In a manner completely acceptable to the professional film maker, yet thoroughly understandable and of great value to the amateur cinematographer, Spottiswoode presents the essential, unwritten lore of documentary film making. The book deals first with the ideas for a documentary film, and shows how they are embodied ina script. It explains how the production unit is assembled, and goes on to describe the mechanism of the camera, the primary instrument of film making. The chapters which follow discuss the important creative process of editing, optical printing, the film library, and negative cutting. A special section deals with the physics of sound, the technical methods of recording it, and the creative uses to which sound can be put in film. A long chapter describes current color processes and 16-mm. techniques. Successive chapters take the reader through all the steps of the production from script to screen and give him clues to what practices he should adopt and what he should avoid. A number of simplified procedures in animation are described here for the first time. The book ends with an annotated bibliography of technical works on film, and an extensive, 1000-word glossary of film terms defined with the needs of the amateur in mind. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1951.

Originally published in England in 1935, this book is an attempt to isolate the fundamental principles of film art and to teach in concrete detail how these principles are well or badly applied in the production of films. This essential task, shirked or derided by most film critics today, Spottiswoode executed with skill and perception. He traced the history of the new medium, analyzed the aesthetic factors governing proper use of camera angle and movement, cuts, dissolves, sound, and other elements of film construction. He also examined the proces by which films produce their special effects upon audiences. A Grammar of the Film contains some predictions that history has belied, and as the author remarks in his preface, parts of it abound in distinctions without differences. Yet its analytic perspective remains sound and useful, because the passage of years has brought little significant experimentation and little change in the basic aesthetic problems of the medium. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1950.

Originally published in England in 1935, this book is an attempt to isolate the fundamental principles of film art and to teach in concrete detail how these principles are well or badly applied in the production of films. This essential task, shirked or derided by most film critics today, Spottiswoode executed with skill and perception. He traced the history of the new medium, analyzed the aesthetic factors governing proper use of camera angle and movement, cuts, dissolves, sound, and other elements of film construction. He also examined the proces by which films produce their special effects upon audiences. A Grammar of the Film contains some predictions that history has belied, and as the author remarks in his preface, parts of it abound in distinctions without differences. Yet its analytic perspective remains sound and useful, because the passage of years has brought little significant experimentation and little change in the basic aesthetic problems of the medium. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1950.

In a manner completely acceptable to the professional film maker, yet thoroughly understandable and of great value to the amateur cinematographer, Spottiswoode presents the essential, unwritten lore of documentary film making. The book deals first with the ideas for a documentary film, and shows how they are embodied ina script. It explains how the production unit is assembled, and goes on to describe the mechanism of the camera, the primary instrument of film making. The chapters which follow discuss the important creative process of editing, optical printing, the film library, and negative cutting. A special section deals with the physics of sound, the technical methods of recording it, and the creative uses to which sound can be put in film. A long chapter describes current color processes and 16-mm. techniques. Successive chapters take the reader through all the steps of the production from script to screen and give him clues to what practices he should adopt and what he should avoid. A number of simplified procedures in animation are described here for the first time. The book ends with an annotated bibliography of technical works on film, and an extensive, 1000-word glossary of film terms defined with the needs of the amateur in mind. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1951.