[TaoColorist] Sunday Morning Reading (The Re-Freshing Edition)
Published: Sun, 06/17/12
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The Tao Colorist
for professional Video / Film Colorists & Finishers. Delivered Sunday.
Issue XCV Brought to you by: Tao of Color.com
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The Craft
- [Podcast] Colorist Aidan Farrell - A great interview with a dyed-in-the-wool colorist who loves finding the boundaries of the craft. (FXGuide.com)
- DI Artist Stephan Nakamura on Prometheus - A terrific in-depth article on the DI process to finish the grading for Prometheus. There's great insights in here on why they did 6 different DI passes for 6 different deliverables, which they chose to start with first and why. (magazine.CreativeCow.net)
- [Video] FXGuideTV: Prometheus Visual Effects Breakdown - Not about the craft of color grading. But about craft nonetheless. A great watch with lots of behind the scenes footage. (FXGuide.com)
- [Forum] Building A Custom Sharpen in Resolve - Colorist Josh Petok adopts a technique he learned at FXPhd for working with RED footage and uses it to selectively isolate and sharpen the Luma channel. After reading this I tried it on a job to soften some chroma artifacting and it worked reasonably well. A must-read for Resolve colorists. It's a starting point for a whole lot of interesting node trees. (LiftGammaGain.com)
- Remove Banding in After Effects - A nice roundup of techniques for removing banding... including a nice tip on why working at a bit depth greater than the final delivery medium goes a long way to reducing banding. (ProVideoCoalition.com)
- DaVinci Resolve Grading Tips - A blog post that collects a range of interesting video tutorials from colorist Warren Eagles. (JonnyElwyn.com)
- [Video] Optical Illusions Show How We See - I've linked to this before but it's been a while and the readership has grown quite a bit: This Ted Talk has some great demos about how our brain takes retinal information and layers our past experiences to find meaning in what our eyes are seeing. Great stuff. Completely relevant to this Newsletter's readers. (YouTube.com via Jim Wicks)
- The Crayola-fication of the World, Part 1: How We Gave Colors Names and It Messed With Our Brains - More details on the current research on how colors develop in languages and how different cultures tend to follow the same 'naming path'. (EmpericalZeal.com)
The Tools
- [Forums] Why Was JL Cooper Support Removed from SpeedGrade CS6? - If you want JL Cooper to be supported in upcoming versions of SpeedGrade, you had best visit this link and follow the directions to put in an official feature request. Otherwise... fuggetaboutit. They're done with JL Cooper control surfaces. (forums.adobe.com)
- [Forum] Remapping Controls Surfaces on DaVinci Resolve - A control surface thread about our inability to remap buttons for DaVinci Resolve. And how to send in a feature request to the DaVinci team to enable this feature. (LiftGammaGain.com)
- Why I Use SpeedGrade - A cinematographer and colorist talks about how he was first introduced to SpeedGrade and why he uses it. Not as in-depth as I was hoping. Still, interesting. (ProVideoCoalition.com)
- [Video] Round trip entre Final Cut Pro X y DaVinci Resolve - Spanish language tutorial on roundtripping. For non-Spanish speakers, it can still be understood while muted. (Vimeo.com)
- [Forum] Color Correction Workflows in Avid - An interesting thread about grading in Avid and possibly integrating it with other color grading apps. Several informed opinions. (community.avid.com)
- Adobe Photoshop: Won't Be Retina-Ready Until Later This Year - An article on why apps will need to be updated to deal with the Retina Display on the new MacBook Pro laptops and why it'll take a few months for Photoshop. (DigitalArtsOnline.co.uk)
- FXFactory 3.0.4: Stereo3D Toolbox 4 - New update with new features including FCPx support. Limited-time $500 discount. (NoiseIndustries.com)
Bookmark This
- WikiHelp: Autodesk Smoke 2013 - Useful. (wikihep.autodesk.com via @videoaaron)
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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The Business
- Running A Post House - Interviews with the founders of three successful post houses and their approach to the business. (PostMagazine.com via @post_vfx)
- The Filmmaker Who Beat Back Bit Torrent, By Embracing It - Nifty story on an indie filmmaker who accepts digital piracy and built a business model around it. Also - check out the trailer for his film at the end of the article. I think I'll be picking it up myself. (TechCrunch.com via @light_iron)
- Apple's Most Underrated WWDC Announcement - Apple has more than 400 MILLION active credit card accounts. If you're wondering what this means for Apple and how that compares to the leader in ePayments, PayPal, click through. (iDownloadBlog.com via @jasonmyres)
- Don't Mean to Be An Alarmist But the TV Business May Be Starting To Collapse - This article shows some astonishing graphics, including the literal collapse of ad revenue in newspapers and how TV is destined for the same fate. Lots of details in this article resonate with me. The one thing this article misses... how the internet is starting to feel like TV. Can you say: Pop-Up (BusinessInsider.com via Notes On Video)
- Chart of the Day: iPad Domination - Amazing growth. And if there's one mobile display platform that this colorist wants to see dominate... it would be the iPad's display. (BusinessInsider.com via Notes on Video)
- How Amazon Studios Can Get Free Options from Privately Submitted Screenplays - We've been following this story for two years. And just when it looked like Amazon Studios was starting to 'play fair' - it turns out they're still trying to screw writers. Obviously this division is being run by Hollywood types. (NoFilmSchool.com)
- The AppleTV Business Model - Interesting analysis of AppleTV sales and profit margins. Being an AppleTV adopter less than 1 month ago... gotta say: I'm not impressed. If it weren't for 3rd party apps, the thing wouldn't have much value at all. (asymco.com)
Outside 'The Box'
- Some Thoughts on Events and Keyword Collections in FCPx - Philip Hodgetts is slowly making sense of these paradigms on a real-world project. It'll be interesting to see how his thinking evolves as he gets further down the editorial process. (PhilipHodgetts.com)
- Why Color Meters Don't Work with LED Lights - Are you trying to use a color meter to balance your lights on-set? Be careful - LED lights are tricky to work with. (ProVideoCoalition.com)
- Amazon's Markup of Digital Delivery to Indie Authors is ~129,000% - Yikes. Perhaps that deal with Amazon Studio isn't such an isolated incident. Maybe it's corporate philosophy? (AndrewHy.de)
- Woody Allen's Cinematographer Has 6 Life-Saving Tips for Low-Budget DPs (IndieWire.com)
- Depth of Field: Why Shallow Depth of Field Has Nothing to Do With 'Cinematic' - Tim Wilson reminds us that one of the biggest innovations in filmmaking happened with extreme depth-of-field. (magazine.CreativeCow.net)
Edumacate Yer'self
- [Video Training] Smoke 2013 Fundamentals - On the off-chance I forgot to put this in a previous newsletter, here it is. The only downside, project materials are not included. (FXPhd.com)
- [Video] The Smoke Learning Channel - A series of Getting Started videos for Smoke 2013. (YouTube.com via @videoaaron)
- [Networking] Assimilate and Escape Studios BBQ - If you're an experienced pro working in London... then eat great food while learning about Scratch and ScratchLab. Sounds like fun to me. Wish I could be there. (Techstore.EscapeStudios.co.uk)
- Adobe Shakes Up Premiere Pro Training and Certification - Why it may be tough to get the training you might want an PP CS6. (PremiumBeat.com via Notes on Video)
- [Webcast] Best Practices for Advanced Encoding and Transcoding Techniques - "Get details on delivering higher video quality at lower bit rates and how to prepare high quality video for delivery to any screen using multiple formats." Free. June 21 (StreamingMedia.com via @Noctylux)
- [Webcast] SMPTE: Laser Illumination Systems for Digital Cinema - I've been linking to articles about laser projection systems. Here's an opportunity to find out about how the technology actually works. Thursday, June 28. Fee for non- SMPTE members. (Eventbrite.com)
JL Cooper Eclipse | Avid Artist Color | Tangent |
Software: v2.7b2 |
Mac: v2.6.2 |
Software: v3.8 HUB v1.0 |
Color Plug-in: v 1.0.5 |
PC: v2.6.2 |
Firmware: v1.9 |
Updated: |
Updated: October 20 | Updated: Feb. 7(ish) |
Sunday Fun(nies)
- Put A Giant Pantone Swatch On Your Wall - For lovers of color. (DigitalArtsOnline.co.uk)
- [Video] A Musical Tribute to Internet Comment-Haters - A happy-go-lucky video to send your trolls. Not Safe For Work. Or Children. (YouTube.com via FilmmakerIQ.com)
- [Video] Bicycle Sounds - A short film created using bicycle parts (and primary colors). Fun, though not as musical as I had hoped. (Vimeo.com via @digitalpostink)
- [Trailer] Forget the Films. Watch the Titles - Watch the best. Learn from the best. (Vimeo.com via Jim Wicks)
- The Power of Grammar: TV chef Rachel Ray is. . . a cannibal? - Gosh - human flesh eaters are breaking out in all sorts of places. (twitter.com via @krkwd)
- Gene Wilder, On Willie Wonka - Correspondance from Gene Wilder on why he wanted Willy Wonka to come out of factory with a limp. His comments on his wardrobe are also fun to read. (LettersOfNote.com via @filmgeek)
- The Truth About Old West Gunfights - Gun-play is a staple of classic Hollywood films and early television... just how close to reality are Old West gun fights? (FilmmakerIQ.com)
- [Video] William Shatner: I Am Canadian - Very funny routine by William Shatner. His impersonation of himself is
Pricelinepriceless. (YouTube.com via LoopInsight.com)
Weekend Warriors
- 3DTV Without Glasses: It Just Isn't Happening - The slow progress and obstacles that need to be overcome for true auto-stereoscopic television viewing. (PCMag.com)
- Woz Says Siri is Poo Poo - Yes. He's getting technical on us. But seriously, it's interesting to hear how much functionality Siri lost after Apple bought the technology. (9to5mac.com)
- DIY: Sonic Distance Sensors To Improve Your Parallel Parking (LifeHacker.com)
Gear Heads
- [Review] 24" Computer Monitors - A roundup of nine LCDs for displaying your computer desktop. (MacWorld.com via Jim Wicks)
- How Fast are the MacBook's USB 3.0 and Thuderbolt Ports - Don't let the headline fool you, there are no real-world benchmarks in this article. It's more about the general transfer rates you might expect. (MacWorld.co.uk)
Re-Freshing?
- 9to5 Mac: The Great Exaggerator? - Read this article in 9to5Mac.com from last week about the then-impending Mac Pro refresh. It squashed all doubt that a newly designed MacPro was going to be introduced. Now read this article from 9to5Mac after the release.
It's almost like they never wrote that first article!
My final word on these rumors sites: Anyone who believes anything these sites have to say about future Apple products - especially if you base business decisions on these rumors - is a friggin' idjit! Here's a link that scores the various rumor sites. (TUAW.com)
- MacPro Gets Minor Update, No Xeon E5 - Yup. 3-year-old hardware in a 10-year-old design. And in case you missed it, Apple's new CEO said to expect a refresh 'later in 2013'. As in: A full year away.
My thoughts: The real 'new' MacPro will be as similar to the current MacPro as FCP X is to FCP 7. In other words, all-new product that shares only the name with the product that came before it. I think it's as likely to serve the needs of video post-production professionals as it isn't. There's a good chance we're going to be disappointed.
Prepare for this newsletter to start focusing on non-Mac towers and Hackintosh gear. (ArsTechnica.com)
- The New MacPro: No Longer 'New' - After an outcry that the New model was almost completely like the Old. (9to5Mac.com)
- Making the Most of the MacPro 'Refresh' - What to do if you want to eek out some more life out of your current MacPro tower? This article by aftermarket supplier OtherWorld Computing has some ideas for you. (blog.MacSales.com)
- Was the 15" MacBook Pro Originally A MacBook Air? - An interesting article about how Apple may have decided to market this as a 'Pro' series laptop at the last minute. (blog.MacSales.com)
- Faceoff: 13" MacBookPro vs 13" MacBook Air - A good feature by feature comparison between these two laptops to help you decide which is for you. (ArsTechnica.com)
- TearDown: MacBookPro with Retina Display - As painful to see as it is interesting to read. (iFixIt.com)
- TearDown: Mid 2012 MacBook Air 13" - Dittos. (iFixIt.com)
Grade a short. Go Beyond the Buttons. Learn a Craft.
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Your Career
- Position: Permanent Colorist, Tokyo - Commercial Reel Required. (tig.colorist.org)
- Position: Senior Colorist, Stockholm - 5 years feature film background. (UtopiaPeople.com via Jim Wicks)
- [Video] How I Got The Job Editing A Major TV Show - The editor from Burn Notice talks about how he got his big gig. An excerpt from a presentation at a LAFCPUG meeting. (YouTube.com via @BurnEditor)
- Why Boredom Is Good For Your Creativity - Why going into 'Airplane Mode' is essential to the creative process. (the99percent.com)
- Setting the Scene for a Productive Day - How to arrange your workspace with physical cues to keep you on-task. (the99percent.com)
- Why You're Broke and Other Video Professionals Aren't - Rules for running your business like, well, a business. (DareDreamerMag.com via Notes On Video)
- The Bad Economics of Bank Robbery - A statistical explanation of why bank robbery is a terrible way to make a living. Just in case you were thinking of switching careers... (ArsTechinica.com)
- Top Ten Reasons Why Filmmakers Screw Up In High Level Negotiations - (ChrisJonesBlog.com via FilmmakerIQ.com)
- Take Back Your Life in Seven Simple Steps - Simple to write. Some 'will' required. All about paying attention to what you need to pay attention to. (blogs.hbr.org)
Tweet of the Week
Tip for becoming a colourist. You have to sign one of these: pic.twitter.com/U4MmC6zD (via @DanMoranColor)
The Next Step Is A Doozy
- What's Next For Silicon Valley? - It isn't all iPhones and iApps. An interview with one of the driving forces behind Google Maps, the Google Car and the future of education. (online.wsj.com)
A Step Too Far?
- Joggobot: The Companion Drone That Makes You Run Faster, Longer, Harder - Soon, not only will drones be able to kill you with impunity and they'll be able to spy on you surreptitiously but they'll also harass you to get you into better physical shape. Please, oh please, don't send this link to New York City's Mayor Bloomberg. Watch the video at the end to see it in action. (Forbes.com)
Th- Th- That's ALL Folks! See you next week. Happy Grading!
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