• Location: Somewhere in time
  • Joined: January 4, 2017

Topic: Media Recommendations on Cinematography

Recently I have been wanting to make brickfilming more than just a hobby for me, and I have been looking around for things like books on cinematography to learn more about film making in the hopes that both my brickfilming capabilities and live action work (if I ever do that sort of stuff mini/tongue) will improve. So if anyone here has any book/video recommendations they would like to share or even any great films that they have seen which they believe is worth watching to learn more about this then please do, I hope that this thread will be helpful to those who want to take brickfilming further and to go beyond just brickfilming by learning more about film in general.

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Dragon Brick Studios's Website

  • Location: United States
  • Joined: June 21, 2011

Re: Media Recommendations on Cinematography

EveryFrameAPainting's Youtube is a good place to start. Somebody mentioned him on here a while back, and his videos are insightful and even technical to a point. I've enjoyed and benefitted from most everything he has released.

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Pritchard Studios's Website

  • Joined: December 26, 2008

Re: Media Recommendations on Cinematography

I started with EveryFrameAPainting. It doesn't focus exclusively on cinematography, but it made me realize just how deliberate everything in a film is, especially cinematography.

A good first step is to learn what goes into a shot. Learn some basic composition techniques. I haven't learned much about lighting, but that is also an important element of a shot, so I'd recommend looking up some info about that as well. There are plenty of YouTube videos that will teach you this stuff. One good exercise is to pause a film at any given time and figure out why a shot is set up the way it is. This website has hundreds of stills from loads of Best Cinematography nominees and winners, and is a great resource for analyzing shots.

I think the best thing, as I've hinted above, is to start really watching films. Pick apart the details; look for patterns. Film is really the best film school there is.

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Re: Media Recommendations on Cinematography

THE VISUAL STORY by BRUCE BLOCK!
I can't stress this enough, and no pun intended with the Block thing, hehe.
I had to get this book for a college class and when I flipped through and looked at the diagrams I was like WTF!? It seemed so abstract. But it has been the best thing that happened to me from a cinematic storytelling point of view. And this applies to any kind of sequential visual art from live action, to animation, to comics.

Also, anything by Scott McCloud! Now his books are more geared towards comics and graphic novels, but animation is the missing link between comics and live action filmmaking, and his approach is completely different from Bruce's.

Neither of these are about animation, the twelve principles, etc. just really solid visual storytelling.

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Re: Media Recommendations on Cinematography

Thanks for the responses guys. I have been watching quite a lot of the EveryFrameAPainting videos and they have been really interesting and useful, so I would also recommend them to people.

The Visual Story looks really good, so I think I'll get it. Scott Cloud also looks like someone who would be a very useful reference and learning material for those wishing to recreate comics in animation, like you said (although I can't think of any reason as to why I would be doing that sort of thing anytime soon).

I personally have also found something of interest on a trip to the BFI yesterday. It's a book called "Dream Worlds: Production Design for Animation", it is a really good book that teaches you about shot composition and positive and negative space in the set design of your shots.

I would love to hear more suggestions from others mini/smile

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