( 4 reviews )
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Posted: Jun 13 2008
Musberger is a great book if you're serious about the craft of shooting. The book is written by a pro for pros and those who would like to be. The style is spare, precise, and clear. There is little flair in the book, but if you want to get better at shooting the information is here and well-explained. While the title is "single-camera", most of the information applies in almost any video shooting situation.
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( 6 of 7 found this review helpful ) Posted: Aug 5 2006
The fact that a book has reached its fourth edition usually means it has some merit that readers have found useful. If that's the case with this book, it's a mystery to me how the book ever got out of the first edition. First of all, the title "Single-Camera Video Production" led me to believe that the book's focus is on how to do everything for a video production using a single camera. For the bulk of the book, that's not what it's about. It's really a general book about using a video camera. (One section even illustrates using 5 cameras--rehearsing and preparing talent!) Second, the illustrations are terrible. They look like they were done by a non-designer using Etch-a-sketch. Further, the drawings of the complex video cameras were so generic and seemingly dated that they were totally useless. However, that didn't matter because I didn't buy the book to learn about video cameras (that keep changing regularly), but rather some wisdom on the production process where the videographer is trying to produce using a single camera. The reason that this book is rated two-stars instead of 1 (or 0) is because there were some materials on lighting with a single camera that were useful. (However, there was nothing unique and that I couldn't find on the Web for free.) All in all, this book is a poorly crafted one, and one that I could cobble together with a topic search on the Web. Unfortunately, I think that a good book on Single-Camera Video Production is something that would be very useful. This just isn't it.
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( 4 of 6 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jan 12 2006
Mr. Musburger tackles a very wide range of information in a comfortable and easy to read style. He peppers his text with interesting tidbits about TV production and technology and covers a lot of ground. There are some unfortunate factual errors in this edition (I have not read earlier editions). Focal Press should improve their editing process and attempt to have more industry experts read books like this before going to press. All in all this is a good overview for someone starting out in video production as long as they continue to seek out other information from various sources. Instructors in the field can furnish errata for their students that will greatly increase the value of this book. Better fact checking would have made this a strong recommendation.
