Focal Press - The Shut Up and Shoot Documentary Guide by Anthony Artis

A Down & Dirty DV Production

Anthony Artis is a 15-year veteran of the film and TV industry whose features and shows have been screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, the IFP Feature Market, Slamdance, and on MTV. He is the manager of the Film and TV Production Center at New York University's renowned film school.

Description
So you want to make a documentary, but think you don't have a lot of time, money, or experience? It's time to get down and dirty! Down and dirty is a filmmaking mindset. It's the mentality that forces you to be creative with your resources. It's about doing more with less. Get started NOW with this book and DVD set, a one-stop shop written by a guerrilla filmmaker, for guerrilla filmmakers. You will learn how to make your project better, faster, and cheaper. The pages are crammed with 500 full-color pictures, tips from the pros, resources, checklists and charts, making it easy to find what you need fast.

The DVD includes:
• Video and audio tutorials, useful forms, and interviews with leading documentary filmmakers like Albert Maysles (Grey Gardens), Sam Pollard (4 Little Girls), and others
• 50+ Crazy Phat Bonus pages with jump start charts, online resources, releases, storyboards, checklists, equipment guides, and shooting procedures

  Here's just a small sampling of what's inside the book:

• Putting together a crew
• Choosing a camera
• New HDV and 24P cameras
• Shooting in rough neighborhoods
• Interview skills and techniques
• 10 ways to lower your budget
• Common production forms

  Audience
  Beginners and amateurs with a digital video camera and the desire to tell a story.

  Reviews
  "Anthony Artis' "The Shut Up and Shoot Documentary Guide" is a good primer for the entry-level documentary filmmaker, presented in a breezy, down-to-earth vernacular style." -Thomas White, Editor of Documentary Magazine, a publication of the International Documentary Association.

  "I vouch for this book...extremely helpful for the newborn documentary filmmaker." -Albert Maysles, Grey Gardens

  "The book is a very easy, straightforward read with plenty of graphics to demonstrate proper and improper techniques.It is also extremely user friendly in its layout.. [It] will be helpful to you for many, many years to come." - Microfilmmaker Magazine

  "The book has a luxury presentation that makes you feel like a successful filmmaker - or that you soon will be - from the word go...Carried out in full colour, which makes a relief from too many academic tomes, its 296 pages are chock-a-block with very useful illustrations. But the clincher seem to be the DVD which is all part of the package. You're a filmlmaker, after all. A visual artist. Why would you want to spend all your time reading when you can be watching and learning." - British Film Magazine

  "Anthony Artis has consolidated years of practical, professional experience into the quintessential blueprint for documentary filmmakers. I have used the techniques in this book on my documentary and narrative film projects, knowing that budget should never stop a filmmaker from seeing his or her vision through. I highly recommend this book if you want to turn your limitations into assets. Now shut up and shoot!" -Pete Chatmon, Writer/Producer/Director PREMIUM and 761st

  "Plain and simple, nuts and bolts on making documentary films. It's told in a conversational manner with no wasted or minced words and most importantly no BS! Few books of this type would mention how important it is to take care of your crew and how that can dramatically improve the outcome of your film. Definitely told from an insiders point of view with useful and practical info that won't go over your head." -Cliff Charles, DP, When the Levees Broke, ThePeoplesDP.com

  "The practical approach promised in the title is delivered fully by the text. Artis exposes the pitfalls that can swallow a beginning filmmaker and offers straightforward advice to avoid them." -Jonathan Luskin, Flying Moose Pictures, San Francisco.

  "The book is comprehensive and detailed. Indeed the most comprehensive practical (I do hate the word `guerrilla', a filmmaker is surely at the end of the day just a filmmaker!) guide to documentary filmmaking I have ever come across! ... It has three principle outstanding qualities that you seldom find individually let alone together in the same book. The first is how comprehensive it is; the second is how intensely practical it is; and the third is how clear it is... But remember that this book will not tell you how to make a great film or indeed a good film. Or indeed even pretend to. But it will give you clear and practical guidance on how to make your film. And without such guidance it is hard to even get started. This book will help you do so much more than that!-Nik Powell (Director of the National Film and Television School in London)