May 28th
ICA Apple Color Advanced Secondaries, FX and more: Los Angeles will be providing Training in Los Angeles at Roush Media on the following date.
This 1 day course is to be presented on Saturday May 28th. The instructor will be Apple Trainer Lorne Miess.
The class is for colourists, assistant and newer colourists industry professionals and digital imaging technicians,. This is an advanced level class that covers setting up your project, colourist strategies, color theory for an advanced colouring session and an in depth look at Color tools. It also suggests grading strategies, and session management. There will be multiple Color stations to demonstrate and use.
Details and registration at http://www.icolorist.com Click "Info" to register.

May 29th
ICA Monitor Calibration Class and Lab: Los Angeles will be providing Training in Los Angeles at Roush Media on the following course.
The 1 day course is to be presented on Sunday May 29th. The instructor will be Lorne Miess in conjunction with SpectraCal the designers of award winning CalmanPC software.

The class is for industry professionals, DOPs, colourists, digital imaging technicians, assistant colourists, newer colourists and editors. This is an intermediate level class, that covers colour theory, colour spaces, colour management, intro to plasma, LCD and LED panels, calibrating multiple displays, on-set as well as post production workflows. There will be computers running Spectracal’s CalmanPC software to demonstrate and use.

Details and registration at www.icolorist.com Click "Info" to register.

Searching For A CRT Replacement Part 2 of 2

I had an ISF (Image Science Foundation - www.imagingscience.com) certified technician drop by and do a calibration on the plasma and it easily calibrated to D65 or television white. We ran a series of test signals that revealed good black to white tracking but a video processor was needed as the plasma displays a wider gamut than Rec 709. The tech recommended a Lumagen (www.lumagen.com) processor. I spoke with the sales manager there and got a very good overview of the unit. I have to say I've never heard of the unit and understand it's a quality unit known to the home theatre industry. There trying to make themselves know in broadcast so check them out. When I was at NAB last year I saw the new line of Cine-tal Monitors (www.cine-tal.com) and their video processor Davio. I recently borrowed a demo unit from our local reseller and took it through it's paces. Davio works in conjunction with cineSpace software and an X-Rite probe (www.xrite.com) to profile the plasma panel, create a LUT and display it. When I did a Digital Colour Theory class at FXPHD.com I had spoken the Jeremy Pollard when he was at Rising Sun Research/Cine-tal. He walked me through the software and I spoke of it in the class and used it to profile a Dell LCD display that I was using at the time. It did a nice job sampling the grey scale at over 4000 points and adjusting the Primaries for Rec 709. I'm using the Davio now and Cine-Tal's Richard Schott was a great help in dialing it in. Excellent pictures now and Rec 709.

Searching For A CRT Replacement Part 1 0f 2

Hi,

I've started my freelance business and was looking for a grading monitor to do my colour correction with. I started my search by going to one of the mailing list I read, the Cinematography Mailing List. A noted Digital Imaging Technician named Tom Tcimpidis had mentioned he was using a Panasonic pro plasma, on set, and the images looked sweet. Tom is well known in the industry and of the 100 or so e-mails I get from 5 or 6 mailing lists I check his. Plasmas have similar colour characteristics as a CRT, the viewing angle is great, response time is super fast and that means no lag. Plasma blacks are black.

The companies I've worked for over the years had 19" monitors and when I started looking at plasmas the size ranged from 42 to 60 inch. There's nothing cooler than seeing your images on a big screen. When you have a big monitor of say 50 inches you have to have a big room so your sitting back at least 15 feet. Otherwise you can't see what's going on either size of the screen.

I picked up the 50", for the wow factor, and read all I could from Panasonic about commissioning it. It seems you have to burn the panel in so I connected a 100% white signal to it and let it cook for a full week 200 hours. This seasons the phosphors and helps reduce burn-ins from leaving an image on the panel for a long period of time. A new plasma drifts until the burn in has ben completed.

Once the burn-in was completed i started looking at some test signal and images and wow between the size of the screen and the fantastic colour it was amazing. More next time.

NAB Wrap-up

Hi,

Here's some things I saw at NAB this week.

Playing for Change: Peace through Music - Jonathan Walls
Over 3 years in the making, "Playing For Change: Peace through Music"is the 2nd film born out of an idea director Mark Johnson had while watching two Monks play music in a NYC Subway 10 years ago. It is a powerful documentary that takes us around the globe then brings us together through the simple but transformative power of music. Co-director and editor of Playing for Change: Peace through Music, Jonathan Walls will present.

http://www.playingforchange.com/pop2.html

Author a Replicatable Blu-ray disc on a Mac
"Digital guy" Bruce Nazarian will be on hand with a very special announcement: You can now author a REPLICATABLE Blu-ray disc ENTIRELY on a Macintosh. Works with ANY Mac Blu-ray authoring program and you will be amazed at how simple it is.

http://www.recipe4dvd.com/

JVC GY-HM700
JVC’s Craig Yanagi with help from DOP Tim Dashwood will show off the brand new “instant editing” GY-HM700 Camcorder.

http://pro.jvc.com/prof/attributes/features.jsp?model_id=MDL101851

The very first customizable music plug-in for FCP
For the first time on the planet -- Larry Jordan will give one of the first public demonstrations of the highly anticipated new Final Cut Pro music plug-in from SmartSound. Watch closely as Larry effortlessly turns scoring markers into fully produced and edited music for his Final Cut Pro projects. Roundtrip editing with control over timing and instrumentation make music creativity a simple task for every visual producer. Say hello to the new go-to music solution for Final Cut Pro. This is brand-new and amazing stuff!

http://www.smartsound.com/finalcutpro/

Syncing the Impossible

5 P2 cameras, 6 wireless microphones, freestyle shooting, a Sound Devices 788T recording 8 tracks of audio, and less than a week from shoot to air. How would you bring this all together in Final Cut Pro?
Jeremy Garchow, Creative Cow Leader, Editor and Post Production
Supervisor at Maday Productions, was tasked with the opportunity to organize and edit all of the elements to make a commercial for the Chicago Blackhawks. Totaling over 6 hours of real time shot material to edit down to 60 seconds, Jeremy faced this challenge by having super-fast access to the native P2 media and auto-syncing with external audio, all with free run time code and a clap slate. MXF4mac and sequenceLiner fired it all over to Final Cut Pro, ready to edit through a workflow never seen before.

http://www.spherico.de/filmtools/sequenceLiner/index.html

Wounded Marines Careers Foundation
The current class from the Wounded Marines Careers Foundation in San Diego returns to the SuperMeet to show off their latest video.

http://woundedmarinecareers.org/index.html

Share the love: FCP and CS4 Production Premium
Adobe’s Jason Levine will show off workflows between FCP and CS4 Production Premium.

http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/production/


Blackmagic Design presents Arthur C. Smith: The Arctic Frontier and Digital Filmmaking
Polar bears, climate change, and Alaska's offshore oil are hot media topics, yet for the digital filmmaker, working in the arctic is cold business. Hear and see how Alaska documentary filmmaker, Arthur C. Smith III is using the tools of digital cinema to produce award-winning films like Ice Bears of the Beaufort.
From acquisition to post, Smith's arctic-based PolarArt Productions has brought the digital age to the arctic frontier.
http://www.icebearsofthebeaufort.com/Ice_Bears_of_the_Beaufort_-_Film.html


The Coca-Cola Pavilion and the Adidas Spiral Theater at the Beijing Olympics
Kim Salyer of Video Arts and Joanne Dorgan freelance producer/editor will present a case study about the Coca-Cola Pavilion and the Adidas Spiral Theater at the Beijing Olympics. The Coca-Cola Olympic Pavilion Venue showcased numerous site-specific media including one video that was projected over a 40-ft. screen. The Adidas Theater, the first of it’s kind, was a 3-tier spiral walkway with lined with continuous video panels spanning 354 feet long and 6.5 feet wide. The Video Arts Team will show media from the initial 3D models and client elements to the finished project.

http://vidarts.com/

Indy workflow and Red
Filmmaker and Red Guru Steve Sherrick will give us a primer on Indy style Red workflow and show us Red Footage

Clip Finder App.
http://www.daun.ch/software/

Crimson App.
http://www.crimsonworkflow.com/


Iphone Teleprompter

http://apps.bodelin.com/proprompter/producer/

Red Rocket Plays 4k in Real Time 10mb/s
http://www.red.com/nab/redray/

Cinetal Monitors 42 inch Version + Davio
http://cinetal.com/products/cinemage.asp#bSeries
http://cinetal.com/products/davio_main.asp

JL Cooper Control Boards
http://www.jlcooper.com/pages/eclipse.html

AJA Ki Digital Disk Recorder
http://www.aja.com/products/acquire/

New Keyer for Lustre, Red native support
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=10223699

Scratch 4K Playback
http://www.vfxworld.com/?sa=adv&code=3631a5a1&atype=news&id=27362

Blackmagic UltraScopes
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/?nab=9

take care

Lorne

Apple Color Keyboard

Hi all,

I had an interesting experience this past month. I was looking for a keyboard for Color and couldn't find one. I spoke with the folks at LogicKeyboard and they were luke warm but when I offered to do the design they quickly came on board. 4 weeks later I have the keyboard serial number one.

When I work in a dimly lit suite the colour coded keys are easy to see and when there's more light I can read the printed keycaps. It was a fun experience figuring out what keys I use the most as all options can't fit on all the keys. It makes you think how to streamline your work. I also found some shortcuts to speed things along that I wasn't aware of.

I still use my control board but the keyboard is a big help. Oh I forgot to mention you can see the board at http://www.logickeyboard.com/shop/apple-color-ultra-1812p.html

Thanks to LogicKeyboard for their help.

cheers

Lorne

What's Lorne been up to

Hi,

Things have been quiet here so I thought I'd let you know what I've been up to. I was in New York City this week to work with another Colourist. It's interesting to hear everyone's stories and find that you have similar issues to deal with. I had a quick look on his book shelves and saw most of the same

Focal Press,
http://www.focalpress.com/list.aspx?coll_id=158&title=Film%20and%20Video%20Bestsellers

Peachpit Press
http://www.peachpit.com/search/index.aspx?

Elsevier
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/bookdescription.cws_home/714647/description#description

and some other books. I did see some books I didn't have and will order. Most of the conversations interestingly enough were around a Colourist being an extension of the Cinematographer. We work hand in hand. When I got home I started to have a look at my books on colour theory just to review. As I read over old stuff I still find things I missed the first time around.

Last week I cleaned my garage out. This isn't big news unless you me. I had 2 big tubs of books, charts, old film, software, etc. that I don't have room for. It's a valuable treasure trove for me but maybe junk for others. I sent 1 box to a local high school and the books and stuff that was more involved went to the film department at a university. I'm sure your places are full of stuff you have accumulated over the years and don't know what to do with it. Think about donating it.

cheers

Lorne

CES Show & New Controls For The Colourist

As a Colourist I like to keep abreast of what’s going on in the entertainment industry as pertains to, you guessed it, colour. The CES Consumer and Electronics Show recently finished up in Las Vegas and there were some pretty interesting products that came out of it. Among them there was all sorts of new flat panels. From the extremely large Panasonic and Pioneer and Sony right down to the Alienware curved computer panels, http://ces.cnet.com/8301-13855_1-9842798-67.html.

It would be so amazing if a colour correction suite developed to the point where you could take advantage of the flat panel technology for both the user interfaces and displays. There is such an explosion with the technology, such as wide gamut displays, that there doesn’t seem to be standardization for the flat panels for us to work with in film and television. The quality of the flat panels seems to be a little inconsistent. This still needs to be addressed.

I also saw some VR glasses that looked really interesting. Again, as far as colour correction is concerned can you imagine a scenario a few years from now where the Colourist is using a totally different set of controls to effect the colour changes of an image? What about wearing VR glasses that are colour balanced and wide gamut OLED technology.
http://www.inition.com/inition/product.php?URL_=product_glove_immersion_hapticworkstation&SubCatID_=26 .
A Colourist could just stand in a room that is 17 feet square and wear the virtual reality gloves and colour correct a scene by moving arms around, staring at blank walls while watching the television program in the VR glasses.
Stu Maschwitz was talking of images from the Minority Report. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000928.html

I know this sounds a little wild but there has to be something better than sitting in a room and having to look down at a control panel instead of keeping your eyes on the screen. I’m not crazy; I just thought it would make an interesting point of discussion. Think about it.