Inside The Cover
Book Reviews
Review by Lily Sadri
Dream Gear: Cool & Innovative Tools for Film, Video and TV Professionals
By Catherine Lorenze
Michael Wiese Productions
April 2004
350 pp.
Filmmaking
Amazon.com price: $20.97
Dream Gear: Cool & Innovative Tools for Film, Video and TV Professionals – just the title alone is enough to tantalize most industry professionals, especially the techies. The statement that best summarizes this handy work is that “Dream Gear provides the wish list for the coolest and most innovative filmmaking technology today.” Lorenze combines the best of photo books with the most useful information needed to create a successful trade book. Sometimes a cutting edge new gadget is just so revolutionary that it’s hard for the reader to visualize and fully comprehend simply through words, and that’s where the photos fit in fabulously, making for visual interest as well as a helpful guide.
Most chapters are introduced through product endorsements by working professionals who really know their stuff. This induces confidence in the product and confidence in Lorenze’s access to and knowledge of the industry; thus, making her someone we trust in our quest for all things cool and innovative in the filmmaking forum. For example, when we read about the A-Minima Super16 Camera, not only are we getting Lorenze’s opinion regarding it, but we’re also given the words of celebrated cinematographer Declan Quinn, who shot Leaving Las Vegas, Monsoon Wedding and One True Thing. So when Quinn says, “I was able to handhold the camera and shoot while I was riding on the back of a rickshaw. In the street I could shoot pretty covertly from a street corner. The unobtrusiveness was what I loved more than anything about this camera,” not only are we shown the immediate applications of this camera, but we see the reliability factor as well. If it’s good enough for Quinn, it’s more than likely good enough for the rest of us.
Once we’ve heard all the features of the product, read all the professional accolades and imagined how much better we’d each be at our jobs if we could only have this extremely cool and innovative new tool, we’re ready to buy it. But unlike fashion magazines where the models taunt and tease us with clothing we’ll never be able to find at our local mall (let alone fit into), Lorenze courteously provides us with all the necessary company contact information for each and every product listed in her book. She lists the companies’ names, addresses, website addresses and telephone numbers. For that kind of forethought and consideration, I could almost kiss the woman.
So, if you need anything industry related (other than an agent, that is), this is the guide to turn to. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some cool gear to order.
CLICK
HERE TO ORDER THE BOOK.
Lily Sadri is not a published author, nor is she a screenwriter – as a matter of fact she rarely even goes to the movies and refuses point blank to read subtitles. She has most definitely never attended the University of British Columbia nor Vancouver Film School (in reality she has never even set foot in the Pacific Northwest). She is, however, a regular contributing writer to Pravda, The Shanghai Daily Free Press Chronicle, The Sheboygan Sausage Manufacturers Times Weekly and The Quibbler. She categorically denies the possibility even of ever writing for The New Yorker, nor will she ever give in to the begging and pleading of Graydon Carter to become a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Lily has never been abroad, and in fact she rarely leaves her ultra-hip apartment that is most assuredly not located in Toronto. She really has no idea why she’s been asked to write an author’s bio, but such is the mystery of life. Currently, Lily is extremely engrossed in her newest and most ambitious project to date – twiddling her thumbs – while wholeheartedly making an effort not to work on her latest novel tentatively entitled Lost & Found.
