What a world we live in today, originating with the laserdisc, supplemental material with a movie has become a standard as DVD’s made their way into virtually every home. Filmmakers have benefited greatly from this, especially for the astute observers. Not a lot of us can afford film school, but I can help you make a curriculum from your own DVD collection and from discs available from the public library for free. A lot can be learned from DVDs in the form of commentary tracks, documentaries, as well as the obvious just viewing the movie for it’s own value.
You can create your own “curriculum” from many of your favorite movies on DVD. If there are commentary tracks and extras, they usually contain a lot of valued information on how something was done.
Commentary tracks have some of the best lessons to learn from. For example, Rob Reiner & Cameron Crowe commentaries are almost exclusively on performance and nothing on camera, and others are too much about camera tricks, they neglect to say anything about actors in the movie. And there’s an all-new category of commentary tracks for people like Tim Burton who don’t talk for 20 minutes at a time and teach us nothing.
The story continues in part two of DVD FILM SCHOOL>>>
