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The Tao Colorist

Issue CIV                                                           Brought to you by: Tao of Color.com

Dead Man's Lake

Stay tuned for next week's announcement about Tao of Color's next major color grading instructional initiative, 'Dead Man's Lake'. It's made possible by the filmmakers at BloodyCuts.co.uk. To get you in the mood here's a great review of the Bloody Cuts horror anthology by MikeJones.tv:

• Why Some Bloody Cuts Are Better Than Others - Why do some horror films emotionally engage us while others have us wishing everyone would die already? (MikeJones.tv)

• 'Dead Man's Lake' Trailer - This coming Saturday is the debut of the next installment in BloodyCuts' 13-part anthology horror short film series. Yesterday the trailer was released. Note: As is often the case, the trailer does not reflect the final graded film (but I love how hokey it looks... my grade is not of the cruddy VHS variety). (BloodyCuts.co.uk)

The Craft

• Blackmagic CEO Grant Petty Talks About the New Cinema Camera - Why is this story about a camera listed up here in the craft section? Because there are great insights in this three part interview about Blackmagic's approach and the fact that they chose not to make the 'perfect' camera. They picked their niche. I especially like Part 3 where Grant talks about why they didn't choose a Super35 sensor size. They had one criteria they used for the sensor and that was that. After watching this I felt this deserved to be up here in the Craft section. (Vimeo.com: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 via @jimwicks)

• What's the Next Technology That Will Change the Way You Watch Movies? An interesting article on what three industry veterans think will be the next step forward in motion picture technology. Hint: It's in the eyes. (io9.com via Tom Parish)

• How Dr. Who Looks Got A Make-over Thanks to 'Color Recovery' - This is a great (and deep) article by Kevin Shaw on iColorist about the digital restoration of a key Dalek episode from the original Dr. Who series. It highlights a new restoration process, created out of necessity for this job. (iColorist.com) 

• Seeing Van Gogh's Paintings, The Way Van Gogh Saw Them - Did Van Gogh have a color deficiency? At a Japanese color conference, an exhibit was set up using filtered light to show how people with color deficiencies see. Under this light were a series of Van Gogh paintings. The results surprised the author and revealed a new layer to Van Gogh's genius. (asada0.tumblr.com via Dexter Gresh)

• Do You Have Tetrachromatic Vision? "One study suggested that 2-3% of the world's women might have the kind of fourth cone that lies between the standard red and green cones, giving, theoretically, a significant increase in color differentiation. Another study suggests that as many as 50% of women and 8% of men may have four photopigments." This difference allows some people to see up to 100 million different colors (compared to 1 million colors for the rest of us). (ColourLovers.com via @JimWicks)

• The DSC OneChart: A Shooting Chart for the 'Raw' and 'Log' Age - Art Adams dives deep into this new chip chart. Explaining why it's more useful than the standard monochromatic chart most of us are used to. Try not to get offended by all the 'keep your colorist from messing up the image' references. (ProVideoCoalition.com via @IAmColorist)

• Arri Alexa LUT Builder: Legal vs Extended - This is a massive brain dump filled with lots of valuable information. Unfortunately - it's a tough slog through this treatise on the differences between recording in Arri as Legal vs Extended and what post production software calls Legal vs Full Range. This information is useful for workflows outside of Arri - I just wish it was done as a series of articles breaking down the various sub-issues more neatly. (NegativeSpaces.com)

The Tools

• Avid Releases Media Composer, Symphony 6.5 - For this newsletter's readers, enhanced relinking and additional AMA workflows are likely to make a difference. (TejBarra.com)

• Lightworks v11 for Windows: Now Available For Download - Here's the feature list. (lwks.com)

• Back to School with SpeedGrade - A list of Adobe's growing resources for learning SpeedGrade. Included is a link for to their recent 'SpeedGrade for Aspiring Colorists'. (blogs.Adobe.com)

• Blackmagic Announces UltraStudio 4k with Thunderbolt (ProVideoCoalition.com)

• Avid Studio for iPad: Now Pinnacle Studio... and Free - Temporarily. (ProVideoCoalition.com)

• [Video] Resolve 9 Feature: External... Fill? Resolve 8 gave us the external key node. The new release of Resolve 9 now gives us... an external fill option. Watch Juan Salvo's tutorial on this new feature to grok it. Nifty. (Vimeo.com)

• [Video] Resolve 9: Dailies Workflow for Premiere Pro CS 6 - Load up the dailies in Resolve, render and import the proxies into PrPro, edit your timeline, import into Resolve and relink back to the source footage. Watch it in action. (YouTube.com)

• Adobe Premiere Pro CS6: How To Import CinemaDNG Footage - You need hunt down an importer from Adobe Labs (which may or may not be available for Mac). Watch for all the details. (YouTube.com via @andres_dla_cruz)

• Smoke 2013: Take the Scruffy Smoke Challenge - A nice meaty tutorial on keying and compositing in Smoke. (YouTube.com)

Color Grading MasterClass: DaVinci Resolve

RT if this is what you think of every time you hear "Fifty Shades of Grey" > pic.twitter.com/j1JmTAId  (@emerywells)