| Introduction | xi |
| Chapter 1 | The Basics | 1 |
| Your Tools | 1 |
| Your camcorder | 2 |
| Your computer | 5 |
| Your software | 7 |
| Other tools | 8 |
| The bottom line | 8 |
| Your Process | 9 |
| Preparation | 9 |
| Shooting | 10 |
| Editing | 10 |
| Finishing | 11 |
| Chapter 2 | Your Camera | 13 |
| Fondle Your Camera | 14 |
| Basic camera anatomy | 14 |
| Assignment 1 | The Blindfold Test | 23 |
| Camera Care | 23 |
| Playing videotapes | 24 |
| A long camera life | 25 |
| Videotape | 26 |
| Tape length | 27 |
| Tape quality | 27 |
| Cassette memory (CM) or IC memory | 27 |
| Using Your First Videotape | 29 |
| Assignment 2 | Shooting Tape | 30 |
| Your Friend, Timecode | 31 |
| Learning to read timecode | 33 |
| Assignment 3 | Working with Your timecode | 33 |
| Assignment 4 | Break the Timecode | 35 |
| Why broken timecode is a problem | 37 |
| Assignment 5 | Fix the Timecode | 38 |
| End Search--a hip feature | 40 |
| Summary | 40 |
| Chapter 3 | Shooting | 41 |
| The First Important Thing About Shooting | 41 |
| Rubin's Rules of Shooting | 43 |
| How to Shoot | 46 |
| Your body and your camera | 46 |
| Think like a wildlife documentarian | 48 |
| Structure | 49 |
| Middle shots: The action or event | 50 |
| Beginning shots | 51 |
| Ending (closure) shots | 51 |
| Camera Shots | 52 |
| The close-up | 53 |
| The medium shot | 54 |
| The wide shot | 55 |
| Coverage | 56 |
| The establishing shot | 57 |
| The shot/reverse shot | 59 |
| The over-the-shoulder (OS) shot | 63 |
| The point-of-view (POV) shot | 64 |
| The cut-away shot (a.k.a. the "insert") | 65 |
| The pickup | 66 |
| "Popping" between shots | 66 |
| How long should a shot be? | 67 |
| Looking into the camera | 67 |
| The Hollywood Way--A Helpful Paradigm | 68 |
| Watching the raw material | 69 |
| Assignment 6 | Watch Some TV | 70 |
| Takes and Repetition | 70 |
| Framing and Design | 71 |
| Centering (or really, Not-centering) | 71 |
| Balance | 72 |
| Safe frame margins | 74 |
| Stop Moving the Camera | 75 |
| Assignment 7 | At the Dog Park | 75 |
| How not to move the camera | 77 |
| Assignment 8 | More Dog Park | 77 |
| Moving the camera | 78 |
| Lighting | 80 |
| Dark scenes | 80 |
| Backlighting | 81 |
| Sound Coverage | 82 |
| Ambience | 83 |
| Don't worry about dialog | 84 |
| Turn off the music when you shoot | 85 |
| What to Shoot: Small Moments | 85 |
| The expense of small moments | 87 |
| Candid photography | 87 |
| Non-candid photography | 89 |
| Summary | 90 |
| Chapter 4 | Organizing Your Video | 91 |
| Organizing Your Materials | 92 |
| Labeling the tape | 93 |
| Tape labels: "reel names" | 94 |
| Logging | 96 |
| Tape logs | 98 |
| Assignment 9 | Making a Log Book | 98 |
| Your logging station | 99 |
| How much detail to log? | 100 |
| Storage and Care of Videotapes | 101 |
| Tape care | 102 |
| Head-cleaning tapes | 103 |
| Disable record (a.k.a. "locking" a tape) | 103 |
| Chapter 5 | Getting Ready to Edit | 105 |
| The Camera and the Computer | 106 |
| Digital Video Is Big | 106 |
| Shooting Ratios | 106 |
| Culling vs. editing | 107 |
| Cabling | 108 |
| Cables and terminals | 108 |
| The most important cable | 112 |
| Cabling 101: Hooking everything up | 113 |
| Your "Edit Bay" | 114 |
| Several good monitor-setup options | 115 |
| Looping the video | 118 |
| Chairs | 119 |
| Choosing What to Edit | 121 |
| Capturing Video | 122 |
| Tips | 125 |
| Chapter 6 | Editing | 129 |
| Who Needs Editing? | 129 |
| Editing Terms and Concepts | 130 |
| Sync sound | 130 |
| Rippling/not rippling | 131 |
| Reading a shot | 132 |
| Source and master | 132 |
| Timeline | 134 |
| Editing functions (inserts and trims) | 135 |
| Track controls | 135 |
| Media files vs. project files | 136 |
| Output (to tape) | 137 |
| Rubin's Rules of Editing | 138 |
| Your Post-Production Schedule | 142 |
| Approaches to Editing | 143 |
| Method 1 | Cutting down (the marble-sculpting method) | 143 |
| Method 2 | Building up (the clay-sculpting method) | 144 |
| Your second pass | 144 |
| Editing Assignment 10 | Compilation Music Video | 144 |
| "Real" Editing | 146 |
| Assignment 11 | An Interview | 150 |
| The Art of Editing | 153 |
| Cutting on action | 153 |
| Motion example: Small-moment kid vid | 154 |
| A little trick | 155 |
| Re-editing and Versions | 156 |
| Sound and Sound Tracks | 157 |
| Your Master Tape | 158 |
| Preparing your master tape | 160 |
| Quality control | 162 |
| Titles and Special Effects | 162 |
| Dissolves | 162 |
| Fades | 163 |
| Titles | 164 |
| Motion effects (slow-down only) | 166 |
| Final Assignment: Small-Moment Video | 166 |
| Version 1 | With production sound | 167 |
| Version 2 | With a song from a CD | 167 |
| Version 3 | With ambience | 167 |
| Version 4 | With narration | 168 |
| Finishing Up | 168 |
| Digital output: CD-ROMs and DVDs | 169 |
| Deleting files and cleaning up | 169 |
| Copyright law | 170 |
| VHS dubs | 171 |
| Conclusion | 172 |
| Index | 173 |
