I chose to read Film directing shot by shot (the small one).

The material that stuck with me included the following:

The physical aspects of film - the different sizes that are available, how sensitive film is, various aspects of getting thet color right including white balance. These things are probably not as relevant today because of digital cameras.

Continuity - how to make sure that sequences of shots make sense to the viewer including continuity of motion and what to avoid in terms of moving the camera from shot to shot.

Various shots - the differences between using different levels of zoom and camera distance from a subject, and the difference between zoom and being physically close - I had not appreciated this as much before.

Editing including rythym - it was interesting to see that these techniques are actually formalized, I kind of thought it was something that people kind of naturally learned

Lighting - I knew something about lighting for film before but not enough.  I know understand why my undergrad animation project did not look like a movie (we tried to light only with the physically present lights in the room and had not considered how the lighting would work.

Sound - much of this didn't apply as much with digital

I would definitely reccomend this to future students in the class. I thought it was useful to read an actual film book so that we have some idea of what the non computer science side of the work is.