The last post I did called Colorist Resources was very popular so here is yet another round up of some of the latest tips and tutorials to hit the web. If you want even more colour grading posts check out the categories links on the right hand side of the site ->
Using the Blur Palette in DaVinci Resolve 9.1
In this short tutorial Jesse Borkowski talks through how to use the blur palette in DaVinci Resolve 9.1. Its a handy follow up to some of Jesse’s other tutorials (Series 1 & Series 2), providing a more in-depth look at the tools in the blur palette.
Discussion With Colorist Jim Wicks
“When you approach color restoring old film prints, you cannot approach it the same way that you would a ‘new’ film… If there’s a green wash over a shot of a forest, how do you remove the green wash without effecting the green trees? This film was the hardest I’ve had to work on to date. – Jim Wicks on restoring La Escondida, 1956.
The weekend of the 28th and 29th of June is a big one in the editor/geek’s calendar. Not only is EditFest coming to London for the first time, but the night before, the Supermeet team will be in town too!
To get tickets to EditFest London – which will feature an incredible line up of high calibre film and TV editors like Chris Dickens (Slum Dog Millionaire, Les Miserables) Eddie Hamilton (Kick Ass 1&2) and John Wilson (Billy Elliot) - and check in on the latest schedule updates, hit the Edit Fest site. For a taster of previous Edit Fests – check out the AOTG archive.
UPDATE: Editors drinks – Gordon Burkell of AOTG fame will be leading the charge to the pub (The John Snow, 8-11pm) on the Saturday night for some further drinks and editor chat. A great opportunity to swap tall post-production tales and actually meet people from twitter!
Third Annual London Supermeet
The friday night will see the Supermeet come to London for the third time. Having been along last year it will great to be there again in person rather than hoping and waiting for videos to hit the internet. There is also the opportunity to win some amazing prizes via the world famous Supermeet Raffle - as each and every entry ticket includes two raffle tickets. Remember to get your whoop on when you win! Buy tickets directly here (£10.90)
Being a great storyteller is key to any creative work, whether its a song, still image or feature film. These 5 books on screenwriting and writing will help you learn how to craft, hone and shape a story, regardless of your creative field.
As a film editor I need to be able to quickly shape a story from the raw building blocks of documentary rushes, talking heads or a drama script. Moulding them into something that really works and developing strong storytelling skills are invaluable to my day to day work and life long career. Here are a few books I’ve found particularly useful so far.
Teach Yourself Screenwriting – Ray Frensham
The first book I ever owned on screenwriting and originally called Teach Yourself Screenwriting (now retitled: Break Into Screenwriting) by Ray Frensham is the most straight-fowrard guide to the classic Hollywood 3-Act narrative structure you could hope for. Given that I was probably 11 or 12 when I first read it, this book represents a great introduction to essential screenwriting concepts but won’t slow you down with too much unnecessary depth. A great book for any creative trying to understand simple narrative structure and a slick introduction to screenwriting. Thank you Mr. Frensham for inspiring me to get into film!
This is probably my favourite book on the art, craft and life of being a writer. I’ve never been a Stephen King fan (I don’t really go in for horror) and aside from masterpieces like Misery and The Shawshank Redemption I’ve not read/seen much of his stuff. But his memoir on the craft of writing is fantastic.
A must read for any would-be writer this part autobiography, part writers manual is a genuine page turner. King’s idea that a story is like a fossil you find on the ground and slowly uncover is extremely pertinent for documentary filmmakers too. Storytelling takes patience, discipline and determination and you’ll learn what that takes from an outstanding teacher in Stephen King. Brilliant.
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years – Donald Miller
Although author Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years isn’t strictly about screenwriting it is about the story of writing a screenplay and how that storytelling process taught him to live a good story, not just imagine one. This is a great book about what makes for telling a good story as well as how to go about living one. I often recommend this book to creative friends because ultimately the best stories will come from a place ‘writing what you know’. So we had better get living a good story as life, as my wife so often tells me, is for living. Miller’s funny, moving and inspiring reflections on the process of screenwriting make for a thoroughly enjoyable read.
If you’ve ever heard anything about George Lucas’ inspiration for Star Wars you’ll know it had everything to do with reading Joseph Campbell’s seminal The Hero With a Thousand Faces. (Which is a book I own, have started a couple of times and always meant to come back to.)
Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey is the kind of book a story analyst who works for Hollywood movie studios would write after digesting and working with Joseph Campbell’s core ideas that there are archetypal stories, characters and narratives which provide the basis for every story ever written, and then worked those into modern feature films. When I say its the kind of book someone like that might write, it is the book that Christopher Vogler (story analyst for Hollywood movies studios) has written. The Writer’s Journey, though a thickly detailed book, is incredibly easy to read and get to grips with. If you’re after a point by point screenwriting guide through the mythical archetype of The Hero’s Journey, this is the book for you.
Screenwriters Favourites – An Assortment of Classic Books
It would be a bit odd to have collected together a list of the best books on screenwriting and storytelling and completely fail to mention a few of the ‘classics’ on the genre. Robert Mckee’s Story is probably the most famous and recommended screenwriting bible. A thick book I own but not gotten around to reading it is considered essential reading for any screenwriter. Or you could just watch Adaptation and get three minutes of Brian Cox instead. Lastly William Goldman’s books Adventures in the Screen Trade, Which Lie Did I Tell? and The Big Picture are all considered classic screenwriters reading material.
Another wave of great resources for new colourists has hit the web and I’ve rounded up a fair few of them here. Hopefully this melange of tutorials, tips and training will help you progress in the fun that is colour grading.
Summer Blockbuster Grading Tutorial
Juan Melera, whose free film emulation LUTS are very popular, recently posted this meaty tutorial on creating a summer blockbuster look similar to Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. If you want to follow along with Juan you can also download the original 5K RED files.
In the tutorial I analyse the look of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and show you it’s not one single cool hue being added to the image, but actually several hues that appear at specific places on the luminosity ramp.
Some professional colorist’s seem to get a bit agitated by the propagation of the idea that you can simply shove a LUT on your footage and that makes you a colorist. Of course it doesn’t but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use them if you want to.
People ask me why I use film LUTs and if they are somehow cheating by using them. I use LUTs because I think they’re an important component in achieving this look. Film LUTs have been used by post production studios on films for aslong as they’ve been conducting DI colour grades. There’s a good chance that the films people continually try to match the look of, have been graded with a film LUT which has then been baked in, thus becoming a large part of the finished look.
To find out how to get your project into Resolve from any NLE, including Adobe Premiere Pro and FCP7 check out this previous post.
Avid Media Composer – Grading Basics
Kevin P McAuliffe continues his epic run of Avid Media Composer tutorials over on the Creative Cow with this two part colour correction tutorial. I’ve personally found Kevin’s free tutorials very useful in my journey into using Avid. (Check out the Diary of an Avid Switcher posts for more on that.)
In part 1 Kevin, demonstrates how to balance the image and then in part 2 gets into using the colour wheels too. A great primer for anyone new to colour correction.
Getting Started in FCPX
Chris Fenwick has a whole load FCP tutorials, and a growing number of FCPX tutorials, on his youtube channel and in this short video he walks through some effective colour grading effects, including using qualifiers to treat selected parts of the image. If you’re trying to wrap your head around the color board this is a great place to start.
If you want even more FCPX colour correction tutorials here are ten more courtesy of Premium Beat.
I needed a new microphone to record a voice over for a recent project and set about trying to find out what the best microphone to get would be. As with anything there’s a vast range of choice for a even bigger range of prices. Here are some of the best microphones for recording voice overs (and podcasts or tutorials) as recommended by a few composer, musician and post-production friends.
How to choose the right microphone
Personally I’m not setting up a studio level booth – I just need a good microphone I can trust to record voice overs in a way my clients will be pleased with. Another vital criteria for me is to be able to quickly connect it all up to my laptop so I can record their talent, wherever they may be. Portability, quality and price are all important factors for the frequently travelling editor!
In choosing a microphone there are essentially two ways to go: A straight USB microphone or a XLR microphone into a pre-amp that connects via usb into your computer. XLR microphones will be of better quality but this 2-part set up will cost a bit more money and take about 10 seconds longer to set up. I went with a XLR/pre-amp set up because it affords me great flexibility in the future and access to a higher quality microphone.
Trevor’s conclusion: Once you have a mic at a certain level, it takes a lot of money to make a small difference.
The surprising hit of the shootout, and a mic also recommended to me by a composer friend was the Shure SM57. As silly as it may sound, from a looks point of view I didn’t think the SM57 would cut it in front of my clients so I went with something more beefy looking. As it turns out Trevor also recommends the same microphone that I ultimately went with.
If you’re new to editing in FCPX getting used to the unique way in which it does a few things can be a bit of distraction to getting any real work done. Hopefully this round up of tips, tricks and tutorials will help you leap over those pain barriers and get back to what you really love doing – editing!
Faster Editing in FCPX
Larry Jordan has a good write up of all the keyboard shortcuts involved in trimming in FCPX. Memorising these will definitely speed up your working day. He also demonstrates how to use the precision editor in this short tutorial from his training series.
In this great short tutorial Ben Consoli shares how he uses FCPX’s favourites feature to keyword talking head interviews to allow him to search through interview footage for the sound bite you need.
Final Cut Basix is a fairly new FCPX editing site that is packed with plenty of great tips, especially for the editor coming to FCPX for the first time, so do have a good rummage. Here is a good example of the kind of tips on the site: Modifying Keyboard Shortcuts - Customise the FCPX keyboard so every button does what you want it to.
I’ve been collecting a growing list of links to interviews with editors who are using Avid Media Composer to get their job done, whether thats a major Hollywood feature or a cable network TV show. Although these are pretty much all Avid market tools there’s plenty of craft insights to be had too. Thanks to the Postchat chaps for such great interviews from NAB 2013.
The other day I had to work with some C300 LOG footage in FCP7 and needed to quickly apply a LUT that would show the client what it might actually look like in the final grade. For a simple free way of doing this just grab LUT Buddy from Red Giant Software and follow the tutorial below. You can also download several free Canon C300 LOG LUTS from the great people at AbleCine.
On-set Data Management with Canon C300
For a step by step guide to working with the C300, you won’t find much better, or more detailed resource than this article on from the Canon official site. The article includes useful charts of data rates, camera menus and comparison of various Compact Flash card makers.
Lightworks is probably the first (?) truly cross platform NLE, running on Linux, Windows and (soon) Mac OSX. So although its exciting to see the demo above at NAB 2013 of Lightworks on Mac it obviously doesn’t look any different to any demos on Windows or Linux, because, you know, its the same program.
In the video above Peter Wiggins has a chat with Lightworks Global Product Manager Matt Sanford (who is an incredibly nice chap and gave me a thorough Lightworks demo at BVE 2013) who mentions some key points:
You can use 5K R3D files in the current version, otherwise its 2K for resolution. 4K is coming in Lightworks 11.2 (11.1 out end of April) it will also have new ingest features, curve based color correction and AJA support.
There will always be a free version of Lightworks and the pro version of Lightworks is a minimal annual cost (£40/$60). Lightworks is hoping to come to a public beta on OSX in the next several months (a few months to alpha and then a robust beta a few months after that) - or possibly at IBC in September. So the wait continues. For a fuller mac demo check out the video below from Newshooter.
If you’re wondering why you might want to use Lightworks at all (compared to Premiere Pro, Avid or FCPX) then it will be worth downloading the free version and giving it a go. Also check out this article on the Redshark News site from editor Fran De Souza.
Lightworks Tutorials
If you’re interested in learning more about how Lightworks functions check out the recently released ‘Sharkbites’ tutorials series, which are mirco tutorials on specific features within the NLE. Further tutorials will be added over time. If you can’t wait that long have a rummage in the Lightworks category.
