Bloom on Magic Bullet, cameras, FCP

Director Philip Bloom is everywhere this week:

• Color Grading in Final Cut Pro with Magic Bullet Looks on the Red Giant podcast
• A Prolost post, Philip Bloom's GH1 First Impressions
• A MacVideo interview, Philip Bloom on NAB 2009, Camera Technology and Final Cut Pro

Update: Here's one of his reports from NAB:

Magic Bullet Quick Looks + RGS Datamator

Red Giant Magic Bullet Quick Looks is a disabled version of the fuller After Effects filter that gives you 100+ look presets for $1 each. You do get well-chosen presets (which you can correct further with other filters) and the power of the DeepColor RT engine for real-time playback of SD and HD (720p) projects, but perhaps also the compatibility issues with your system's graphics card.

Update: Red Giant Software also released Datamator, "a plug-in set for creating data-driven animations for news programs and corporate videos. Red Giant Datamator (formerly Digital Anarchy Data Animator) turns charts and graphs into" animations. Datamator "includes a set of eight plug-ins that make it easier for videographers to create graphs and charts directly in After Effects instead of using PowerPoint or re-creating graphics from scratch." Seems like a good addition, especially since the loss of Useful Things meta filter to SONY.

If you can't use Datamator, there are some more involved options; see the previous post Charts and graphs for tutorial links.

AE, Magic Bullet, & FCP in 'Benjamin Button'

Apple has coverage by Joe Cellini and and Oliver Peters looks at post-production of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button:

'This film received the benefit of other digital tools. According to Angus, “One of the scenes in the film is a fable told by Cate Blanchett. We were looking for ways to set this scene apart and decided to give it an old movie look, since it’s a movie-within-a-movie. To that aim, we settled on treating these shots with Magic Bullet Looks. The final version that appears in the film was processed through [Adobe] After Effects where we ‘baked in’ the effect. There are also a few other scenes throughout that received a little Magic Bullet love.”'

Also, 'Button' is on the cover of Cinefex #116.

Update: Flippant News noted that Nola.com posted a seven-part series of video vignettes with director Fincher and others.

Update: How Benjamin Button Got His Face | Video on TED.com

A shot across Color's bow

Fini comments on the recent post from ProLost that discusses a filmmaker who used both Colorista and Magic Bullet Looks to finish an entire feature:

"I've found the control surface easily doubles my productivity (you can read my initial experience here). So a 90 minute feature color corrected with a mouse could easily take 5 working days... just for the initial grade. And that's without even getting into establishing a look. And look creation in Color is an exercise in patience + fortitude + luck..."

Update: Fini explicately asked for control surface support in the next version of Magic Bullet; Steve Hullfish has a quick look at the JL Cooper Eclipse panel in his new blog CUT.N.COLOR.

Color podcast

Flippant News notes Studio006, a nice FCP Color Podcast (series), as Studio Daily complains Again with the Color, PrepShootPost asks former Apple mates Would Someone Please Make Color Work (for features), and others ask FCS 2-Ready for Prime Time?

It looks like Magic Bullet was timed about right.

Update: Previous posts show other resources for Color. Online forums can be found for Color at Apple's Color Forum, The Color List, Creative Cow, 2-Pop, etc.

Experiences with Color are varied. Jason Mitchell shared his experience on SF Cutters:

"Just colored a narrative feature in Color using DVCProHD 1080i24p shot on the HVX200. It dealt with the material wonderfully well. I prepped it to output 1080p24 ProResHQ for the render (floating point) and the results were awesome.

I do know that Color doesn't like interlaced footage, but I had conformed the material into 24p before sending the projects to color (had to break it up into reels).

Read the instructions closely and it won't give you any trouble. Mainly, pre-render into their own movies all still images, speed changes and nested FX sequences. Move everything down onto one track (or as few as possible). Cut it into 20-minutes sections (or less if your sound mixer desires)."

Magic Bullet Looks ships

Red Giant Software is shipping Magic Bullet Looks, the highly anticipated color correction tool for Adobe, Apple, and Avid software. Magic Bullet Looks also includes Misfire and Magic Bullet LooksBuilder, a stand-alone application to pre-visualize looks anywhere. You can get MBL bundled in Magic Bullet Suite 2007, which includes Magic Bullet Looks, Magic Bullet 24p, Magic Bullet Colorista, and Instant HD for high-quality up-conversion.

This version of Looks really has to be seen, so check out the trial version and these videos and posts: Magic Bullet Looks Prolost post, Tour The Bullet (Prolost/Studio Daily), and Motionworks' Getting Started with Magic Bullet Looks.

Update: Stu says to look for a secret feature...

Update 2: Review: Magic Bullet "Looks" - Slick, Sexy, A Few Flaws

Getting Started with Magic Bullet Looks

John Dickinson posted a video for Getting Started with Magic Bullet Looks, a deep product nearing release from Red Giant Software.

Prolost color commentary

Stu Maschwitz updates his preview of Magic Bullet Looks, and adds a meaty screed (with interesting links) on Apple's new competitor, Color, from their purchase of Silicon Color.

Update: from the lively comments on Stu's take on Color, Peter Jackson's QT production diary entry on the grading phase of King Kong.

Update II: While still digesting all the great comments on this article, I found that that Mike "Lucifer Jones" writes about Apple's confused corporate direction and Stu's article on Color on his DMN blog. Mike quotes Stu on his relationship with Apple and its product, but to be real, does Stu still use a Mac and Final Cut? It's hard to imagine that The Orphange uses Premiere! Not that Steve Jobs isn't odd (or was around Infinite Loop), but perhaps things are a bit complicated by the fact that Stu makes competing software and that The Orphanage made a big deal over it's switch to free Windows boxes when Apple was still unsteady. God knows.

Magic Bullet Looks picts at Prolost

Magic Bullet $800 + Colorista $200 = almost =
Final Cut Studio with Color $1300