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I was hoping for some opinions from the Maxwell community ... I'm looking for a book about movie making targeted to the teen age group. My daughter is 12 and is doing some really interesting playing around with our video camera and I would like to feed the obsession.

Any ideas? Thanks

Steve

I doubt she's short on ideas or subject matter , .. I'd just let that evolve on its own. But I would introduce her into video editing, ... something basic like Windows Movie Maker, Pinnacle, or Ulead. As technical as video can be even at that level, .. I think she'll grasp it and be using Premier or Final Cut in no time (relatively speaking here ... lol), but they do grasp technical things way faster then we did at the same age)..... I don't see any reason why she would need to be shown the 'proper' structure of movie making at this point, ..... just let creativity be and simply make sure the technology end doesn't bottleneck her creative side.

In short, ... don't put her in a bottle. Sorry if that sounds accusatory or preachy, ..that's not how it is meant. She's 12, .. you know what I mean...

Thanks ivox3 for the reply.

Actually she is short on ideas and subject matter. I was hoping to find something that could help inspire as well as begin to introduce some very basic ideas like composition and lighting. It's not about the 'proper' structure of movie making, but helping her take the next couple of steps ... she's already better at Final Cut than I am! For example, she pours over the behind the scenes on DVDs and tries to incorporate any little tidbits that she may pick up. I guess ultimately I was hoping to be able to find more tidbits in one place in a understandable format.

Okay ... I understand.

I think that beyond the video/film/technical aspect, .. then honing in on story telling is the next real step(somewhat forgetting about the camera for now). The difference is the approach, ie., If your just looking externally for ideas then there's too much distraction and nothing seems deep enough(or too deep) to form even a small film or the idea is too large. But if you begin with mentally just picking out something (that is of personal interest) and then following the idea imaginitively then that auto-creates what you need to shoot versus just shooting something that'll hopefully be created into some - thing. Essentially, .. it unfolds naturally. The end result will probably have too many ideas, ... this should be edited down to just pure content relative to whatever the original intent was, .. or it could change and often does. Creative types can be flaky ... I'm one. lol..