[TaoColorist] Sunday Morning Reading (Look Into My Eyes)

Published: Sun, 07/17/11


The Tao Colorist

Curated links of news, reviews, thoughts, career advice, and humor 
for professional Video / Film Colorists & Finishers. Delivered Sunday.
Issue LVI                                                            Brought to you by: Tao of Color.com

The Craft

  • 2011 Oscars Best Pictures Nominees: Who Graded Them? And on what system and in which city and how were they shot? (iColorist.com via @warreneagles)
  • Rescuing Dark Footage - Using composite modes to build up underexposed images while (hopefully) minimizing noise. (ImNotBruce.blogspot.com)
  • How to Key Greenscreen In Resolve 8 - Resolve 8 can composite in-context. Will it replace Nuke or AE? Who knows. But for us transplanted Apple Color'ists... new opportunities to help our clients out. This How-To is brought to you by ICA co-founder and colorist Warren Eagles. (YouTube.com)
  • Baselight Tutorials: How To Create A Shape - Nice demo of the masking tools in Baselight. (YouTube.com)

Our Tools

  • SCRATCH Lab Trial: A Presentation - How to download & install your SCRATCH Lab trial license. And a walk-through of its key features. (Vimeo.com)
  • London Supermeet: Resolve 8 Demo, Part 1 - The FCP SuperMeet peeps have posted Part 1 of Alexis Van Hurkman's Resolve 8 demo. (YouTube.com)
  • Investigative Colorist: Why is the Adobe CS5 to Resolve XML Roundtrip Broken? Of course, you could always go the EDL route. But that's so Resolve 7... (TaoOfColor.com)

Shameless Self-Promotion

  • MasterClass: DaVinci Resolve 8 Training, The Roadmap - Yup - I'm recording and editing the training. Here's the course outline as it existed about a week ago (it's since expanded a bit). If I'm missing something you want to learn, leave feedback in the comments! (TaoOfColor.com)
  • MasterClass: Resolve 8 Announce List - The MasterClass training is closed while I revamp to include the new Resolve 8 training. If you want to be alerted when I re-open, then click the link and join the announce email list. As a bonus for signing up, early this week I'm sending a download link (FREE) for one complete Lesson. (MasterClass.TaoOfColor.com)
  • Why It Took My Company 6 Months to Officially Adopt Resolve (Fini.tv)

Edumacate Yer'self

  • NYC: Free DaVinci Resolve Demo - This Wed. evening I'm doing a free Resolve demo at Manhattan Edit Workshop in Manhattan. It starts at 6:30pm. Sign up to reserve your spot! (EventBrite.com)


A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Flanders Scientific Broadcast Monitors

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Grading On A Curve

  • The Ultimate Home (Grading) Theater - Colorist, Author Alexis Van Hurkman shares his lastest room setup. Wipe the drool off your chin. (VanHurkman.com)
  • Speaker Calibration for Film and TV Sound - If you do both grading and finishing, you might want to get your room set up with proper sound levels. This is a nice tutorial for doing so. (FilmMakerIQ.com)

In Depth

  • Creating the Illusion of Depth - A great starter on how 3D photography works and the terms used including, interlocular, interaxial, convergence and much much more. (FilmmakerIQ.com)
  • Captain 3D Presents... Volume, Lenses, and other ideas - The link takes you to an introductory blog post. Both the blog post and the article it links to are outstanding. If you want to up your knowledge of 3D - take a half-hour and dig in! Oh, and pull out your anaglyph glasses (that'd be the Red / Blue ones). (OpticalFlow.wordpress.com)
  • Review: AJA Hi5-3D - Nice quick write-up on how to use this converter box for combining the outputs of two cameras for stereo viewing. With a comparison to the HDLink3D. (NegativeSpaces.com)

Outside The Box



Current Colorist Control Surface Drivers
 JL Cooper Eclipse Euphonix MC Color Tangent Wave

Software: v2.1.6

Mac: v2.6

Software: v3.8

Color Plug-in: v 1.0.5
PC: v2.6
Firmware: v1.9

Updated:
March 7

Updated: June 14 Updated: Jan. 28(ish)

 

Sunday Morning Fun(nies)

  • Split Screen: A Love Story - Really well conceived and executed short film. Take the time to watch this. (Vimeo.com)
  • The Ultimate HDSLR Rig - What's more important: Your story or how you look on set? Never look like a amateur on set again with your puny little DSLR. (YouTube via @steelephotoaz)

Gear Heads

  • To TRIM or Not to TRIM? I've been reading a lot about Solid State Drives (SSDs) and benchmarking using TRIM modes (and if Lion will support TRIM). But what the heck is TRIM??? And why does a hard drive need it? I finally have my answer... (blog.macSales.com)
  • FCPx on Three Different Macs - MacPro vs MacBookPro vs iMac (BareFeats.com)

Weekend Warriors

  • DIY Battery Reconditioners Lets You Keep Your Rechargeables Longer (LifeHacker.com)
  • Update: Build A Hackintosh with the Latest Sandy Bridge Processors - At half the price of a MacPro. (NoFilmSchool.com)
  • The World's First 3D 4K Home Theater - Sorry Alexis... this one beats your Home (Grading) Theater. But I bet his electric bill is ridiculous. (avsForum.com via @4KTV)


accelerate your learning curve                      get a mentor

Stop Fiddling, Start Grading

Coming This Month: Resolve 8
Click through to get on the Announce List for a Free Resolve 8 Lesson!

 
Aftermath
  • Final Cut Pro X: It Was Good While It Lasted - Ya know that "You never need to Save again" 'feature' in FCPx? Wishful thinking. (MediaStorm.com via @rhedpixel)
  • Keywords in FCPx - My old college chum, and amazing designer, Craig Tozzi has a fantastic blog documenting how FCPx is working out for him. He's zeroed in on the central core of FCPx: Keywords. How are they working out for him? More and more his conclusion is: It's not. Check out his blog to find out why. (FCPxQuirks.tumblr.com)
  • FCPx and Long Overdue Logic of Evaluation - On how to evaluate and select your next NLE. Along with a few randomly unnecessary f-bomb drops. (MikeJones.tv
  • App Store Volume Purchasing for Business - Here's how you get 15 seats of Motion 5 without having 15 iTunes accounts. Oh - you need a Dunn and Bradstreet number. Because, otherwise what? Having a Federal Tax ID number isn't good enough for Apple? (apple.com)

Being In Business

  • 6 Tips to Manage Client Expectations with Video - I would have put at #1: 'Manage Your Clients Expectations". But the other 6 are good too. (ReelSEO.com)

The Business of You

  • Ten Principles to Live By in Fiercely Complex Times - Nope. Nothing about getting more sleep. But stuff like: "If you love what you do, the money may or may not follow, but you'll love what you do." (blogs.hbr.com)
  • 'Awareness' Reminds You to Take Breaks Without Being Annoying (LifeHacker.com)
  • Searching for Professional Significance - I like this article with its focus on apprenticeship and mentoring in the workplace. (blogs.hbr.org)

Retro

  • Agenda: A Clean Calendaring App - Finally a nice simple app to view your appointments. Amazing how hard it is to find someone who 'gets it'. (LifeHacker.com)

Tweet Of The Week

  • "Edit with a LUT or base grade on raw footage. It will you save you the headache of realizing your footage is out of focus come final grade." (@lorenwhite)

A Step Too Far?


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