A PLUME BOOK
THE FILMMAKERS HANDBOOK
STEVEN ASCHER is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker whose films include Troublesome Creek, So Much So Fast, and Raising Renee (trilogy codirected with his wife, Jeanne Jordan). He has taught filmmaking at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in workshops around the world. His awards include the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award, the Prix Italia, a George Foster Peabody Award, and an Emmy Award, and he was nominated for a Directors Guild of America Award. His website is www.WestCityFilms.com.
EDWARD PINCUS s pioneering work in personal documentary led to Diaries (197176). He codirected Black Natchez, One Step Away, Panola, Portrait of a McCarthy Supporter, and The Axe in the Attic. He founded the Film Section at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later taught filmmaking at Harvard. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and National Endowment for the Arts grants. He is author of the widely used Guide to Filmmaking and grows cut flowers commercially in northern New England.
Pincus and Ascher also codirected Life and Other Anxieties.
THE
FILMMAKERS
HANDBOOK
A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE
FOR THE DIGITAL AGE
FOURTH EDITION
Steven Ascher & Edward Pincus
Drawings by Carol Keller and Robert Brun
Original Photographs by Ted Spagna
and Stephen McCarthy
Completely Revised and Updated by Steven Ascher
With Contributions by David Leitner
A PLUME BOOK
PLUME
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa Penguin China, B7 Jaiming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, June 1984
First printing (second edition), March 1999
First printing (third edition), August 2007
First printing (fourth edition), December 2012
Copyright Edward Pincus and Steven Ascher, 1984, 1999
Copyright Steven Ascher, 2007, 2012
Drawings and photographs copyright Steven Ascher, 1999, 2007, 2012
Drawings copyright Carol Keller, 1999
Drawings copyright Robert Brun, 1999
Photographs copyright Ted Spagna, 1983
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARKMARCA REGISTRADA
CIP data is available.
ISBN: 978-1-101-61380-1
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For Jordan
For Jane
CONTENTS
PREFACE
I f you look at how storytelling in movies changes over time, you can see moments when new technology has made new kinds of narratives possible. Sometimes its a seismic shift. The introduction of sound in the 1920s transformed scriptwriting, film acting, and editing. Or it may be more gradual, but just as dramatic, like the way digital has led to documentary and fiction films that would have been technically or financially impossible before.
As a filmmaker, you find that changes come so fast these days that its really daunting to try to tell stories while having to learn and master so much about your craft. This book, which is for beginners and for working professionals, can help you. Inevitably, some parts wont be as current as the latest information on the Web, but the book offers something most websites cant: a view of the entire filmmaking process from beginning to end. It will give you the foundation and language to understand new developments as they come along.
The Filmmakers Handbook started out almost thirty years ago, and through the editions its become a stockpot of ingredients added and removed. In 1984 Ed and I wrote the first edition about working with celluloid film. After that, Ed bowed out of working on the book and in 1999 I wrote an expanded second edition to include analog video; in 2007 I did another major expansion to introduce digital, doubling the size of the original book. David Leitnera talented filmmaker and explorer of technologycontributed his expertise to that third edition and to this fourth edition. As of this edition, Ive had to jettison a lot of material about once-proud film, which is painful. But digital is the future and the book is already a doorstop (or the e-book equivalent).
The world of moviemaking is really made up of many separate but related worlds. Ive tried to address the needs of fiction and documentary filmmakers, who may be creating work on their own or as part of a large organization, to be shown in any number of ways, for profit or not.
In a sense, all moviemakers start out as independents. More often than not, beginners must become versed in all aspects of productionshooting, sound recording, editing, raising money, distributionsimply because theres no one else to perform these tasks. Learning all the facets of filmmaking has advantages no matter what your future career is in movies. In fact, with shrinking budgets and the growing power of technology, professional moviemakers are often expected to have a range of skills that go well beyond traditional job categories. This book is written with the assumption that you may be performing all the tasks of making a movie, or that youll at least want to understand them. And of course, its a reference: so read what concerns you and skip the sections that dont.
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