Universal Thumbs Down: DVD Seminar Review

If you’re like me and trying to get an education on your own, you might find yourself on Netflix, searching ‘filmmaking’ to see if there are any seminars or DVD courses to help you out. The #1 choice that will come up is John Russo’s Filmmaking Seminar.

I was really excited to get this DVD, since this is one of the guys who did Night of the Living Dead and the description claimed it would teach the viewer all about independent horror filmmaking (my favorite genre). Also, it lists this DVD as being from 2008. All I can figure is that this was the year when it was transferred onto a DVD, since the actual copyright you’ll see on the video is 1993, and it really looks like it was shot in the ‘80s. (Mullets ahoy.)

My advice to you is that this particular seminar is not worth the four and a half hours you’ll need to watch it. (Granted, I still have about an hour to go, but I predict the last hour won’t be much more thrilling than the first three and a half.)

Not that it was a complete waste of time. Hearing filmmakers talk about making their first films is inspiring, and I have picked up a few tips about film law and marketing – although nothing too distant from what I knew already. Here are my main grievances with this DVD:

1. Like I said, it’s from 1993 even if they say 2008, and it mainly focuses on making movies to sell directly into rental stores, which nowadays are pretty much obsolete.

2. For a video-turned-DVD that’s all about the art of filmmaking, I have to say: it looks HORRIBLE. Aside from looking as though it was filmed in your mom’s basement, with the door to the laundry room left ajar just behind the speakers (or a room full of random debris at best), I’m about 90% sure that the speakers were filmed on one day and that all the footage of an audience watching and reacting to them was filmed separately. The shots of the audience are never positioned so that you see the speakers and audience at the same time. The audience is also sitting in a white room with film equipment and harsh overhead lighting, while the speakers are in front of a dark brown wall with soft lighting.

3. OK, camera angles: if you’re going to have your speakers sit just in front of the open door to your mom’s laundry room, just angle the camera so you can’t see the sliver of the open room on the left-hand side of your frame.

4. For all the horny guys out there, the makeup and special effects speaker brings up a fake latex torso of a naked woman and keeps it on ‘stage’ as he speaks… to his credit, it’s super life-like… against his credit, you don’t really learn how to make anything like it for your own special effects purposes, and it really annoyed me, just because I thought it was so gimmicky and unnecessary to have a pair of boobs next to him on the table.

5. Finally, the word boring is taken to new heights. I know it’s just a filmed seminar/panel, but there’s gotta be some way to jazz it up. Even a laundry room fire could only help.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to rant about this so much, but it really is a disappointment. Does anyone out there know of a quality filmmaking course available on DVD? Particularly if it’s more modern and talks about digital filmmaking?

If not, maybe the time has come to make one!