FILMMAKER RESOURCE THREAD - please contribute

[Benjamin Boer]

Anybody find a good website that gives you a reference to scenes of actual movies allowing you to study them.
Why, you ask?

This would come in handy if were struggling to figure out how to shoot a scene in the script. Something which a DOP could find handy as a reference.

Example: If I was looking for a shot in an alleyway, I could search the database on the site and recieve the title; the time in the movie it happens; and comments on the technique used etc.

Thanks for your comments.
(I am still searching and I am looking at the sites mentioned above too.)

Benjamin

[Jack Barker]

The most DP-centric web site I know of is
http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/
Whether they have what you are looking for is another matter. I think wat you suggested is a great idea for any web site devoted to the motion picture arts.

[Michael Wisniewski]

Microsoft OneNote

An "electronic notebook" that actually works! The interface is simple, effective, and can be very addictive. A good tool to organize all that un-structured / one-off data.

[Marius Boruch]

where can I find information about legal aspects of film making (ie. what can be filmed and what requires signed release; general giude)

[Michael Wisniewski]

Being a lifelong geeky Doctor Who fan, I picked up the Doctor Who: Shooting Scripts book and have been having fun breaking down the first season. It's a great way to see how BBC production interpreted the scripts and it's also to see how Russel T. Davis structured the scripts for a television series. Think of it as one step beyond the DVD commentaries.

Book - Doctor Who: The Shooting Scripts
DVDs - Doctor Who: The Complete First Series

[Dan Hudgins]

I am developing a "freeish" full post production DI system with color correction and sound mixing for feature film post production and would like to work with filmmakers to help them produce 35mm prints of their projects for projection, as well as down sized output frames for making Blu-Ray and DVD etc.

My system works with both movie film scans 8mm to IMAX size, and with digital frames from Digital Cinema cameras and frames converted from video files with a program like VIRTUALDUB (tm) etc.

You can read more about the 0K to 8K+ workflows at my site, and can e-mail me direct if you have any questions or need support for finishing your feature film project. The program names are: DANCINES.EXE (tm) for DIY movie film scanning, DANCAD87.EXE v3.7N (tm) for DI, editing, color correction, and sound mixing, and DANCINEL.EXE (tm) for DIY film recorder output it, shoots off a 1600x1200 LCD monitor or 2048x1536 CRT monitor and controls the movie camera and gamma adjustments to compensate for the film stocks used, negative or positive.

The programs run under FreeDOS FAT32 (tm), Windows ME boot floppy (tm), or on some computers under Windows XP Home SP3 (tm). FreeDOS FAT32 (tm) lets you run several PC boxes in parallel to process frames faster "without" OS licence fees.

My software also includes 512 track sound mixing going out to 16 channel sound for multi-track feature film sound track finishing. Dual computer playback is used with one computer running Magix deLuxe (tm) or some other SMPTE WAV player, and the other running my programs in MASTER/SLAVE for image playback 25/25/30fps full screen.

Dan Hudgins
tempnulbox [at] yahoo [dot] com
The official DANCAD3D (tm) Beta Test Web site.

[Greg Donovan]

I just thought that I'd let you guys know that if you go to http://www.archive.org and use the Wayback Machine, most of the Amateur Movie Portal is available.

Amateur Movie Portal

Some of the links you need to shift-click to open in a new window for them to work, but for the most part everything functions.

Greg

[Dave Brown]

To add to a recent thread, here is a link to information about filming with firearms:

The 12 Greatest Myths about Firearms on Film Sets: What every filmmaker needs to know