Got Me a Side Job
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 at 9:06AM Red Giant Software today announced the addition of a new Creative Director for the Magic Bullet product line. Me!
“The Magic Bullet vision is to create software that gives any production, regardless of budget, the look of a high-end feature film. We are immensely pleased that Stu is dedicating his time and vision to enhance and grow the Magic Bullet tools in 2009 and beyond. He has already begun to work on new Magic Bullet products, and you will see many new and updated tools coming later this year,” said Sean Safreed, Co-Founder and Director of Products at Red Giant Software.
The full press release also goes into some detail about the history of Red Giant, Magic Bullet, and The Orphanage.
While the announcement is exciting, it doesn’t actually represent a big change for me. My relationship with Red Giant has always been strong, and has always been about sharing with the world the tools that I create out of necessity when making films. I promise you that my filmmaking will always come first, and that anything I design for Red Giant is a tool that I wanted or needed or found missing in my arsenal.
Colorista and Magic Bullet Looks are perfect examples of this, and to kick off the party with Red Giant I recorded a little tutorial on how to use them to match the looks of this summer’s big movies.
Red Giant TV Episode 22: Creating a Summer Blockbuster Film Look
Thanks very much to Aharon Rabinowitz, host of Red Giant TV, for tidying up my tut and wrapping it in pure (and embarrassing) pimp. Aharon does a great job with Red Giant TV—if you want to catch every episode, subscribe in iTunes.
Stu
Shortly after this tutorial, Red Giant Software released Magic Bullet Mojo, which makes it dangerously easy to give your footage this look. Check out my guided tour of Mojo.
Reader Comments (43)
This is a very promising prospect! When is Colorista coming for Premiere CS4? We've been waiting on that for some time now...
Congrats!
I've spent the last few days trying to resolve some shit that the mac 10.5.7 update has caused with my macpro and it's 7300 vid card..... Looks brings it to it's knees and it locks up. Ordered a newer video card today that should solve the problem... not going nvidia this time. I'm sure I'm not the only poor bastard having issues.
Since I'm shooting with the RED now anyways it's time for me to upgrade.... Looks is still my best friend!
Great News STU. Congrats! You deserve it!!!
As long as we're asking about CS4 compatibility, what's the likelihood of getting 64-bit versions from RedGiant? Is it on the radar? See? Now you're our inside man! Congratudolences!
Very nice. Colorista is an awesome plugin. I can't wait till they fix the AVX version so I can use it with Avid 3.5. It's the best way to keep my blacks black.
And that's sounds great
Two greats news on the same day...
Congratulations for the job and again... HAPPY BIRTHDAY...!!!
Stu, congrats to the new (old) job from me, too and (if I got that previous comment above me right) Happy Birthday, too!
I have been waiting for a post like this from you for quite a while! I don't want to sound like a groupie (the frequency with which I'm checking your blog already makes me feel like one ;)), but I've really been wondering what you have been up to lately after the end of the orphanage and such. Great to know a litte of it now, as I admire ALL of the different work you have done so very much! :)
Congrations Stu. I think have learned more color theory, in a more accessable form, reading your blog and book then any other source. I hope there is an opportunity for our two companies to work together in the near future, as I know there is so much more I learn.
great tutorial. very inspirational.
Do you write anywhere about your system setup? Specifically the types of monitors you use, the way in which you calibrate them and the connection type between your computer and your monitor.
All right, Stu! Can't wait to see what you guys cook up together.
Happy Birthday too!
Karyn
Great post! I love it. But when are you going to color grade African Americans? Infact is there even a tutorial covering that?
-Will
Also Stu, if you have a African American (not Light skin, but dark skin) and a White Actor in the same frame, how do you color grade them? Thanks for any help you provide.
Will
Check out this old post Will: http://prolost.com/blog/2007/10/22/hue-are-you.html
You are the MAN!!! Thanks!!!
-Will
Loved this tutorial. I posted on my blog for it… http://lostringsattached.com/stu-maschwitz-creating-a-summer-blockbuster-film-look ... Keep up the great work.
Congratulations Stu,
Nice to have a side gig these days :)
Hey, drop me an email...it's been awhile since we chatted (from the fusion forum)
I'm just getting back into the game from being sidelined for the last 3 years :)
Cheers,
Ray Adams
radams6@hotmail.com
Stu, you're the biggest inspiration, I hope to see more in depth color tutorials such as this. I've been coloring a project and I happened to notice at around 30 minutes, when you were applying a saturation filter in MBL that the color you picked "skin tones" you had mentioned that it stays more saturated while the other colors are desaturated. I found that the opposite is actually true, the color you pick will become the color that is desaturated so if you pick "skin tones" they will become desaturated. Of course this is MBL running with Final Cut Pro, but I thought that I'd mention that. Again you're an inspiration. I love the fact that you've worked on big noteworthy projects, yet you still have the DV Rebel in mind :)
Cheers,
Denver Riddle
Great tutorial - very well done and liked it was nicely in depth.
Any chance that some of the Red Giant software products might be made available to work with 'smaller' editing packages like 'Premiere Elements'?
I am sure this would open up a big market for Red Giant.
super tutorial Stu. In some parts you sound bit like the "you suck at photoshop" -guy, but I think that's just positive.
Looking forward to Red Giant TV Episode 24: Getting a Summer Blockbuster Film Budget
LOL
that's great stu. just make them add the tracking engine from the stabilizer to colorista for fcp so i won't have to start up motion or ae just to do a simple face track and i'm happy. oh and looks desperately needs keyframes, with or without tracking.
well done on the new job!
I have a feeling that the reason a lot of these FX fillled action films have such heavy grades is to help smooth out the differences between the CGI elements and the live action footage. I especially noticed in Terminator Salvation and Transformers 2 that they had piled on layer upon layer of smoke, lens flares, fake camera shake as well as colour grading to pull everything together and I felt a bit like I was getting eye fatigue because everything ends up looking the same. But I really appriciated the new Star Trek movie because it used the same techniques but seemed to have a bit more of a range in terms of tone, lighting and colour schemes which kept me interested and helped differentiate between various scenes.
Hi, what camera did you use to make this?
I feel like I'm standing right over your shoulder, watching you work. This is a wonderful lesson, and I'll forward it to my students.
I can't help but think of the Orphanage when I read your posts lately, and mourn its loss. Here you are as a creative director at a software company. Will you get back to effects? Or is it just too hard to make a living at it? What about directing? About a month ago, I watched Mark Coleran give a lecture about the computer interface graphics that he's done for the last 10 years, on films like The Island, the Bourne movies, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. It was beautiful work, and an informative lecture. But at the end he mentioned that he doesn't do these graphics much anymore, because he got kind of burned out on it. Now he's doing interface design for... software, like GridIron's Flow (Which I highly recommend for absent-mined artists like myself).
Now here's Stu, the DV Rebel, and he seems to have (for now) hung up his helmet and flight suit, giving a fascinating and informative lecture on how to do what he's done for years. Whither the effects artist? Has the director retired?
Why am I getting all mopey about this? Because I'm 33. I've spent the last ten years in motion graphics, making logos fly around, tweaking type, abusing Trapcode Shine, and I'm bored with it. Seeing these masters of their craft shift into other areas, stepping away from their desks, is making me pause. Should I learn a new craft, like compositing, or character animation? Or did I miss my window? Should I shift into teaching full time, and leave the late nights and pizza to the younger fellas, who don't need to balance work with family/marriage yet, and can really dive in?
Mumbles, thanks for your note. Maybe I should have put this part in bold, because it's the most important part of the post: "I promise you that my filmmaking will always come first, and that anything I design for Red Giant is a tool that I wanted or needed or found missing in my arsenal."
Side job, get it?
congrats Stu...
with a guy like you providing direction they could really turn out some powerful apps...
Maybe a little early for requests, but as I'm sure you realize there is a lack of cheap color grading apps out there. Extending the Colorista tool suite would certanly be appreciated
Congrats on the gig Stu.
Here's what I want to know: what the heck did you shoot your sample footage of Eric with to get that much headroom for all this through-the-roof color correction. If I pull sliders around that far on my HDV footage --even stuff from reasonably good light-- the whole thing starts to look like a film print made on sandpaper: Colorful, super-saturated noise takes over in the shadows and midtones and the whole thing looks like someone hated my film so much that they spat a moutful of gritty orange and blue food colouring on it.
So is that happening in this footage as well, but we just can't see it because the vimeo footage is so small, or are you shooting with some crazy re-wrapped 4:4:4 32 bit RAW red one hack?
Hey Eric, that footage was all shot on my Canon 5D Mark II. The correction brings out some of the compression noise, but not too much.
Hey Stu, thanks for replying. I think this defintiely needs to go on my list of reasons to get a 5DmkII. Unfortunately, that'll have to wait until film school lands me a job that provides $4000 CAD of disposable income...
Could be a while.
In the mean time, I guess I should admit that I`m not actually using colorista and magic bullet, I was plunking away in the HSL and 3-way color corrector built into Premiere Pro. Do you feel that might be part of my problem? I've always assumed that my off-the-shelf tools are less accurate and intuitive than the big guns, but it had never occured to me that they might also be introducing extra noise or artifacts.
Hi Again Stu,
I'm glad to hear that the side job is just keeping you busy between the main show :)
Thou I really love your thoughts about creating tools that you see missing or needed for your own projects as well as ours :)
Hey how are you dealing with the artifacts and H.264 (low profile) format?
Have you been able to key off of the footage.
Drop me an email or so when you get the chance,
Cheers,
Ray Adams
Will Looks be ported to RedCineX please? That would be so damn awesome. Having the toole Looks Provide combined with Reds Raw Footage and the headroom it gives you for your grading. Should be pure genius.
Would even pay the price again for a RedCineX Version of it.
George
Hey Stu,
Glad to hear about your new job! I'd just like to say thank you 1000 times over for that coloring tutorial. I've been looking for something like that for a long time now, it's really helped me out with some problems I've been running into with color timing stuff I've shot.
Thanks again!
Is it still not possible to view looks on an external monitor...... the ONLY reason i won't use looks, and won't do until this is rectified!
The last post I have from your RSS feed in my Google Reader is dated March 19, 2009. If FreshDV hadn't pointed to this post I might have never know. Damm! I missed the discount on Colorista and Looks. Now I'll have to wait for the next sale.
I resubscribed to your RSS and now I've got two ProLost entries. I guess I'll delete the dead one.
Thanks for the tutorial. I sent it to my buddy who I convinced to buy Colorista.
Wonderful news! Congrats Stu! What about the 64 bit XP or Vista versions of Magic Bullet? Will they be possible in the near future? Keep up the good work!
I have literally read the whole blog. I'm learning to colorize, to create stuff in aftereffects, and this is not 'tips', it's also inspiration.
Thank you for all this! My congrats from Argentina!
IPOL: MBLooks works on my Vista64, but Colorista does not. RGS says that Vista64 support is on beta and should be available soon.
Your Rebel CC plugin does the same stuff as Colorista, sure you made Colorista easier to use, but the Rebel CC plugin is free. That Transformers tut was cool, but it works the same with Rebel CC as it does in Colorista.
No doubt Spill, totally true. Rebel CC isn't exactly the same, but it sure is free!
You're right, I'm not trying to be bad for buisness so here it goes.
Colorista is a quick and easy professional solution for cinematic color grading, and it's now available for many popular editing suites. However if you're looking for quick and dirty color correction for AE, from the same guy who brought you Colorista, check out the DV Rebels Guide.
Sound about right to you?
Hey! My gosh, what an excellent tutorial!
I can't believe how much color correction goes into films!
It's opened my eyes to making my features, music videos and even corporate videos look different!
Silly question, but in reality - does who ever is editing actually spend this long on each scene?