Editing Professional VFX Compositing With Adobe After Effects

Not a VFX text, but included here for its potential utility as a guide to hacking your way into a career in filmmaking. Armed with only $7,000 (much of that earned by repeatedly checking himself into the hospital as a test subject for drug trials) aspiring director Robert Rodriguez produced his first feature-length film "El Mariachi" at the age of twenty-three. Originally intended to be sold to the Spanish-language direct-to-video market, the film was eventually picked up by Sony, who polished the audio and gave the film a theatrical release, thus launching Rodriguez' (From Dusk 'Til Dawn, Sin City, Spy Kids) Hollywood directorial career. An honest and thoroughly entertaining book, you'll learn how his "edgy editing style" was a workaround necessitated by his inability to record sync sound (his camera was too loud), how he lit his scenes using color-balanced bulbs in whatever standard light fixtures were available on location, and how he used a borrowed hospital wheelchair for all his "dolly shots". Pure genius, brash and inspirational.