Digital Filmmaking for Kids

Digital Filmmaking for Kids
© 2015 Nick Willoughby
304 pages

I am not, readers may spot, a kid.  However, when I WAS a kid, I was one given to wandering around the woods with a massive camcorder in my shoulders, attempting to make nature documentaries -- or endlessly playing around with home audio equipment to make "radio shows"  or Calvin and Hobbes audiobooks.  (None of these tapes survived the nineties to my knowledge.)     Computers renewed that old interest in  mucking around with audio and video, hence my reading this.   The title is well organized and generously illustrated, but approximately a third of the content is useful only to Apple users. These are the chapters on digital editing, which only utilize iMovie. The only obvious indicator of this book being written for kids is the fact that all of the actors in the example stills are children; there's no overt "Boys and girls, today we'll be learning about 3-point lighting! Isn't that COOOOL?" tone.   Most of the content covers the basic concepts of filmmaking, a review of equipment from a basic cameraphone to more elaborate setups including mic booms, mobile camera tripods,  and lighting systems, and film production organization, and techniques.  I think a book like this would have definitely fed my imagination as a kid and helped me an even more pretentious little David Attenborough imitator.

Related:
Making YouTube Videos, Nick Willoughby.