1st Edition

Visual Storytelling for Filmmakers

By Blain Brown Copyright 2025
    352 Pages 485 Color Illustrations
    by Routledge

    352 Pages 485 Color Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Directly addressing how filmmakers can craft visually powerful films through practical skills that can be used throughout the filmmaking process, author Blain Brown explores how we use space, color, camera angles, composition, motion, POV and all the other methods in the day-to-day work of telling stories visually.

    Brown interrogates not only the tangible aspects of visual storytelling, but also the more abstract areas as well including visual metaphor, manipulating time and space, and visual subtext. It covers all the aspects of visual storytelling that directors, cinematographers, and editor use to tell stories visually a. Written by a working filmmaker with over 30 years’ experience as a director and cinematographer, this book looks at both the how and the why of visual storytelling, consistently drawing on the day-to-day real-world environment of making a film.


    Ideal for intermediate and advanced students of filmmaking as well as professionals working in the industry.

    Topics Include:
    • Building A World
    • Cinematic Space
    • Visual Metaphor
    • Frame & Composition
    • Using Color
    • Time & Space
    • Light & Shadow
    • Visual Forces
    • POV & Eyelines
    • Motion
    • Lens & Focus
    • Establishing
    • Case Studies

    Chapter 1: Building a world

    Chapter 2: Visual Metaphor

    Chapter 3: Establishing

    Chapter 4: Cinematic space

    Chapter 5: Frame & Composition

    Chapter 6: Light & shadow

    Chapter 7: Texture

    Chapter 8: POV & Eyelines

    Chapter 9: Using Color

    Chapter 10: Lens & focus

    Chapter 11: Time & space

    Chapter 12: Motion

    Chapter 13: We open on…

    Chapter 14: Case studies

    Bibliography

    Biography

    Blain Brown has worked as a director of photography, writer, and director on feature films, commercials, industrials, music videos, and documentaries for over thirty years. His other books include Cinematography: Theory and Practice (4th Edition), Motion Picture and Video Lighting (4th Edition), The Filmmaker's Guide to Digital Imaging and The Basics of Filmmaking.