Making Documentary Films and Reality Videos: A Practical Guide to Planning, Filming, and Editing Documentaries of Real Events
Product Description
Making Documentary Films and Reality Videos is the perfect text for students of filmmaking who would like to make a documentary. Barry Hampe, who has made more than 150 documentary films and videos, traces the two main approaches to documentary–recording behavior and re-creating past events—and shows students how to do both effectively. Covering all the steps, from conceptualization to completion, the book includes chapters on visual evidence; documentary ethics; why reality is not enough; budgeting; and casting, crew, and equipment selection.
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This book has very little content. The author spends more time discussing the cosmetics of documentary filmmaking than content. It is repetitive, random and disorganized. There are a few gems of wisdom, but they are hard to find. If this book was condensed to a 10 page outline, it might actually be more useful than its current 350+ pages.
Rating: 1 / 5
I haven’t read much, but the book is very thorough. Good for someone just getting into documentary films.
Rating: 4 / 5
I felt like I was back at UNCA in a Theory class. This guy was all over the place with his ideas and often repeated them. This book is old, refering to high 8 video as the best available. He wrote this before the boom of reality on TV. There’s no good outlines of what to do and not do, how to set up interveiws, shots or anything of that matter. It’s full of ludicrous examples that extend to great, uneccessary links. I hate this book.
Rating: 1 / 5
this really isn’t the best guide for documentary filmmaking. especially if your goal is to create an independent project. i wanted a “step 1, step 2. step 3…” guide. this was not it. also, the author’s bias is toward behavioral documentaries, for profit.
Rating: 3 / 5
Overall, this book is really great. One of the best things about this book is that it offers valuable insight for every reader–no matter how involved with video production they may be. If I take one thing from this book, its the importance of keeping the documentary VISUAL. After devoting an entire chapter on the subject, Hampe continues to drill that fact into the reader’s mind. It really stresses the importance of having visual “evidence” to show instead of the dreadful “talking heads” telling you about the visuals you should be seeing.
Overall a great book. I give it a 4 out of 5 simply because it could have been a little shorter making it less repetitive towards the end.
Still, a great read!!
Rating: 4 / 5