It’s already received an honorable mention at the LA Reel Film Festival and was selected to be the opening night film at the Oakland International Film Festival 2011. And this dark and haunting film wouldn’t look out of place beside ‘The Big Sleep’ or ‘Night and the City’ and other noir classics.

Oakland filmmaker Vincent Cortez’s ‘The Hush’ follows hitman “Freddy ‘the Hush’ Burnett” on his quest for redemption as he fights to stay alive and faces the tormented ghosts of the people he has killed. With a budget $8,000 – writer, director and producer Vincent Cortez had to be ‘creative on his toes’. We asked Vincent how Magic Bullet Looks and Magic Bullet Colorista II allowed him to focus on the storytelling.

“Our workflow began with shooting directly into our Mac Pro tower, in FCP Studio 2 from a HV20 with a 35mm lens adapter (before the dawn of the VDSLR). We needed a high quality digital negative because we would be mastering our entire film’s visual style using Colorista and Looks in AE CS3. I quite literally colored every shot to create an dark, organic and gritty atmosphere that shifts as the story and characters progress. It is noir, but in a graphic novel fashion. Red Giant tools never hindered or failed me – they were quick and flexible, allowing me to be as creative as I could think and feel.”

Links:

• Mitchell Street Pictures
• The Making of ‘The Hush’

We’re always busy coming up with new ways to keep our software up to date, add in the support that you’re asking for, and ensure that bugs you’ve been telling us are getting fixed – roll that all together, and you get Magic Bullet Suite 11.1, the latest incarnation of the suite, with these great additions:

Magic Bullet Looks 2.0 for Vegas Pro

To quote a great man, “It will be available soon. Yes. You heard me. Soon.” Well, soon has arrived – download the latest Magic Bullet Suite 11.1 installer to grab Magic Bullet Looks 2.0 for Vegas Pro. This release has all of the great Looks 2.0 features working in Vegas Pro 10, in both the 32 and 64 bit variants. We are also actively working with Sony to ensure Looks 2.0 will work perfectly in the upcoming Vegas Pro 11 release. So, grab it now for Vegas Pro 10, and get our thumbs up on a seamless transition when you upgrade.

Magic Bullet Colorista II 1.0.4

One of the bugs we’ve been hearing about the most in Colorista II is an issue in Premiere Pro CS4, CS5, or CS5.5 where you end up with an error dialog stating, Error: “Unable to get a suitable preview frame for the keyer dialog”. We’ve found the solution and are including this fix in the Magic Bullet Suite 11.1 release.

Introducing Red Giant Link 1.0

One of the toughest computer maintenance issues everyone has is ensuring that you’re running the latest versions of the software you rely on daily. For Red Giant customers, this has meant checking our website for updates or perhaps hoping you didn’t miss the blog post or newsletter that mentioned the update you’ve been waiting for. We’ve identified that hole in our software delivery process and are introducing Red Giant Link 1.0 as the solution. Link is a simple piece of software that will let you know when updates are available to fix issues or add functionality. For the full details on Link, read all about it here.

Grab the full Magic Bullet Suite 11.1 installer here.

Grab the Latest updates for both Magic Bullet Looks and Magic Bullet Colorista II Here:

• Magic Bullet Colorista II
• Magic Bullet Looks

Note: Since all of our Magic Bullet products now install through one Suite installer, you only need to download the update once – it will contain the maintenance release for both products.

So, what’s new?

Magic Bullet Colorista II 1.0.3

• The biggest fix here was to allow Colorista II to run properly again on non-English systems.
• We also fixed up our keyboard shortcut handling for Colorista II in After Effects – in previous releases, you probably noticed it didn’t work the greatest – it’s all working great now!

Magic Bullet Looks 2.0.1

• As with Colorista II, the biggest fix for a lot of users is that Looks will now run properly on non-English systems.
• We fixed an issue with Looks causing pixelation in FCP 7 when using the Upper or Lower Field Dominance Sequence Settings.
• Fixed some issues in the Looks Builder interface where the delete key wasn’t working properly and you would encounter some weird beeps.
• Addressed an issue with Looks in Premiere Pro CS5 where the preview image could end up cropped in the LooksBuilder.
• The Looks Theatre inside the Looks Builder interface would always start displaying Looks from the “Basic” category – it will now show you looks based on the category you’ve selected.

As always, you can find updates for all of our products HERE.

Hey folks – We wanted to let you know that we’re aware of and working on the fixes for issues that have come up in Magic Bullet Looks and Colorista II on OS X Lion. The good news is, that for the 2 major issues, there are temporary workarounds. Jeremy, our head of support, put together a screen capture to walk you through it, and below that, you’ll find a description of the process, in text format:

Magic Bullet Looks 2:

• Description: On OS X Lion 10.7 with Final Cut Pro 7, Magic Bullet Looks LooksBuilder doesn’t open properly after clicking the Edit button.
• Temporary Solution: After clicking the Edit button, move the playhead in the Timeline and this will open the LooksBuider.

Magic Bullet Colorista II:

• Description: On OS X Lion 10.7 with Final Cut Pro 7, Magic Bullet Colorista II doesn’t update preview when the parameters of the color wheel are changed.
• Temporary Solution: After adjusting the parameters in Colorista II, move the playhead in the Timeline and this will force the preview to update.
  

Again, we know this isn’t ideal, but we are quickly working towards a solution. Stay tuned.

Promotions for sports need to be fast and one company that is keeping the pace is Flock of Pixels out of Phoenix, AZ.

Justin Katz established Flock of Pixels in 2008. Starting out in the business as a motion designer, he was soon taking on larger and larger roles and now is a talented Director, Animator, Producer and Art Director. At Flock of Pixels he is often asked to create broadcast quality spots with extremely limited time and budgets for television and web. It just so happened that one of their recent spots was for the Phoenix Coyotes NHL team and we were excited to find that this dynamic piece of editing used Trapcode Particular and Magic Bullet Colorista II, so we got in touch with Justin to tell us more.

“We had a script and hard drive full of photos delivered to us at 5:30pm on a Friday and were asked to have a full cut for sound design by Monday” Justin told us. “There wasn’t even a creative direction in place – they literally said “work your magic.” “Since the entire spot would be comprised of only still images we needed other elements to help bring further dimension to the Coyotes spot. I decided to approach the project so it would feel like everything was happening during a very brief moment in time by bringing the stills to life in ultra slow-mo.

“Since everything had to be done very fast, yet be consistent throughout, Particular was used for its speed and to help sell the effect of the super slow-motion photo-animation. In addition to the flakes of ice coming off of the skates, I layered elements of defocused dust/ice/confetti particles (made with Particular) at various depths to add dimension to the scenes and more interest. Most of the particles are the ‘cloudlet’ shapes (including the ice and dust) with the confetti being one of the few custom particles.

“We also used Colorista II to color balance and match each photo for a high contrast look/feel and to keep everything looking like they were shot at the same time.”

“I’ve been using Particular since around 2005 and it’s one of my go to tools – especially on very tight production schedules. It’s fast, gets the job done and lets you see results immediately. I had considered using stock elements for these effects, but in the end it was actually faster for me to create them with Particular than to search stock sites for the proper footage and then composite them in. This was also my first time trying to emulate super slow-motion with Particular – it’s physics time factor settings came in super handy.”

As with everything we do we wished we had more time on this project, but as my friend says “Things are never done, just due.”

You can see Flock of Pixels 2011 Showreel here:

Related Links:

• Flock of Pixels Website
• Flock of Pixels Facebook Page
• NHL Arizona Coyotes Website

Episode 56: Digital Cosmetics in Final Cut Pro with Magic Bullet Colorista II

In this episode of Red Giant TV, Apple certified Master trainer Simon Walker revisits a tutorial by Stu Maschwitz on digital cosmetics with Magic Bullet Colorista II – He’ll be working in Final Cut Pro, with a focus on getting it done faster.

Watch the tutorial HERE.

Related Links:

• Get Magic Bullet Colorista II HERE.
• Get Simon Walker’s Weddings & Events for Looks HERE.
• Check out Simon Walkers website HERE.

Using Magic Bullet Colorista II and Magic Bullet Looks, NY-based Christopher Smith created the powerful and dramatic film ’Suicide Kids’. His reel above shows a great use of Colorista, and Christopher himself said,

“I’m a big fan of Red Giant Software – used Colorista and Magic Bullet nearly exclusively to color correct ‘Suicide Kids’, as well as for most other shorts and music videos I’ve worked on in the last couple years. Really incredible how easily and extensively you can manipulate color with those plugins!

• http://www.suicidekids.com
• http://www.thethingsitdoes.com/

In case you didn’t hear, this little thing called the NAB 2011 show happened last week in Las Vegas. The event was full of great product announcements, friendly faces and alotta industry buzz. All three combined into our favorite part of the show, which was learning that Red Giant won two awards for our Colorista family of tools.

Studio Daily’s Scott Simmons did a lively roundup of the Winners and Losers at NAB. Guess which category our new color corrector, Magic Bullet Colorista Free, is in! Scott wrote, “Winners: Color Grading… The free version was a popular concept: Red Giant Software introduced Colorista Free, a CDL-compliant plug-in for basic primaries only.” Read the list of Scott’s Studio Daily winners here.

DV Magazine gave their prestigious Black Diamond Award to Magic Bullet Colorista II, the full-featured version of Colorista Free. The award “…recognize[s] outstanding achievement in the advancement of the art and science of video technology… A select panel of engineers, editors, and production and post professionals joined the magazine staff to judge the Best of Show awards for DV.” Read the list of DV’s Black Diamond winners here.

Director, writer and producer Paul D. is delighted that his remarkable new promo for Thomas Dolby’s Toadlickers, has been nominated for not one, but two Webby Awards. The Webby’s are the Oscars of the internet so this is quite a big deal. The video was filmed at last summer’s Maverick Festival and color graded using our Magic Bullet Suite, so here at Red Giant we are doubly excited.

According to Paul D, the Toadlickers track “is about a group of scientists who live in the hills of Snowdonia, get high licking toads, get the munchies and come out at night to raid sweetshops.” (Now how would a musician know anything about this?)
 
About his Magic Bullet process, Paul explains, “With the final cut complete, it was time to move to a grade for which Red Giant Software’s Magic Bullet Suite 10 was used. The black and white sequences were handcrafted with a mixture of Looks & Misfire and the video as a whole was graded using a combination of Colorista II and Looks (all running as Premiere Pro CS5 plug-ins). This was the first time I had used this brand new version of Colorista and its significant new functionality came in handy, especially its impressive masking and keying, which proved invaluable.”
 
Read the full behind-the-scenes scoop in Paul’s Making Of Part 1 blog post and his Part 2 blog post.

These ‘Making Of’ articles are very interesting, as Paul goes through his process of doing three separate photoshoots for the Dolby band, the toadlicker actors and the animal puppets. He talks about lighting around different weather conditions, his choice of camera equipment, the VFX compositing deets, and hunting down props that include the ever-elusive ‘Eat Me’ sweets.
 
Toadlickers is nominated in the ONLINE FILM & VIDEO > MUSIC category of The Webby People’s Voice Award. Closing date for votes is April 28, so there’s still time to get your vote in. You can vote for Paul D on the Webby site. See Paul D’s portfolio here and Thomas Dolby’s music here.

Announcing Magic Bullet Colorista II 1.0.1:

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/magic-bullet-colorista-II/updates/

This update to Colorista II fixes several issues, including:

• Colorista II now works properly on non-English Windows installations.
• a crashing issue when using the auto balance eye dropper in Premiere Pro.
• a compatibility issue between Colorista II and Warp that could cause your host app to crash.
• In Final Cut Pro, the Mids and Highs RGB functionality were switched, so that when the RGB Mids were raised it effected the whites and when the RGB Highs were raised they effected the middle values.
• an issue where the 3 way color corrector is sometimes reset to the default red.
• several installer issues.

To make this even more useful, we decided to include a feature we’ve been talking about for a while: Colorista II shortcut keys for After Effects. For all the details, check out the manual after downloading the update!

As always, you can find updates for all of our products here: http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/downloads/updates/