ingramworks digital

Do I miss having facebook? No.
Does it feel weird not checking it every thirty minutes? Sadly yes.

Behold, my Resolve, editing and everything else workstation in all its glory. Bow and feel unworthy… but, yea, it’s pretty spiffy.

This week I have started the color grade for the upcoming feature, “Because I Love You.” This is my first grade using Davinci Resolve and, I have to say, so far I am very impressed. The images are being treated wonderfully compared to my experience in Apple’s Color and the speed has been impressive. There has been a couple of lag glitches, but they were minor. I feel a bit clumsy as I’m still learning the shortcuts and just how to do all the usual things within the new interface.

I’m using USB3 for speed since Thunderbolt isn’t yet out for PCs and, while reliable, I would really like to move faster than eSata. I’d love to use Fiber or SAS, financially that’s just not in the cards right now. USB3’s speed works great for the work that I’ll most likely be doing, which will generally be Prores and DVCPro level codecs. Of course, RED footage is something I’ll be working with on a fairly regular basis. Luckily, RED is very flexible when it comes to playback, due to being able to select debayer and quality, so USB3 has plenty of speed available for nice R3D playback.

The glitch for me on USB3 was that G-Tech doesn’t have any USB3 option and Caldigit’s option was pushing my budget. So, and I will probably get some shit for this, I went with Lacie’s 2Big Raid option. I’ll go into the whole story later, but the short is I saved money, had a huge pain in the ass, spent more money and now have everything working right, with a GSpeed eSata now working as well. Basically, it’s the Wacom lesson all over again; buy what’s right first, don’t skimp on the money and your life will be far easier.

Again, though, the Resolve is running great, being a pleasure to work in. I’ll post up what I can, when I can on this latest project.

I’ll start this post saying, or rather, recommending that you do see the film “Apart” if you get the chance. Especially if you’ll a fan of films that skew towards teenage angst, but with good overall performances and an interesting premise.

That said, on the day that the film has finally been released it has not been a happy morning for myself. You see, while at XL Films we were hired to do the digital coloring on the film, which was being shot locally in Richmond and Rosenberg, Texas, near our offices. One reason the company did it was to see if we could actually do film work considering the size of our company and an underlying desire to do film work. The reason I was willing to extend myself (we were pretty consistently busy) was for one reason and one reason only:

Credit.

In the end that is something I did not receive. For whatever reason I received credit for camera assisting, something I didn’t do. What I did do was bust my ass to, essentially, grade the film three distinct times to meet deadlines. What I did do was to establish many of the looks that are in the final release (which, by the way, I think the final colorist did a fine job on). The company (now defunct) and one of the owners did receive credit for their parts, there’s at least that.

I know these things happen, I know all the politics and all the rationalizations that can explain this away. Doesn’t matter. I worked until 2 in the morning and several sleepless weekends for one thing.

Not a good feeling, not a good morning.

Simon’s towl sneak attack (Taken with instagram)

Holy cow, the rotowork! Very neat video, although not sure if it’s client work or promotional.

I’m not the first to share this, but I just had to include it on my blog. It reminds me so much of those old “House of the Future” films that Disney did. I really hope I get to live to see the world like this, it’s a possibility if none of the current moronic groups drop us back into another dark age.

Late last year I was called to possibly edit a local indie feature called “Because I Love You”. Having a regular two week gig and the production’s timeline being tight, I had to pass on the editing, but I did do a simple grade on their teaser (on a quick turnaround) and hope to be doing the final grade once picture is locked.

They released the teaser on YouTube a couple of days ago. Nice bunch of folks working on the project, looking forward to doing more with them.

I first came across Nick Ryan years ago when he released his short film, A Lonely Sky. I was so impressed by the style, story and the fact that he had done all the VFX work himself that I offered up storage and bandwidth so that he could share it more easily until he got his own web presence up and running.

Recently I saw that he had released a new short, aerial-inspired film and once again I am very impressed. Nick just doesn’t have some excellent VFX skills, he has some very good instincts in story and direction. A smart producer would be paying close attention.

Staying warm (Taken with instagram)

Oscar the Blind Kitten: Watch and let this sink in for a bit.

Lovely little video if you happen to be banging your head against a table.

RED DIT fun Saturday (Taken with instagram)

This has been floating around for awhile but I totally missed it. I actually slapped my knee.

Just in case anyone doubted the man’s nerd cred’s.

Source

Brilliant ad for the target audience and pretty bad ass vfx-wise. MW3 has me really thinking about finally getting a game system.

Being a fan of both Peter Jackson and the RED camera, had to share this behind the scenes video. I’d love to be in editorial on this one.

New Media Composer 6. Video is mostly useless on details, great right up at Little Frog in High Def. The first of three big announcements today in the world of video.

Oh Blur, how I enjoy your digital magic.

Procrastination… kind of ironic considering how I found this clip.