So You Want to Be a Filmmaker
Film is a powerful medium. With the right script under your arm and a staff of eager team players, you’re about to begin an exciting ride. The single most important thing that goes into making a successful film is the passion to tell a story. And the best way to tell your stories is with pictures. 
Today, you can shoot your movie in several different formats. You can choose analog video or digital video, high definition (HD) digital files, or a traditional film camera using super-8 or 16mm film, or — the choice of studio productions — 35mm motion-picture film stock. The medium on which you set your story — whether it be actual film celluloid on which the images are developed, videotape, or digital (standard or high definition) with a film-style look — engender specific feelings and reactions from your audience. A movie shot on film stock tends to have a nostalgic feeling, like you’re watching something that has already happened. Something shot on video elicits the feeling that it’s happening right now — unfolding before your eyes, like the evening news. You can use this knowledge to enhance the emotional response your audience has to your film. Steven Spielberg, for example, made Schindler’s List in black and white to help convey both the film as a past event and the dreariness of the era.
Keep Reading! Keep Knowing: SCENEMASCOPE
Filmmaking is visual storytelling in the form of shots that make up scenes and scenes that eventually make up a complete film. As a filmmaker, you have the power to affect people’s emotions, make them see things differently, help them discover new ideas, or just create an escape for them. In a darkened theater, you have an audience’s undivided attention. They’re yours — entertain them, move them, make them laugh, make them cry. You can’t find a more powerful medium to express yourself.
Filmmaking: Traditional or Digital?
Going digital: Standard or high-def
In this age of digital technology, almost anyone with a computer and video camera can make a film. You can purchase or rent a 24-frame progressive digital camcorder (like the Panasonic AG-DVX-100B) that emulates the look of motion picture film, without incurring the cost of expensive film stock and an expensive motion-picture camera. For a little more money, you can shoot your movie using an HD (high definition) digital camera (like the Panasonic AG-HVX200, or Sony’s PMW-EX1) that uses memory cards to store your footage. If you can’t afford one of these digital cameras, you can purchase computer software called Magic Bullet Frames (www.redgiantsoftware.com) that takes a harsh video image shot with an inexpensive home camcorder and transforms it to look more like it was shot with a motion-picture film camera. Many new computers come preloaded with free editing software.
High definition (HD) is the new-age technology that takes the camera image one step farther. The picture is much sharper, richer, and closer to what the human eye sees as opposed to what a standard definition (SD) video camera shows you. Watching HD is like looking through a window — the picture seems to breathe. The new HD digital cinema cameras combine HD technology with the 24-frame progressive technology to emulate a unique film-like picture quality in an electronic file format, without the use of physical film. When talking about inexpensive HD full resolution camera, DSLR cameras are the favorites among many Indie-filmmakers and Industry people. DSLR cameras can give you not only stunning film-look-alike visuals but the flexibility to try plethora of photographic and film lenses already available in the Market. And the Cost: NOTHING LIKE IT. Which DSLR camera to Buy, Plz read my earlier post “Top DSLR Filmmaking Cameras !”
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