I’ve started writing text materials for the Cinematography and Motion Picture Production classes I’m teaching at APU in the fall. The students will use this info like text books, and I thought I’d share these articles on I Speak Film.

I’ve read a zillion books on cinematography, but there isn’t a stand-out book that I’d like to use as a text book for the whole class. I like some books for lighting, and others for camera assisting. Some for conceptual thinking and others for practical hands-on stuff. But no single book does it all, so I’m making my own text and will supplement from the others. That’s the idea, at least.

I’ll be writing about exposure, lighting, motion picture cameras, aspect ratios, film processing, the Zone System, camera assisting, handling film, scene coverage, light meters, directing, analyzing film lighting, pre-production and a whole host of other topics. It’s going to take all summer and into the fall to write all this good stuff, plus a lot of re-writes, I’m sure.

I may not write my articles in order of how they’re being presented in class, but I’ll make a new page on the site so all these articles will be easy to find. Hopefully, I’ll be able to start posting the first of these articles in the next week or two.