to someone you know, it is super easy to do on the website, www.robertprabbit.com.

Do you have stories of software gone awry? Let us know! We love to hear from our readers. Drop us a line and tell us about the time you rerouted your keyboard shortcuts to make workflow smoother, only to find out you can't remember where you routed everything. Yeah, we've been there too...

Thanks for reading! Until next time!