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.

Avid DS On-line Training

Over the holidays I was on the Softimage website, and I took the Avid DS101 course to get familiarized with tools for colour correction. Avid DS system is absolutely awesome as far as horsepower and the ability to do nearly everything you want. Its colour correction tool is very interesting because it gives you a wide range of controls. It’s fascinating for me, coming from a DaVinci background, to find all the controls that you’re used to in a DaVinci and apply those to an Avid. It’s fun when you go back and forth and notice there are things missing on either product. I have to say Avid is certainly an interesting box to look at. On the Avid website you can take these on-line tutorials that are really inexpensive, I think they were from about 15 minutes to half an hour. It would be great if some of the other manufacturers, of colour correction equipment, were able to throw these kinds of training tutorials up on the Internet for all. It’s a great way to improve your skill set.

Monitors and RED Camera Info

As I mentioned before I was at the FTX west trade show and found some interesting things. I was able to visit the Sony display and have a look at their new BVM-L230 backlit LCD monitor. I had seen it at NAB this year in a darken room beside 2 other monitors but this was my first chance to really have a look at the unit and I have to say the images on that monitor are really, really nice. This is Sony’s grade A replacement for the BVM CRT and it’s definitely worth having a look at. The 23”model I was looking at was $25,000 approx CDN. Hopefully, they will be coming out with larger versions to fit into telecine bays and could be useful in grading.

Now it may not be 100% right for your application but it’s still a monitor you should check out. Another product I saw at the show and want to touch on is the Red Camera. As I’ve mentioned before I’m teaching a class on Apple’s Color on FXPHD.com, (blatant plug) and they are doing a Red course, which I’m about 8 classes into. Although I’ll never be a Cinematographer, being a Colourist goes hand in hand and it’s really important for me to learn what’s happening on set. A Colourist needs to understand how cameras work and what the crews are going through to create the images that we are going to enhance. So, feeling that my pockets were half full I went up to the Red camera booth to get more information so that I can understand what the technicians say. With technology changing so quickly now, we in the industry need to keep up by constantly training. However, that’s a whole other topic, which I’ll get into next week.

Writer's Strike

A hot topic of discussion with film and television professionals is the state of the industry. Specifically in regards to the writers strike and what is happening with the crews and post production. In the Vancouver area the shows are starting to shut down which is starting to have a ripple down effect in the post production industries. A strike is never well timed but this now leaves post production people scrambling to do one of two options. Either they lay off their employees to save a little bit of money or if they have deep pockets they can try to weather this and keep people on. To get laid off is a wake up call that this industry has changed and many job positions are freelance. You’ll be better prepared if you are vertically integrated so that you can do a number of jobs and do them well. Case in point is being a colourist with on-line capabilities at the same time. It’s up to you to make sure you are trained, that you seek out the training that will make you future proof. There’s a sidebar in my website that can direct you towards classes in Final Cut Pro, Color, and colour correction in Avid Express. Major manufacturers of Nucoda and Baselight both offer colour classes as well as DaVinci. Now a day, with the workstation model being adopted, the other 8 hours of time spent at a colour correction system is doing editing. Therefore, it would be a good idea for you to learn part of that whether it be conforming or just dropping in visual effects shots, doing outputs or dirt fixes. With automation improving, the job market is starting to shrink and you just want to make sure if you’re in it for the long haul that you have the tools that you need to weather this out. I was on a DaVinci for over 20 years and in the last 5 years I’ve found it necessary to re-invent myself just to stay current. Sometimes I feel like I’m pedaling a bike endlessly but that’s the model for today, it’s change, change, change. If you want to work in this industry it’s all about being versatile and keeping up with technology. Make sure you lift up your eyes and see the forest for the trees and hopefully you’ll have a long and prosperous career in the television industry.

Trade Shows and Networking

I attended the FTX West tradeshow in Vancouver last weekend. Trade shows are a great place to see the new technology as well as a great place to do some networking. You won’t find books that cover all aspects of the jobs we do in the industry. So if you run into some issues that you’ve never experienced before a reference book isn’t going to help you. There are lots of spots on the Internet that provide information but the best way I’ve found is to go networking. Belonging to user groups, formed of people who are experiencing issues the same as yourself is just an amazing resource. Tradeshows are the same thing, going around and meeting the exhibitors and the technicians as well as other people who are interested in these products. You have the opportunity to build a large data base of people to talk to so when you have a problem with a certain program or a certain piece of hardware you have a pool of resources to ask those questions and to get you around that issue. Whatever the problem someone will be able to help directly or be able to connect you up with someone else in the know. Manufactures also take note of these networks and design or modify products to better serve their clients. At the tradeshows there is a good chance you’ll meet up with people you communicate with on the Internet, which is usually an interesting experience. I’ve realized that our industry is a small world with the same names popping up in various places. Also on a social issue, the beer and wings that follow these events are well worth attending.

HD Monitoring Cost and Quality

HD Monitoring Cost and Quality

 

If you asked a group of industry professionals what their choice in HD monitoring is you would find a line drawn in the sand.  High-end post production facilities have always gone with the best CRT they can find,  mostly the Sony BVMs.  These monitors are found in the grading suites as they are able to display what the image really looks like and they are expensive.  On-line bays have a mixture of CRT and LCD as a more cost effective solution.  The images have been graded or quality checked in the Telecine suites before they arrive in On-line.

The cost of edit suites have been coming down steadily and these suites are being used more and more replacing the on-line edit bays.  They need high quality monitoring as well.  The Kyoto Accord, whether you support it or not,wants the use of lead reduced.  Lead is an important part of the monitor.

As your CRTs wear out and you can’t find parts you’ll be looking for the smaller, lighter flat panel monitors.  The price spread between these monitors is big so you have to start asking yourself some questions.  What’s my application for them going to be?  Am I grading, editing or monitoring?  Image creation in Telecines and visual effects get the best monitors as they are creating imagery.  Quality control and media ingest stations and On-line need good monitors. VTR as usual gets the leftovers. 

Manufactures are rushing to bring the newest technology to the market.  The first few generations of LCD displays answered the need for a cost effective wide screen monitor.  The colour resolution was 8-bits with high blacks and not directly comparable to CRTs as yet but you knew it would be a matter of time.

At NAB this spring I was running from booth to booth seeing what was new. 

In the past year I've had a look at the Sony, Cine-tal, e-Cinema, Panasonic, TV Logic and JVC offerings. 

Over at the Sony booth they had a darkened room with 3 monitors playing the same media.  The idea was to guess which monitor was Sony’s new back lit, 10bit  LCD display.  The images were very close and well worth a look.

Sony recently announced an OLED monitor was on the way and this wide gamut will be the new standard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_light-emitting_diode

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/sony-demos-9mm+thick-high+def-oled-displays-251613.php

The e-Cinema offer wasn’t working when I dropped by but I would have liked to have had a look at the DPX monitor.

All looked good but my preference, for an all around LCD, was the Cine-tal mainly due to the cost and available features. Firstly, the staff at the NAB booth were very helpful in answering my questions first.  The monitors have a good-looking image and many handy features such as the waveform and vector-scope option.  The blacks had the slight LCD blues you get with that version of technology but it was minimized through the software and is well thought out.  I had heard many good things about these monitors from people who are  shooting in the field as well.

Remember the service and support aspect of the monitors as well. Hope this helps.  Now don’t get me wrong here, you can’t beat the resolution or solid blacks of a CRT monitor. Their cost is another issue.  CRTs day in the sun is at an end.  If you want a new monitor you’d better start educating yourself and moving forward with the new technology.

It would be very interesting to see all these monitors in a sidei by side shoot-out against the a Sony 32 inch CRT reference monitor. http://bssc.sel.sony.com/BroadcastandBusiness/DisplayModel?m=0&p=8&sp=20073&id=80823

This would make it easy to divide monitors into 2 groups, good and affordable.  Buy the best for what you can afford and know the technology will be changing as fast as your last computer. 

Sony (Backlit LCD technology)

http://pro.sony.com.hk/nab2007/products_bvml230.html

E-Cinema (Backlit LED technology)

http://www.ecinemasystems.com/products/dcm/intro.html

Sony; (LCD technology)

http://pro.sony.com.hk/nab2007/products_lmd2050w.html 

Cine-tal (LCD technology)

http://www.cine-tal.com/

Panasonic (LCD technology)

http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp...roupId =14625 

JVC.com (LCD technology)

http://pro.jvc.com/prof/attributes/features.jsp?model_id=MDL101631

TV-Logic (LCD technology)

http://www.postium.com/products/mf_lcd/ml_index.php

FYI

Boland

http://www.boland.com

Brightside / Dolby (Backlit LED technology)

http://www.dolby.com/professional/vi...by-vision.aspxa