Coward is a stunningly shot (35mm anamorphic) World War One short film by director David Roddham and shot by Stephen Murphy. Check out the 28 minute short film and the making of video below. There is also a decent online production diary with some great looking production stills.
A few more youtube gems of color grading Peter Jackson’s epic The Lord of The Rings and also King Kong. These have been taken from the extras on the LoTR box set and the King Kong double disc release. If you’re after more great DVD extras then check out this post on The Best DVD Extras For Film Editors (and Colorists!)
They’re using Discreet’s Lustre (now owned by Autodesk) in these videos and if you want to learn more about it hit the Lustre section on the Lift Gamma Gain forum.
AOTG.com has a great interview with the incredibly enthusiastic Fred Raskin, editor of Quentin Tarantino’s latest film Django Unchained and previously an assistant on many really great films like Insomnia, Punch Drunk Love and both volumes of Kill Bill. Fred talks through how he got his start in the industry – learning as he went from the pages of The Assistant Editor’s Handbook, worked his way up to editing Fast & The Furious and then where he is today working with Quentin Tarantino. It’s a great interview and well worth a listen.
Johan Walters has a superb interview with Marshall Curry & Matthew Hamachek who both wrote and edited Oscar nominated documentary If a tree falls which tells the inside story of the Earth Liberation Front. What I love about this interview is that it provides a great inside look at what it’s like to shoot and edit a feature documentary. Impressive stuff.
Christopher Nolan is undoubtably one of my favourite directors and his editing team – Editor Lee Smith and Assistant Editor John Lee – will no doubt play a huge part in why his films turn so brilliantly. Film is after all a team sport.
To celebrate the release of The Dark Knight Rises, Flickering Myth have a fantastic interview with Lee Smith. Smith has edited 5 of Nolan’s films (The Dark Knight Trilogy as well as Inception and The Prestige) as well as several of Peter Weir’s films (The Truman Show, Master & Commander). He’s also working on Wally Pfister’s (Nolan’s favourite DoP) directorial debut – Transcendance.
We watch the dailies every night,” states Lee Smith. “We’re both great believers in that because it’s not just the notes; it’s a time where we can chat and I can talk about what I’m doing while the dailies are rolling. It’s one of the few times you can actually sit down and have a conversation because of the speed and intensity of shooting a movie.
Frame of Reference also have a great interview with John Lee, Lee Smith’s assistant on how he got into the business and what he’s learned along the way. Well worth a read.
If you want even more interviews with these guys check out these two previous posts:
Steve Hullfish gave this half hour presentation to the Editors Lounge on how to get the best out of your edit with simple but effective colour correction techniques. Steve introduces how to use a waveform monitor and curve controls and walks through some fundamental grading techniques like how to balance an image. This is a great video to watch if you’re beginning to get into colour correction and want to know how to use waveforms, RGB parades and vectorscopes correctly.
If you enjoyed Steve’s teaching style he also has a book: The Art & Technique of Color Correction which you can buy on Amazon (US/UK)
Warren Eagles from the ICA recently posted this walk through of a TV commercial that he graded and how changing the grade throughout the spot helps to shape the story. Well worth a watch. If you like Warren’s teaching style then he has a course on color grading with DaVinci Resolve on FXPHD.com ($199)
South African editor Johan Walters has a fascinating interview with director/editor Bauke Brouwer on what it takes to craft a one minute short film for the International One Minute Film Festival. Bauke provides some great insights into very disciplined filmmaking.
A few youtube gems on color grading a David Fincher movie. About 5 minutes into the Panic Room featurette world class colorist Stephen Nakamura color corrects a few shots. The two part Se7en featurettes are all of Stephen colour correcting the end scene from the film.
Everyone shooting digital wants their stuff to look like film. (Why not shoot film then?!) There are several footage packages that allow you to overlay real or simulated film grain of differing weights and sizes, as well as dirt, scratches and light leaks, to give your edit that filmic appeal. Here are several options to choose from including a tutorial on how to use the footage in your edit.
This particular FCP7 quirk can be frustratingly mysterious, yet the solution is incredibly simple. It happened to me the other day and after longer than desired googling I finally found the solution thanks to this post from the Apple Discussion forums.
You’re merrily transcoding in your tapeless footage and for some reason FCP decides to be a bit tricky and stop importing any footage and instead presents you with this mysterious error of a red exclamation mark. (bottom left)
No matter what you do, (ejecting the card, opening and closing L&T etc etc) it will always present you with the red exclamation mark and refuse to import anything.
The key thing to notice in this image is that the Total Free Space: 0.
This means that L&T thinks the hard drive your capture scratch is set to has no free space on it and will not transcode to it. So the stupidly simple solution is the open up your FCP system preferences (Final Cut Pro > System Preferences) and reset your scratch disks.
Now everything will work just as it did. Notice also that the Total Free Space: 130GB reflects the real amount of free space on the drive. Hopefully this post will save you some time if this ever happens to you!
