[TaoColorist] Sunday Morning Reading (The Best of 2012.2 Edition)

Published: Sun, 01/06/13

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The Tao Colorist

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

Editor's Note: Happy 2013 to all our fabulous Newsletter subscribers! We made it past the Mayan Apocalypse and ploddingly turned our own Gregorian calendar. 

In between those two events I've started what will be my new annual tradition... completely disconnecting from email, social media and forums (though a few voicemails did get answered) for two weeks. I highly recommend it to all of you. It was refreshing.

This edition is our bi-annual Best Of, where I collect the most popular articles we've published over the past 6 months and collect them into one edition. This Best Of is very heavy in Craft stories... and I'd have it no other way! Enjoy!

The Best of 2012, Part Two

The Craft

  • Fincher Film School: Paint It Black - A well-executed examination of Fincher's use of color in several of his films. And how a single film can use color differently depending on what Fincher wants to achieve. (FincherFanatic.blogspot.com)
  • [Video] Color Grading 'Powerade AFL' - A sort'a Before / After that's hyper-edited, showing the color grade build of a commercial. Done on Baselight. If someone asks you why it can take as long to grade a :30 spot as a 15 minute short film - send them this link. (Vimeo.com via Jim Wicks)
  • How 'Blindfolding Your Brain' Can Improve Your Color Grading- The first of a month's worth of blog posts I did over at SpliceVine.com. I focus on introducing editors to color grading. Week 1 starts with the basics - our brains. (SpliceVine.com)
  • Grading 'Short Beach', Part 1 - This is a great post from Colorist Warren Eagles about a 3-week color grade that happened over the course of a few months. He shares some great insights about managing clients, presenting yourself to the client and remembering your role in the process. Good stuff Warren! (iColorist.com)
  • Grading 'Short Beach' Part 2 - Grading 'Short Beach' Part 2 - A series of Before / After stills with a short explanation of how each shot was approached. (iColorist.com)
  • The Psychology of Color - Steve Hullfish shares his collection of links about colors and color preferences. There's some great stuff in there. Worth a bookmark. (ProVideoCoalition.com)
  • 7 Tips for HD and DSLR Color Correction - Decent list of tips. Though the Order of Operations tip doesn't make much sense to me - but it isn't wrong. Just... a personal preference that may or may not work for others. (HurlbutVisuals.com)
  • [Video] Anatomy of a Grade: The Bleachy Western Look - Building a contrasty Black and White look for a classic Western feel. Graded in Resolve 9. Experienced Resolve colorists take note... once you start grading, Resolve 9 feels just like Resolve 8 (a good thing). (Vimeo.com)
  • The Humana Project: A Closer Look at Flesh Tones - Mike from Divergement Media (creator of Scope Box) has taken the images from the Humana Project and plotted the skin tones on Scope Box. The results were unexpected. (DivergentMedia.com)
  • [Video] How to manage color temperature effectively to produce better looking video - It's a primer on color temperature; something every colorist needs to understand. (ReelSEO.com)
  • 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)
  • 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 ofVan 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 Loved Ones: A Color Grading Breakdown and Footage Download - This blog post is terrific for two reasons: 1) It's a great breakdown of the color grading process for a TV Commercial and 2) at the bottom of the post (for the cost of your email address) you can download the ProRes source files and DaVinci Resolve project. The folks at the The Film Bakery should be thanked far and wide. BTW - I love the client tip about communicating in 'points'. (TheFilmBakery.com)
  • [Video] The Art of Creating Awe - Academy Award winning Special Effects Supervisor Rob Legato gives an awe-some presentation to TED. Anyone who works in post-production will feel an affinity to what Rob shares. Terrific presentation. Must watch. (ted.com via @agibrahim)
  • Color Theory Basics - Hey... I figure after a 2-week break from this Newsletter we could all use a little refresher, right? (indezine.com via @JimWicks)
  • [Forum] Super Saturated 'Velvia' Look - Velvia is a Fuji film stock known for it's crisp sharpness and intensely saturated images. It's Wikipedia page is an interesting read itself. In this forum thread Josh Petok offers a Resolve node tree to emulate this look. A few posts down an alternative method is suggested. Download the .drx source image and give it a try yourself. (LiftGammaGain.com)
  • How Color Works: A Quick Lesson - A nifty short video on how a lighting designer thinks about color. (cinescopophilia.com)
  • The 10 Things That Make A Great Colorist - From a guy who has trained a whole lot of us for a very long time. (iColorist.com)
  • [Video] The Effect of Color - From PBS Digital comes a short 7-minute treatise on all aspects of color. I particularly like the interview with the two GIF animation artists. My favorite piece of advice, "Throw in some black & white". Worth the watch. (filmmakeriq.com)
  • [PDF] Understanding Colors & Gamuts - The link is a direct download to this classic poster from Tektronix. (Tek.com via @IAmColorist)
  • Color Grading Case Study - A nice detailed write-up of a color grading workflow, from client meeting through project prep, color grading and delivery. (NoFilmSchool.com)
  • [Infographic] White Balance and Color Temperature - Simple chart showing the color temperature of various illuminants and the range that most camera white balance presets cover. (FilmmakerIQ.com)
  • Cooking Up Unique Color Grading - Interesting profile of Encore's senior colorist Pankaj Bajpai. He discusses their distributed workflow with four networked Baselights managing seven television series, with him handling all the final grading. (DigitalCinemaReport.com)
  • Understanding Colour: Colour Gamuts - RGB and YUV? Those are not color gamuts. Read this to understand the difference. (redsharknews.com)
  • [Video] The Masters of Compositing - Brew a full pot of coffee because you're about to watch the pioneers of visual effects talk about the start of the most recent age of compositing and visual effects. Killer, killer stuff in here. In all, over 90 minutes of interviews. Recorded by Jeff Foster, author of 'The Greenscreen Handbook'. (cinefotografiando.blogspot.com via Jorge_Soto_Vigo)
  • An Ode to the Colorist or Finisher! - Nice. And in my circles, the Online Finisher is frequently the Colorist. (philiphodgetts.com)
  • Progressive, Interlaced, PsF. . . How did we get to this? The difference between these scanning standards plus a bit of history. (redsharknews.com)
  • What Is A LUT? - A nice summary of the theory behind LUTs culled from a variety of sources... many of which long-time readers of this newsletter will be familiar. At the end of the article are links to the various source material for further reading. (FallenEmpireDigital.com via @Noctylux)
  • Color Grading a Fincher Film - It's the original Grade-Along! A fantastic set of videos showing the color grading of Fincher's Se7en and Panic Room. Colorist Stephen Nakamura offers a rare glimpse into the world of grading A-List films. Great find by Jonny Elwyn. (JonnyElwyn.co.uk) 
  • [Video] Steve Hullfish: Color Correction Tips - Steve does a great job teaching scopes, how to 'read' them and how to use them for creative purposes. (vimeo.com via @JimWicks) 
  • [Video] How Your Grade Helps Tell The Story - Colorist Warren Eagles takes us through the 'color story' of a commercial, which helped support the overall narrative. (vimeo.com)

The Tools

  • Understanding Color Processing: 8-bit, 10-bit, 32-bit and more- Definitely one of the stronger articles I've read on this subject. If you're having trouble with these concepts this is a great article. Premiere Pro. (Blogs.Adobe.com)    
  • Seven New Features in Resolve 9 - These are previously unannounced features. And some of them are Big Time. If you're a Resolve colorist, a must-read. (VanHurkman.com)
  • [Video] DaVinci Resolve 9: How to Safely Upgrade the Pain-Free Way - This is a special preview of the Special Report from Tao of Color's DaVinci Resolve MasterClass... it's my typical 50 minute tutorial and the first 15 minutes offers advice on how to upgrade from Resolve 8. Then it's a 35 minute magical mystery tour of the new UI. I highlight my favorite 5 new features in v9 while orienting v8 colorists on the new Interface. (TaoOfColor.com)
  • Color Grading Systems Evaluated - This is a pithy post, considering the ground it covers. From Resolve to Rain and everything in between, all the major color grading systems are evaluated listing their strengths and weaknesses. A really good read. (iColorist.com)
  • How to create Day for Night in After Effects in 5 Minutes - Shoot in the day. Make it look like night. It's a fun watch. (filmmakeriq.com)

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

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The Business

  • Digital Cinema Financing Cheat Sheet - It's a PDF that answers questions to exhibitors about the costs of 'going digital'. Interesting to see how digital projectors are being partially financed by the studios to encourage (force?) adoption of digital cinema. (digitalcinemabuyersguide.com)

Edumacate Yer'self

  • MixingLight.com: New Color Grading Website, Coming Soon - I mentioned this last week but here's the full 'inside scoop' on your faithful Tao Newsletter editor's new online venture... and if you're interested don't forget to sign up for MixingLight.com's Launch Newsletter. It'll have original content. (TaoOfColor.com)

 

Current Colorist Control Surface Drivers
 JL Cooper Eclipse Avid Artist Color Tangent

Software: v2.9.3

 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:
Jan. 2

 Updated: October 20, 2011 Updated: Feb. 7(ish)
 

Sunday Morning Fun(nies)

  • The Very First Photo Uploaded to the Web - Almost everything that has come after can be explained by that photo. In literary circles they call it 'foreshadowing'.  (FilmmakerIQ.com)

Gear Heads

  • Anatomy of an iMac Suite: Is this the future of the MacPro? - Thunderbolt everywhere. Looks like a very capable system. The Ethernet I/O problem is somewhat troubling. Heat issues are also a good point. (BiscardiCreative.com)
 
Download and grade a short horror film, then get personal feedback!

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 Career

  • 10 People to Avoid in Creative Industries - "The seeds of creativity are just that, seeds. If you're in the wrong environment, with the wrong people, they'll never blossom. These are ten people who will do their utmost best to kill your spark." Unfortunately, the article doesn't name names (THAT would be cool - maybe via an API that uploads your Contacts and cross-references against a list of know 'spark killers'). But it does name ten archetypes. (kidinthefrontrow.com  via @JimWicks)

The Next Step is a Doozy Awesome . . .

  • [Video] The Electric Rise and Fall of Nikola Tesla - A live and terrifically told story of Tesla, using projection mapping and a pop-up book. Really, very cool. (TED.com)

Th- Th- That's ALL Folks! See you in two weeks. Happy Grading!
  
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