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Hello,
I hope everyone is well! I am trying to look into books for general guidance/education and was wondering what your thoughts are on Blain Brown? I am only hesitant because they are on the more expensive side, but they seem to be popular. For those of you that have read anything of his, do you find yourself referring back to his writing during filming or post production? If you would not recommend him, why did he not work for you? Lastly, are there other works have you found helpful and would recommend?
Thank you!
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I can’t say anything about Blain Brown, just that books about cinematography (or filmmaking in general) never worked for me personally. They could be inspiring and great theory, but very seldom anything actually translated onto set later.
I think I learned more by listening to Team Deakins than from any book, e.g. it made me realize how differently people can go about the same task. Which made me more confident in my own choices or actions when they didn’t correspond to what I believed to be conventional.
This is not to discourage you from getting books, people are different and what didn’t work for me might work very well for you!
Its funny but that is the thing that keeps coming out of the podcasts , there is no one way and also the process as an important life experience. Roger said something few weeks back that really struck me, about not wanting to spend months inside a green screen studio.
I’ve only read Blain Brown’s book on digital imaging and that was several years ago but I remember thinking at the time that it was an excellent primer. To Stip’s point, Brown’s books aren’t really prescriptive, he’s not teaching you ‘his’ way of doing things, the concepts are much more elementary and aimed at the beginner.
I love filmmaking books — I have two tall bookshelves full of them! It’s just knowledge that you can choose to use or not use, but I don’t see any reason to avoid reading books. One of my favorites was written in the early 1970s about British cinematography practices and probably most of the information is outdated and yet it’s a window on a period of filmmaking that I love.
I can’t imagine a Civil War history fan only reading a few books on the topic, nor a baseball history fan who has avoided most of the player biographies out there, and yet I run into cinematography students who just want to read one or two books on filmmaking, a subject that they are dedicating their life to. Absorb information wherever you can find it; what matters will stick to you.
When I moved to Los Angeles at the age of 22, I used to go to the libraries at UCLA, USC, AFI, and AMPAS and spend hours reading cinematography books and magazines. I read every issue of American Cinematographer going back to 1920, I read every issue of International Photographer (later ICG Magazine) and every issue of the SMPTE Journal going back to the 1950s, I read three decades of British Cinematographer magazine, a decade of Super8 Filmmaker, years of Film & Video Magazine, Lighting Dimensions, and many short-lived magazines. And I read books, lots of books. I even read PhD dissertations on shelves if they were related to cinematography. Of course I don’t remember now a lot of what I read…
I would guess the students you refer to still read a lot, though. The internet is one huge book. I used to collect hundreds of articles from dedicated filmmaking or cinematography sites whenever they contained something I found useful or inspiring.
Books have some advantages over the more fractured knowledge of the internet though.
In reply to the original question about Blain Brown, I can recommend his books as they contain a lot of technical detail which most books these do not, many of the books on the market claim to provide a wealth of information but contain very little, mostly are written by vanity publishers and charge massive price which amounts to daylight robbery. However, I can recommend Blain Brown as a worthy author even though they are still expensive but they are worth it imo.
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