Forget Titanic and Schindler's List, ignore Ugetsu Monogatari and Four Weddings ... this is your show time!
FiveQuick Tips
for making better movies

Read magazines and books. Join a film / video club. Study the work of the best. Take training courses. Join IAC - the Film & Video Institute.

Magazines | Clubs | IAC Film & Video Library | Training | Using Music | Join IAC

Nothing quite matches the joy of first seeing your pictures on a screen - large or small. There, where Hitchcock, Spielberg, Godard, Ang Lee, Satyajit Ray, Kurosawa presented their best for your pleasure ... now it is your epic on centre stage.

Then on the 9th, 10th or 12th viewing you start to notice something missing. The trick is to identify just what it is. Then all you have to do is correct it. You could work that way but why re-invent the wheel? Other moviemakers, professional and amateur, have trod this path before over the last century. Even the pioneers learned from artists of a previous age - taking ideas on composition from painters, on drama from playwrights, on language from poets and so on.

Not, mind you, that you can learn everything.

There is still plenty of room for experiment and development. Movie making changes constantly. The "rules" of one generation become the "suggestions" of the next. There is no reason why you should not be able to push the boundaries a bit further.

But it makes sense to catch up on developments so far. Read, look, listen, learn - and apply a degree of judgement to what you absorb. Not everything in print is the absolute truth, not every pronouncement from a celebrated director is the whole story. Each person in the chain is only passing on her or his perceptions, no matter how dogmatic they may sound!

"If a turtle doesn't have a shell, is he homeless or naked?"

Page updated on 21 March 2008

Authors' views are not necessarily those of The Institute of Amateur Cinematographers

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