The latest news, reviews, thoughts, and humor for professional (and aspiring) moving image Colorists and Finishers. |
Tools You Can Use
- Test Gear 2.5 - I don't know how I missed this back in December... It's shipping for Adobe CS5. Includes waverform monitor, vector scope, histogram, gamut display, image slice tool, audio phase monitoring - all in After Effects. Free Demo available. (Synthetic-Ap.com)
- Natural HDR Toning - Are you into HDR (High Dynamic Range) images? Here's a very nice tutorial from Adobe on getting natural-looking HDRs. (Adobe via
@mangababe) [direct download of .mov]
- Colorist Control Surfaces - I'm putting together a free Buying Guide on control surfaces. Until that comes out, here are summary pages of which grading apps each control surface supports: Euphonix MC Color, Tangent Wave, JL Cooper Eclipse (for what it's worth: it's interesting that JL Cooper doesn't list Resolve compatibility, they haven't even issued a press release)
- 3 PDFs for FCP editors switching to Premiere Pro (Adobe)
Edumacate Yourself
- Free DaVinci Resolve Training at the San Francisco SuperMeet -This registration page also includes training on Avid, Adobe, and Canon. (Eventbrite)
- 10th Annual FCPUG SuperMeet - Go for the Workflow / Smoke On A Mac / 3D Production / "I The ProRes Maker" discussions and stay for the amazing raffle prizes. (Eventbrite)
- Free Autodesk event for 'Smoke on Mac', Central London, Feb 3 (MacWorld.co.uk)
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Mind Games
- How Optical Illusions Show Us What We See - What's the point of seeing color? How do our minds interpret the images we see? What can optical illusions tell us about the answers to those questions? These concepts are explored in this 16 minute TED talk. (TED.com)
- Silencing: How Motion Can Alter Our Perceptions of Color and Brightness (Harvard.edu via Steve Hullfish)
Self Evaluation
- BluRay Reviews We Can Learn From: "Stallone Special: Daylite": BluBrew.com has a consistently excellent series of BluRay reviews that always highlights the technical aspects of the transfer and compression of the movies they're reviewing. This review of Daylight is a nice example, where the reviewer calls out the overly sharp transfer and pulls a still image for us to examine. In this case, you can clearly see the strong edge enhancement on a wide shot of a bridge. Reading their reviews and examining their images is good practice if you want 'sharpen' your eye. (BluBrew.com)
Deliverables
- An interview with David Reisner on Digital Cinema - This discussion ranges from film to d-cinema, resolution, film grain, colorimetry, digital distribution, reading CIE diagrams, and defining standards with ASC and DCI. (UltimateAVMag.com)
- What About WebM? Philip Hodgetts takles this question in a succinct manner. Good read. (PhilipHodgetts.com)
- This Week In Google, Episode 77 - The first 30 minutes of this weekly podcast is dedicated to understanding the history and politics of web video and the impact of Google's WebM decision. The special guest leading this discussion is Kevin Marks who, among many other roles, was part of Apple's Quicktime team for many years. (TWIT.tv)
Sunday Fun(nies)
- Are you sad about Steve Jobs? Do want to spend a few minutes every day meditating on him to send him your positive healing thoughts? Well, you can't focus on this Steve Jobs action figure - it's been discontinued. But try this CEO Ninja action figure, which looks suspiciously like our hero. Get well Steve!! (MicGadget.com)
- Verizon iPhone Commercial - Well done. (YouTube)
- Proving the Point: 10 Famous Movies That Sundance Rejected - Read the above item before clicking through this list. (FlavorWire.com)
- Traffic in the USA: How It's Done & Who Is Doing It - Have you ever wondered about those live traffic reports? Especially now that they're coming to our GPS navigation devices? It might not be funny, but I think it's kinda fun. Be the know-it-all. (GPSPassion.com)
Weekend Warrior
Really, Another 3D Story?
- Nintendo 3DS: Finally. 3D without the glasses. (MarketSaw)
Craftsmanship
- The Visions of Stanley Kubrik - Through his film "The Shining". Well done. (FilmmakerIQ.com)
develop and hone your color grading skills
on a 16-minute short film:
Teaching Your Peers
- Grading Arri Alexa - A nice tutorial showing how a colorist (ICA's Warren Eagles) thinks. This is graded using Resolve, but the techniques are universal. (Vimeo)
- Setting Up Your 5D Mark II - I know, thought leaders are all moving on to newer cameras... but some of us like to operate behind the bell curve. For us, the proud few willing to let others trail the fire'y blaze so we can walk the path in barefoot happiness, this post has a nice roundup of the most useful 'Getting Started' videos for the 5D Mark II (Caparkinson.com)
- Audio Mixing Strategy, Part 1 - Sure. This is a newsletter focused on vision. But we have ears too, you know! (DigitalFilms)
- Virtual XDCam - A very short, very smart tutorial on getting your PC-based Avid to render out an XDCam-compatible disk for final deliverables to a network. (DylanReeve.com)
Working Smartly
The Next Step Is a Doozy
- Rackmount Your iPod, iPhone - Serious? Or seriously demented? (Middle Atlantic via @PeterWiggins)
A Step Too Far?
- 'Big Iron' Meets 'Fast-Is-It-Going-To-Burst-Into-Flames Iron' - So. How are those 'big iron' boys like Quantel doing in the down economy we've been experienced the last few years? Apparently, pretty well. Pretty well, indeed. (DefinitionMagazine.com)
Bottom-Feeding Story of the Week
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