March 27, 2007 -- Post productions for Sins of
the Father is coming along quite nicely. The movie's pivotal death
scene is really bad ass. This weekend, I'll be shooting an additional
scene for it almost 4 years later from when we shot the original footage.
Eric Yonick will play Martin Graves, a role originally portrayed by his
brother, Mark, in Fear of the Dark. Joe Lauria will return to reprise
his role as Ethan Fernier.
And be sure to check out Sal Sirchia in a special Fangoria Monster Mondays
screening of Knock Knock that will be held on May 7th at 6:30 pm at
the Two Boots Pioneer Theater
in New York City. This is an open screening held by Fangoria for there
horror fans!
March 8, 2007 -- I'm finally back on track with
post production on Sins of the Father! It's coming along
nicely. Keep your eyes peeled for and advance look at some new scenes
in the next months! In the meantime, check out my review below of
Magic Bullet Colorista.
Review of Magic Bullet Colorista
By Glen Baisley
Sometimes it’s hard to get excited about NLE plug-ins.
The market is flooded with them. The question was if Red Giant Software’s
Magic Bullet Colorista would offer any advantages over my existing color
correction tools in Adobe After Effects 7 or Premiere Pro 2.0? The answer
is yes. It’s easier to use and produced better results. Colorista works
like most professional grading systems that use the industry standard model
of Lift, Gamma and Gain. Colorista ships as a native plug-in for all major
host applications including Final Cut Pro (FX Plug), Motion, After Effects,
Premiere Pro, and Avid AVX compatible systems.
Mastering some of the tools in programs like After
Effects requires time and dedication so it’s a real treat when you can pick
up software and run with it. The software comes with a 15 minute tutorial
done by Eric Escobar which covers the basics of color correction and how to
use Colorista. Having previously watched Total Training DVDs on Premiere
Pro’s color correction tools, I found that the included tutorial hit the
bullet points well enough to get started.
On first glance, you will find that there are fewer
controls than most built-in 3-way color correction tools but Colorista
doesn’t sacrifice any functionality or performance. Consolidating the
controls has made the tool more manageable. The learning curve is made
easier because whatever host application you use the plug-in in the controls
will be the same. There is no need to relearn the controls.
The real benefit is the ability to easily do Power Masks
with adjustable ellipses and rectangles to isolate a portion of the frame.
In After Effects 7, Colorista is a 32-bit floating-point plug-in which means
you can stack as many of them on top of each other to make adjustments and
the color will not degrade.
Plug-ins like Magic Bullet Colorista are making it that
much easier for budding filmmakers who are forced to use lower end equipment
to be able to make their films shine the way they should. I pulled out some
older DV footage from one of my earlier films that I didn’t have the luxury
of affording decent equipment on. The footage was from an outdoor scene
that was shot on a very overcast day. The resulting footage had a blue
colorcast on the actor’s skin tone. The results between After Effects 7’s
color correction tools and Colorista were comparable at first but I was able
to push the envelope further with Colorista using the Power Mask feature.
Colorista allowed me to fully color correct the footage. Keep in mind that
Colorista is no substitute for shooting footage and lighting it properly to
begin with but it certainly can help to correct or enhance your footage.
The test was performed on a Pentium 4 3.0 GHz with 2 GB
of RAM. Colorista took full advantage of my EVGA 7800 GTO AGP card and ran
at almost real-time in Premiere Pro 2.0. Not bad for a computer that is 4
years old. On the other hand, my Pentium 4 3.8 GHz with 2 GB RAM and an
EVGA PCI Express 7900 card didn’t flinch.
Magic Bullet Colorista is just another in a line of great
products from Red Giant Software. It’s well thought out and easy to use.
