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THE BARE BONES CAMERA COURSE FOR FILM AND VIDEO Tom Schroeppel. Tampa: Tom Schroeppel, 2003, 89 pp.
We've all seen those bright yellow or orange books with titles like Dummies Guide to Golf of The Idiot's Guide to Retirement Planning. These popular books have become a publishing phenomenon because they cut through the clutter, avoid big words, use lots of illustrations and humor, and generally make it easier and more fun to learn. At least a dozen years before these books arrived on the scene, Tom Schroeppel used the same approach to great effect in The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video.
Somewhat of a well-kept secret early in its publishing history, the bookfirst came to my attention in the mid-1980s, when I was a beginning film student at the University of Miami. At the time, I was always on the lookout for new sources of practical information about filmmaking. In a pre-Internet world where many filmmaking concepts were regarded as trade secrets, I turned over every stone looking for insider information and I soaked up everything I found. One day I caught sight of Bare Bones in my professor's office. As I thumbed through the slim volume, I was struck by its homemade layout and cartoon-like illustrations. Both things suggested a nontraditional film production textbook-an accessible manual of trade secrets from an actual working filmmaker, and a refreshing alternative to dry and intimidating textbooks. I knew immediately that the book might be a Holy Grail for me, a way to truly grasp the basics of difficult concepts such as continuity, composition, and lighting. At the time there were fewer film production textbooks available than there are today, and those in popular circulation were usually overwrought and needlessly complicated, written by academics more interested in film theory than the nuts and bolts of everyday filmmaking. I ordered my first copy directly from the author, and twenty...