Jack Tunnicliffe is the owner-operator of two successful companies in Western Canada that serve broadcast clients along both coasts. His post-production facility Java Post Production provides editing and visual effects for broadcast TV, commercials and ad agency productions. Caffeine Commercial Productions is an award-winning production company that works alongside Java Post with their commercial and corporate clients. Sounds like Jack also serves up a mean cup of dark roasted brew.

At Java Post, Jack works as the chief colorist and a lead motion graphics artist. He began his career as a camera operator, then moved into producing/directing a range of media from commercials and documentaries to sports broadcasts including Olympic broadcasts for Canada and world host feeds. In 1995, Jack started Java Post with a business partner, one Media 100 workstation, and self-taught knowledge of After Effects and compositing. His talents and company exploded along with the visual effects industry.

I caught up with Jack to hear about a new Canadian TV series, InSecurity, that Java Post produces the color correction and visual effects for. The show went to air in January 2011 as a comedy about a bumbling group of Canadian intelligence agents. Jack walked me through the effects-heavy opening sequence of InSecurity and also previewed an intriguing scene that involves a composited ‘finger screen’. Both segments use a lot of heavy-hitting Red Giant products, and the ones I will showcase are Magic Bullet Colorista II and Red Giant Warp.

InSecurity-Intro from Java Post Production

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Red Giant has been a fan of the elegant, evocative video art by Jean-Sébastien Monzani since learning about his use of our Magic Bullet products. His portfolio site Simplemoment.com is a constantly evolving showpiece for his video pieces along with his photography, illustrations and graphic design work. Five of his videos have aired on the French cable channel Souvenirs From Earth and he recently authored a book of his artwork.

I recently caught up with Jean-Sébastien to find out about his work, inspiration, and how Red Giant products fit in.

The movie Blindspot uses Colorista II.

Jean-Sébastien introduces himself as a “freelance photographer, graphic-designer, illustrator and video-artist” and uses the term ‘experimental movie’ to describe his video art. He came to storytelling with a background in music and theater and a PHD in computer science but no formal training in visual art. A decade ago, Jean-Sébastien began directing, acting and writing in local theater, while also taking photos of the young amateur actresses he worked with. Many of his movies are shot outdoors using available light as he walks around with the model.

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07 – Color Correcting Food with Magic Bullet Colorista II

Recently, Stu Maschwitz sat down with a friend who wanted to learn about color and why his 7D stills look so much nicer than his video.  He had some 7D stills and video from a food prep shoot.

Stu helped him match the video to the stills and used almost every feature of CII.

Here is the Original footage, followed by the final result:

Get Colorista II HERE.

I was scanning twitter over the weekend and caught a tweet from Director/Editor Mick Jones about a project he just completed for Wrangler, in which he used Magic Bullet Colorista II. The spot is about to be released as a part of a web campaign for Wrangler Asia-Pacific. It will be in conjunction with the “Worn Across America” print campaign. Here’s the video:

This was such an amazing piece that we asked Mick to send us some still frames from the edit so we could see the before and afters:

About why he uses Colorista II, Mick says:

I use Magic Bullet Colorista because I like to do my color correction within the editing system that I use, Final Cut Pro. Due to the nature of commercials and music videos, the picture edit changes quite a bit throughout the evolution of the spot, and often at the last minute. So rather than round tripping projects to external software for my Color Correction, I keep it in the edit and can respond to the changes quickly. Colorista II has some really powerful controls such as the keyer and selective color correction that I use a lot. The density and exposure controls are great for primary level correction and having a secondary level of control within the one filter is great. I also often “Stack” multiple Colorista filters to build a look. So, having precision professional controls and being able to stay within my edit sequence means I use Colorista on a daily basis in my line of work.

About the project, Mick had this to say:

For this piece I got to work with the legendary photographer Christopher Ferguson. For this collaborative piece we really wanted to capture the feeling of the great American road trip. Shot on the Canon 5DMkII with mostly a Zeiss 50mm 1.4 this was an exercise in seizing the moment. It was shot in conjunction with a still photo shoot that Chris was handling and the live action moments were often stolen as the shutter from his camera stopped firing. This stills and video collaboration definitely had it’s challenges, but I managed to build a good rapport with the models and was able to direct them through some live action sequences in order to get the shots that I needed for the edit.

This was such a fast paced shoot and the only gear I had was a Zacuto Z-finder 3x with pro anti fog and a Zacuto Target Shooter. The anti fog eyepiece was an absolute gem working in very humid conditions for this shoot...

The music went through a few variations before landing on this fantastic track from The SnowDroppers called “Do The Stomp”.

Check out Mick’s company, Litup Digital HERE, and his Vimeo page HERE.

As a side note, outside of the beta team, Mick’s was the first professional work we ever saw done in Magic Bullet Colorista II. This music video which came out just a few days after Colorista II’s release, is almost definately the first ever graded with Magic Bullet Colorista II:

Red Giant QuickTip #29: Magic Bullet Colorista and Window Layouts in FCP

In this tutorial, Apple Certified Master Trainer Simon Walker, will show you the benefits of using the window layout shortcuts when adjusting filter settings, to help you become a faster Final Cut Pro editor.

Get Colorista II HERE.

Recently, while searching for some good wholesome content on Vimeo, we came across this amazing music video full of compositing work done by Dan Blank:

We contacted Dan and here’s what he had to say about the importance of Red Giant products in his workflow:

Here’s a video showing some of the making of, including pre-visualization and compositing – plus a few money saving tips:

LIVE [NIKE] from SomeofmyWork™ on Vimeo.

After seeing this project by Jim Campbell’s that used Colorista II and Mojo, we asked him to tell us more about how he made this beautiful piece. This was his response:

“Since I was shooting with the anamorphic adapter for the more cinematic ratio alongside my intention to get a further cinematic feel to the project by doing the film reel/light leak effects, the grade was always going to be important. I shot the footage flat on the 550D so that I could get as much latitude as possible out of the footage once grading. The problem was since the shoe was silver, it appeared such different colours in different settings and since I was pushing my grade heavily towards warmer tones, I didn’t want the true colour of the shoe to be lost in a yellow mush. So I used the Secondary keyer on ever single shot, to isolate the shoe, push it towards the blue, so that on balance it retained a medium tone, also adding a bit of separate ‘Pop’ to make sure the shoes always stood out within the frame. I then also used other instances of Colorista 2 to add a general amount of ‘Pop’ across the frame, add vignettes, using masks to pull back cloud information blown out skies and similarly to tone down blown highlights on the shoes themselves. The secondary keyer really is so useful I kinda wish we had it on every level, but it’s easy enough to just add further instances whenever needed.

I then added a subtle amount of Mojo to each clip, using the warm slider and the mojo balance to get the warmer feel I was after, safe in the knowledge the prep I’d done on the shoes wouldn’t turn the whole thing too warm/yellow.

Then again once I’d edited all the shots together I added a bit more Mojo just to get the final look I was looking for.

Other Red Giant tools I used included SoundKeys which I used along with a lot of keyframing to control some of the lightleaks etc along with the music. I would have used Looks for the grain and hairs, but had my own prepared files that I use for these things.”

Dude – that was awesome. Jim was kind enough to send us the footage pre-grading so you could compare it to the final color corrected version:

You can read more about this project on Jim’s site.

Watch it HERE.

Just a note on 3 awesome tutorials we posted today:

RGTV Episode 47: Tiny Inventions

Red Giant Quick Tip#16: Creating a Flare Preset Slider for Knoll Light Factory EZ

Buckle up baby! Color correction just got awesome!

Magic Bullet Colorista II is here, and it’s taking names. It’s seriously supped up and ready to unleash color in your timeline. You can learn more about it here. Or just give in the inevitable… and buy it here.

Here’s a first look at what’s new in Colorista II, from the DV Rebel himself, Stu Maschwitz.