There’s a really interesting-sounding new book that I just ordered, The DV Rebel’s Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap, by Stu Maschwitz. Kevin Kelly reviewed it in his newest Cool Tools write up, and Chris Anderson just did a post on it in a Long Tail blog entry called How to Make a Long Tail Movie.

I don’t have The DV Rebel’s Guide in my hands yet, but judging by the excerpts provided, the book contains some really great common sense advice. There’s this:

The DV Rebel cannot pass a glass elevator, or an open-air escalator, or a tire swing, without pondering how it might be used to create a smooth establishing shot. I once made a dolly shot in an airport by resting my camera on the rail of a moving pedestrian walkway. If you can ride it, it’s a dolly. If you can ride it up and down, it’s a crane.

And this:

Watch that scene now. It’s a solid scene, very well directed with a flair that would later become Besson’s trademark. You could never shoot this scene. But now watch it again, and try this: Don’t watch the scene, watch the individual shots. Pause the DVD on each one, and ask yourself this question: Could I create this shot? This less-than-two-second little snippet in time? Could I figure out a way to shoot that with my little DV camera?

I really love posts and books about stuff like this. Breaking things down into scenes, and using everything around you in creative ways–they’re all incredibly doable propositions. Looking at the filmmaking landscape, the flexibility offered by the guerrilla-style DV shooting described in the book is really exciting. You can make more films and take on more risk for less money. Because of thinking like this, it’s a pretty exciting time for filmmaking.

(Check out the second Spout FilmCouch podcast for some additional discussion on this topic.)