Ready, Steady, Shoot: The Guide to Great Home Video by Roger Sherman (review)

I have known Roger Sherman for well over thirty years. He has been involved with multiple Academy Award–nominated documentaries and has earned one nomination for The Garden of Eden. He has also won an Emmy and a Peabody. Roger formed Florentine Pictures with Ken Burns, Larry Hott, Buddy Squires, and Amy Stechler after graduating from Hampshire College. Florentine’s members have made some of the outstanding documentaries of the last thirty-plus years. Roger not only directs and produces but also shoots. He has done camera work for Ken Burns and other documentary filmmakers. In addition, Roger has also done editorial still photography for Town & Country, Saveur, MetHome, and Newsweek.

When Roger told me about his book project Ready, Steady, Shoot: The Guide to Great Home Video, I was intrigued. For some time I have been looking for a book to recommend to new documentary filmmakers who send almost daily requests for advice and help with their projects. I have been looking for some time for a simple approach to shooting—no theory, no technical explanations, nothing about workflow or business, but rather a stripped-down version of what I would expect from a textbook. There is a lot to be said for keeping things simple. Very simple. For someone with Roger’s experience and background to share techniques, approaches, and thoughts on directing and shooting is rare.

Mr. Sherman’s book is very much a hands-on approach to the process of shooting documentaries. It is deceptively simple in its approach. The core of the work, its genius, is Roger’s idea of telling a story in ten shots. I love it. The 10-Shot Video® is perfect for new documentary filmmakers and not bad for experienced ones. I do not know whether Roger invented this approach, but pedagogically, it allows a student to make an interesting documentary (or fiction film) in a formulaic fashion that will yield a useful outcome. It allows the student to set up simple stories using a variety of shots, including mixing close-ups with medium and long shots as well as tracking and dollying shots to tell a story. Roger provides useful hints that make for excellent films. For example, he writes, “Static shots are winners,” and “Shoot three static shots for every moving one” (27–28). Not Eisenstein, but how helpful! He elaborates and advises the filmmaker to hold it for at least five seconds. He writes, “Ten seconds are about as long as a viewer can handle if there’s a fair amount of action or interest in the frame. Hold longer and the audience becomes restless” (29).

In film school as a producer, I worked with dozens of new directors. It was always exciting to me to observe the moment on set when the director could finally see shots and knew where to put the camera. It is intuitive. For some, that moment never comes. For others, the ability to link camera setups, movement, and actor blocking to convey emotion, narrative, and other elements is almost a built-in gift, like perfect pitch. Roger’s book allows a new filmmaker to approach the visual side of filmmaking with a powerful tool kit or approach that makes this transition almost painless. The questions “Where should I put my camera?” and “How should I compose the shot?” are now answered.

In the chapter “10-Shot Video,” Sherman provides a series of exercises that are really helpful to students and are at a production level that makes it easy for children as well as college students to practice making mini-films.

“Inside, All Static” is the first exercise, to be shot in one’s living room. The ten static shots are varied, and they provide a simple narrative structure. Roger even suggests holding shots and ending with a lens cap on to have black for editing. Sherman writes, “It took me years to master when it was right to cut sooner and hold longer. If...