The Digital Filmmaking Handbook, Sixth Edition: Digital version (The Digital Filmmaking Handbook Presents)

by Sonja Schenk

You have the ability to build an audience at the same time that you develop your idea, your brand, and, if you are new to filmmaking, your voice.

TV when you watch it on your phone? Is it really a movie when you never go to the theater? Whatever you call them, these other genres are not just launching pads to get into the "real" movies: they are all real movies, because this multiplicity is the future of moviemaking.

Don't think about the rules, just go out and make your movies.

And we will also be saying goodbye to 35mm film as a finishing medium. Film has been obsolete for shooting and editing for some time, but people were still printing and projecting on film for theatrical movies. But now even that is more or less over, so RIP 35mm motion pictures, you changed the world.

producers (that's TV-speak for "directors") take a gamble and shoot their own pilot episode. Then they present that material in the form of a pitch reel or a finished cut of the first episode of the series, aka the pilot. It's called a pilot because it flies out ahead and leads the series-unless it crashes and burns.

Digital cinema is a type of high-resolution digital video that is aimed specifically at making films, as opposed to television. In fact, 2K digital cinema is only slightly larger than 1080 HD, and 4K digital cinema is twice as big as 2K (Figure 3.1).

Although some studios still use 35mm motion picture film as an archive medium, only a select handful of A-list directors are able to insist that they shoot their movies on film.

Film is an analog medium so it doesn't have pixels, but nevertheless it is considered to have a minimum resolution of 2048 × 1080 pixels, or 2K. In other words, in order for a digital video format to approximate the resolution of 35mm film, it must have a resolution of 2048 × 1080 pixels or higher. 2K digital video is progressively scanned, and usually has a frame rate

The number of still images, or frames, per second is called the frame rate.

With the advent of sound, the frame rate had to be increased to 24fps

24p, 23.976p and 48p. Frame rates based on film. 29.97p, 30p, 59.94i, 60i, 59.94p, and 60p. Frame rates based on American television. 25p and 50i . Frame rates based on European television.

24p is used when shooting video footage that will eventually be transferred to film. It is also used when transferring projects shot on film to HD for broadcast.

With some types of video, these scan lines start at the top and work their way down to the bottom, filling the screen entirely, a process called progressive scanning (p).

With other types of video, the scan lines start at the top, but only draw the even- numbered lines until they get to the bottom; then the odd-numbered lines are filled in from top to bottom (see Figure 3.4), a process called interlaced scanning (i).

Each inter- laced pass across the monitor is ...

A pixel, short for "picture element," is the smallest component of a video image.

The number of horizontal lines that fit on the screen is known as the vertical resolution.

The ratio of the width of an image to its height is called the aspect ratio

video are usually described by three things: the pixel dimensions (or resolution), the number of frames or fields per second, and the scanning method (interlaced or progressive), in that order.