It's Hell on Wheels at FuseFX
The second season of Hell on Wheels continued its epic story of post-Civil War America, focusing on Cullen Bohannon, a former Confederate soldier, and his dramatic journey west as he struggles to leave his past behind. The building of the transcontinental railroad serves as the backdrop to the entire series. The scope and challenges of the expanding railroad were critical to the storytelling and couldn't be achieved without the resourceful use of visual effects provided by FuseFX. At the center of the traveling town are the trains. Production built full scale replicas of the period trains and laid down a few hundred feet of track to support tight shots and moments when the train isn't moving. But almost all shots showing wider perspectives and moving trains was achieved with CG models of trains and railroad tracks composited into live action backgrounds. ...Read More »
"Sling Baby" Is A Winner at Super Bowl XLVI
Burbank's Blacklist Productions was a part of the process from beginning to end, providing the rented Red camera "Sling Baby" was shot on, and handling color grading and finishing in house with DaVinci Resolve. The one stop shop, which has essentially grown their entire business around the color correction system they purchased last year, considered Resolve to be the instrumental tool in making "Sling Baby" look like a million bucks....Read More »
Apple's Richard Townhill Calls to Discuss the Final Cut Pro X 10.0.3 Update By Heath McKnight
I just got off the phone with Apple's Richard Townhill, senior director of applications marketing, who took the time to update me on the latest major update to Final Cut Pro (http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/), ver. 10.0.3. Apple is delivering multicam support, broadcast monitoring via third-party PCI-e cards and boxes (in beta, along with Thunderbolt), advanced chroma keying features, XML 1.1, the ability to import layered Photoshop graphics (PSD), and media relinking....Read More »
ASSIMILATE Congratulates Chilefilms for Sundance 2012 Winner, Violeta Went to Heaven
At the Sundance Film Festival 2012 in Park City, Utah (January 19 - 29), several films were on the roster for filmmakers whose post-production companies used ASSIMILATE's SCRATCH(r) DI tool in their digital workflows. The Sundance Film Festival 2012, is the premier showcase for independent American and international filmmakers....Read More »
Working for the Weekend at Pleasant Valley Baptist Church
At the main campus in Liberty, Missouri, a band led contemporary service is held every Saturday evening. Two Sunday morning services follow, one traditional and the other contemporary. Pleasant Valley's Kansas City (KCI) location offers two contemporary services each Sunday morning, complete with a full band. Though the variety of services appeals to all sorts of churchgoers, whether they be young or old, conventional or modern, one thing remains the same throughout. No matter which service Pleasant Valley's congregation of 5,000 partakes in, they will all hear the same spoken word by the pastor....Read More »
Tools and Technologies for Working with 3D on the Set By Tim Dashwood
The nature of how we shoot 3D and monitor it on set has changed as we have learned from our mistakes. Today, I would say 75% of stereographers out there prefer DPs to shoot in parallel. Not necessarily parallel rigs, with cameras side-by-side, since beam-splitter rigs are more flexible and therefore much more common -- but instead, pointing both cameras straight ahead, literally shooting parallel to each other....Read More »
Advanced Technology Succeeds with Tighter Budgets on Real Steel By Glenn Derry
My team created something that we call Simulcam, which provides a sort of augmented reality. We pre-record CG characters and backgrounds, and feed them into a camera playback system on set. The director can then see CG elements, motion-captured characters and live actors composited together in the viewfinder or the monitor, using a real time chroma key. ...Read More »
"Standing Ovation" Shines in SCRATCH-RED Workflow at Local Hero Post
Tween audiences will be all aglow when the musical "Standing Ovation" (2010) opens at theaters nationwide on July 16. The RED ONE(tm) Digital Camera was used for the shoot of this major summer release, and the entire DI, including color correction, was done in ASSIMILATE's SCRATCH(r) Digital Finishing Solution at Local Hero Post, Santa Monica, CA. ...Read More »
Adobe CS5 and NVIDIA Quadro FX by PNY - What is your time worth? By Tim Kolb
I've been a professional graphics card user for a number of years now and have used 5 or 6 different models from the NVIDIA Quadro by PNY product line. Currently I am using two dual-head cards in one workstation, lighting up four displays. I've become absolutely addicted to the speed of visual feedback I get while working on a system with a Quadro card installed...but Adobe CS5's use of the GPU for edit effects preview changes everything. ...Read More »
Premiere of "Two Gates of Sleep" to 2010 Cannes Film Festival
Vision On's first color grading of a feature film - director/writer Alistair Banks Griffin's "Two Gates of Sleep" -- had its premiere at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, Directors' Fortnight on May 18. Vision On began using ASSIMILATE's SCRATCH(r) Digital Finishing Solution in August 2009 for the real-time conform, color grading, and finishing of imagery projects....Read More »
Neo 3D Tutorial -- Muxing 2D CineForm clips for 3D By David Newman
Cineform CTO and co-founder David Newman demonstrates a brief tutorial for those getting started with 3D. This explains how to take separate Left and Right eye CineForm AVI or MOVs and multiplex them into a single CineForm 3D clip. ...Read More »
Adobe After Effects CS4 Essential Training: Colorizing black and white objects By Chad Perkins
In this clip, host Chad Perkins discusses how to colorize black and white objects, footage, and effects. He covers hue, saturation, and lightness. He applies tint to the footage to remap white to a color and black to another color. He also works with tri-tone, which enables you to map the midtones; color balance to colorize an object that has a lot of gray in an image. ...Read More »
Adobe After Effects CS4 Essential Training: The color balance effect By Chad Perkins
In this clip, host Chad Perkins looks at how to change the actual color in footage, also known as color grading in the film industry. Chad uses the color balance effect in the effects and presets panel in After Effects to change the feel of a clip by adjusting its colors. He discusses a bit about color theory, discussing the color values of video, red, green, and blue. ...Read More »
Adobe After Effects CS4 Essential Training: Luminance Correction By Chad Perkins
In this clip, host Chad Perkins looks at how to correct luminance, or brightness problems in your footage. He shows you the color corrections panel and discusses the auto levels and other auto effects, but also works in the levels effect, detailing the histogram which shows what is going on in your image, shadow areas, mid tones and highlights of the histogram. ...Read More »
It's Hell on Wheels at FuseFX
The second season of Hell on Wheels continued its epic story of post-Civil War America, focusing on Cullen Bohannon, a former Confederate soldier, and his dramatic journey west as he struggles to leave his past behind. The building of the transcontinental railroad serves as the backdrop to the entire series. The scope and challenges of the expanding railroad were critical to the storytelling and couldn't be achieved without the resourceful use of visual effects provided by FuseFX. At the center of the traveling town are the trains. Production built full scale replicas of the period trains and laid down a few hundred feet of track to support tight shots and moments when the train isn't moving. But almost all shots showing wider perspectives and moving trains was achieved with CG models of trains and railroad tracks composited into live action backgrounds.
...Read More »
"Sling Baby" Is A Winner at Super Bowl XLVI
Burbank's Blacklist Productions was a part of the process from beginning to end, providing the rented Red camera "Sling Baby" was shot on, and handling color grading and finishing in house with DaVinci Resolve. The one stop shop, which has essentially grown their entire business around the color correction system they purchased last year, considered Resolve to be the instrumental tool in making "Sling Baby" look like a million bucks.
...Read More »
ASSIMILATE Offers New SCRATCH Lab Certification Program for DITs, Video Engineers, and other Dailies Professionals
ASSIMILATE announced today that it has launched a worldwide professional training and certification program for SCRATCH Lab(r) via selected ASSIMILATE Authorized Training Partners. The new certification program offers DITs, video engineers, assistant editors and other dailies professionals intensive hands-on training courses, covering the production dailies workflow.
...Read More »
ASSIMILATE Store Now Features NEAT Video Pro Plug-in and Tangent Element Control Panels for SCRATCH and SCRATCH Lab
These two exciting new additions to the SCRATCH and SCRATCH Lab ecosystem enable post-production artists to work more creatively and productively than ever before, with greater control in their SCRATCH digital workflows.
...Read More »
Apple's Richard Townhill Calls to Discuss the Final Cut Pro X 10.0.3 Update
I just got off the phone with Apple's Richard Townhill, senior director of applications marketing, who took the time to update me on the latest major update to Final Cut Pro (http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/), ver. 10.0.3. Apple is delivering multicam support, broadcast monitoring via third-party PCI-e cards and boxes (in beta, along with Thunderbolt), advanced chroma keying features, XML 1.1, the ability to import layered Photoshop graphics (PSD), and media relinking.
...Read More »
ASSIMILATE Congratulates Chilefilms for Sundance 2012 Winner, Violeta Went to Heaven
At the Sundance Film Festival 2012 in Park City, Utah (January 19 - 29), several films were on the roster for filmmakers whose post-production companies used ASSIMILATE's SCRATCH(r) DI tool in their digital workflows. The Sundance Film Festival 2012, is the premier showcase for independent American and international filmmakers.
...Read More »
Working for the Weekend at Pleasant Valley Baptist Church
At the main campus in Liberty, Missouri, a band led contemporary service is held every Saturday evening. Two Sunday morning services follow, one traditional and the other contemporary. Pleasant Valley's Kansas City (KCI) location offers two contemporary services each Sunday morning, complete with a full band. Though the variety of services appeals to all sorts of churchgoers, whether they be young or old, conventional or modern, one thing remains the same throughout. No matter which service Pleasant Valley's congregation of 5,000 partakes in, they will all hear the same spoken word by the pastor.
...Read More »
Tools and Technologies for Working with 3D on the Set
The nature of how we shoot 3D and monitor it on set has changed as we have learned from our mistakes. Today, I would say 75% of stereographers out there prefer DPs to shoot in parallel. Not necessarily parallel rigs, with cameras side-by-side, since beam-splitter rigs are more flexible and therefore much more common -- but instead, pointing both cameras straight ahead, literally shooting parallel to each other.
...Read More »
Advanced Technology Succeeds with Tighter Budgets on Real Steel
My team created something that we call Simulcam, which provides a sort of augmented reality. We pre-record CG characters and backgrounds, and feed them into a camera playback system on set. The director can then see CG elements, motion-captured characters and live actors composited together in the viewfinder or the monitor, using a real time chroma key.
...Read More »
ASSIMILATE announces SDI output, for SCRATCH and SCRATCH Lab on Mac OS X via AJA KONA 3G card
ASSIMILATE announced that it has collaborated with AJA Video Systems to deliver SDI output for its industry-leading SCRATCH and SCRATCH Lab products, running on Mac OS X, via the KONA 3G card. The company also announced that, during the show, it will be previewing brand new remote grading, and stereo/3D features.
...Read More »
Video-Based Review of GridIron Flow 2.0 Essentials
Think of Flow 2.0 essentials as a visual Dropbox for media assets, with versioning and time tracking. Let's take a look at a project I have setup.
...Read More »
"Standing Ovation" Shines in SCRATCH-RED Workflow at Local Hero Post
Tween audiences will be all aglow when the musical "Standing Ovation" (2010) opens at theaters nationwide on July 16. The RED ONE(tm) Digital Camera was used for the shoot of this major summer release, and the entire DI, including color correction, was done in ASSIMILATE's SCRATCH(r) Digital Finishing Solution at Local Hero Post, Santa Monica, CA.
...Read More »
Adobe CS5 and NVIDIA Quadro FX by PNY - What is your time worth?
I've been a professional graphics card user for a number of years now and have used 5 or 6 different models from the NVIDIA Quadro by PNY product line. Currently I am using two dual-head cards in one workstation, lighting up four displays. I've become absolutely addicted to the speed of visual feedback I get while working on a system with a Quadro card installed...but Adobe CS5's use of the GPU for edit effects preview changes everything.
...Read More »
ASSIMILATE Congratulates SCRATCH Users for 2010 Cannes Film Festival Nominations
At the 63rd Cannes Film Festival (May 12 - 23, 2010), several prestigious award nominations and honors are on the roster for filmmakers whose post-production companies used ASSIMILATE's SCRATCH Digital Finishing Solution in their digital workflows.
...Read More »
Premiere of "Two Gates of Sleep" to 2010 Cannes Film Festival
Vision On's first color grading of a feature film - director/writer Alistair Banks Griffin's "Two Gates of Sleep" -- had its premiere at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, Directors' Fortnight on May 18. Vision On began using ASSIMILATE's SCRATCH(r) Digital Finishing Solution in August 2009 for the real-time conform, color grading, and finishing of imagery projects.
...Read More »
Neo 3D Tutorial -- Muxing 2D CineForm clips for 3D
Cineform CTO and co-founder David Newman demonstrates a brief tutorial for those getting started with 3D. This explains how to take separate Left and Right eye CineForm AVI or MOVs and multiplex them into a single CineForm 3D clip.
...Read More »
Final Cut Pro 7 Essential Training: Changing clip speed
Changing the speed of a clip is something that you will do frequently as an editor. In this clip, host Abba Shapiro discusses several ways to achieve this in Final Cut Pro.
...Read More »
Adobe After Effects CS4 Essential Training: Colorizing black and white objects
In this clip, host Chad Perkins discusses how to colorize black and white objects, footage, and effects. He covers hue, saturation, and lightness. He applies tint to the footage to remap white to a color and black to another color. He also works with tri-tone, which enables you to map the midtones; color balance to colorize an object that has a lot of gray in an image.
...Read More »
Adobe After Effects CS4 Essential Training: The color balance effect
In this clip, host Chad Perkins looks at how to change the actual color in footage, also known as color grading in the film industry. Chad uses the color balance effect in the effects and presets panel in After Effects to change the feel of a clip by adjusting its colors. He discusses a bit about color theory, discussing the color values of video, red, green, and blue.
...Read More »
Adobe After Effects CS4 Essential Training: Luminance Correction
In this clip, host Chad Perkins looks at how to correct luminance, or brightness problems in your footage. He shows you the color corrections panel and discusses the auto levels and other auto effects, but also works in the levels effect, detailing the histogram which shows what is going on in your image, shadow areas, mid tones and highlights of the histogram.
...Read More »
