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.

Every once in a while I like to put Netflix aside and look for a good short film on Vimeo (I have a Roku box, so I can watch Vimeo on my TV). There’s a lot of great stuff there, from a lot of talented people. In fact, I recently found a film called Unemployment, that was just so wonderful, I wanted to share it with you.

The hilarious, well shot, well-acted, and well written film is co-directed and acted by Chris Crutchfield and Austin Herring, two very talented guys who who’ve done a lot of great work together over the years. Trapcode Particular and Magic Bullet Suite, which are both part of Chris’ and Austin’s filmmaking arsenal, were used in Unemployment.

From Austin: “Trapcode continues to blow my mind every time they come out with a new plug in, and its no surprise that Magic Bullet is quickly becoming THE color grading software of choice for guerrilla filmmakers like us and high end Hollywood professions too. I use those on pretty much every single project I work on.”

From Chris: “Red Giant products have been a crucial tool in my arsenal. It’s like having a Swiss army knife of plugins, where there’s always something I can manipulate or modify, with relative ease and speed, that will allow me to achieve whatever look or effect I’m going for.”

I’m not new to Chris and Austin’s work. I actually found their stuff a couple of years ago, when they were working together at IMIGpro, where they created a series of “educational” videos to explain the various facets of our industry. I never realized how little I, and the rest of Hollywood, actually knew…

Ok, maybe they’re not educational, but they’re seriously funny – and there’s a bunch more, so check ‘em out. We’re glad that our products help such talented people tell their stories.

Check out more of Chris Crutchfield’s work HERE.

Check out more of Austin’s Herring’s Work HERE.

Red Giant is truly an international company. Our visual effects software for motion design, photography and color correction is used for everything from major motion pictures to worldwide television programming and web production.

Our VFX software has been reviewed in many of the top International broadcast and creative magazines and we were excited to see a recent review of Magic Bullet Mojo on Italian web site, MacforDummies.

MacforDummies wrote a great review on Magic Bullet Mojo and how particularly useful it is for fine-tuning skin tones. Magic Bullet Mojo is “absolutely priceless, it’s perfect for the amateur, but also for the professional who wants to get a good result quickly and with minimal investment.”

You can see the full review here.

Siti italiani tassi di Magic Bullet Mojo

Red Giant è davvero una società internazionale. Il nostro software di effetti visivi per la correzione del movimento del design, la fotografia ed il colore viene usato per tutto, dai film importanti di programmazione televisiva in tutto il mondo e la produzione web.

Il nostro software VFX è stato rivisto in molte delle trasmissioni di alto livello professionale e riviste internazionali creative e siamo stati entusiasti di vedere una recente revisione di Mojo Magic Bullet sul sito web italiano, MacforDummies.

MacforDummies ha scritto una grande rassegna su Mojo Magic Bullet e’ particolarmente utile per mettere a punto i toni della pelle. Mojo Magic Bullet è “assolutamente inestimabile, è perfetto per l’amatore, ma anche per il professionista che vuole ottenere un buon risultato in modo rapido e con un investimento minimo.”
Potete vedere la recensione completa qui.

MacforDummies

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.

Add modern Hollywood color effects in seconds!

Just released! Magic Bullet Mojo is our first product released for FCP X. We continue to fully support Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, and now you can also use Mojo in Final Cut Pro X and Motion 5.

Our Engineering and QA teams are working hard on FCP X compatibility for our products. We have made great progress in a short time, and promise that products will be released as they become available. Read more HERE.

Now about gettin’ some of that great Mojo…

With Magic Bullet Mojo, you have one of Hollywood’s best tricks up your own sleeve. Modern blockbusters often use a subtle coloring effect to warm up actors’ skin tones while backgrounds and shadows get a cool blue treatment –– but the trick is to do it while keeping your talent in focus. Magic Bullet Mojo gives you the look of a modern Hollywood blockbuster in seconds, with easy customizable controls to suit any footage.

Buy now with our week sale! From August 18–25, get Mojo for only $49, regularly $99. Use Coupon Code MOJOFCPX.

Free update for current Mojo users. To download the FREE update to Mojo 1.2.2, go to the Updates page for Mojo.

NOTE: This installation will require your original Mojo or Magic Bullet Suite serial number.

Hey folks – We know you’ve been wondering what’s taking so long to update some of our plug-ins for OS X Lion. We’ve actually been hammering at it, and we wanted to give you an update:

First off, All Trapcode Products work perfectly in OSX Lion. We’ve seen no problems, nor have any users reported problems to us.

Unfortunately, On the Magic Bullet Front (specifically with Looks and Colorista II) we can’t say the same. And we’re as frustrated as you. The short explanation is this: There is a critical bug in Lion that causes Final Cut Pro to ignore custom data – data that is essential for getting Looks and Colorista II to work properly.

We’ve tried everything under the sun, but at this point, we have to give it back to Apple, and wait for them to make this fix. There is nothing more that we can do other than to strongly advise you that if you want to work with Looks or Colorista II, avoid Lion for now.

To our knowledge, all outstanding issues being cause by Lion are for FCP only. Magic Bullet products in other host applications (like After Effects and Premiere Pro) work fine.

Here’s a more technical explanation from our head of engineering:

The release of OSX 10.7 (Lion) introduced a bug into FCP7 that we have been unable to find a way to work around. We have contacted Apple and are waiting to hear when they will have a fix (either in the Operating System or with Final Cut Pro). This bug affects any plugins for FCP that make use of custom data. Essentially, Apple provides two methods for storing data related to a plugin – general sliders, for example, are a built-in method that Final Cut Pro provides for storing data related to an effect with your project. For more complex information, however, a plugin can define its own set of custom data that it will save within the project. This second method of storing data about an effect with your project is currently broken in the FCP7 / OSX 10.7 combination. It works fine when you run FCP7 on OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

Unfortunately for Red Giant plug-in users, we make use of custom data in both the Looks 2.0 and Colorista II plugins. The end result of this is that, while you can use the plugins with FCP on Lion, part of the data associated with the effects once they are applied will not be saved.

We are truly sorry for the inconvenience, but we’re at Apple’s mercy, at this point. Rest assured that the moment Apple has a fix, we will implement it.

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.

When Friends of the Earth (FoE) set out to launch their recent ‘Talking Half as much Rubbish’ campaign they commissioned Ealing Studios based Catsnake to produce a short film that would visually engage viewers with the campaign goal.

‘Love Story in Milk’ follows the tale of star-crossed lovers from factory to fridge. It was launched across video and social network sites and included a link back to the FoE web site where visitors were encouraged to and given details of how to contact local MP’s to “Ask your MP to talk less rubbish.”

As well as being a delightfully emotional story the film has a really nice cinematic look which adds to the drama. We were excited to learn that Magic Bullet Looks was used to grade the film and we asked writer and Producer at Catsnake Stephen Follows about how Magic Bullet Looks works for them.

Stephen told us, “Magic Bullet allows us to deliver high end projects on affordable budgets. When working with charities you never have a huge amount of money to play with but that’s no excuse for delivering a second class film. Magic Bullet delivers the punch our films need to stand up against Hollywood productions.”

FoE’s goal is to halve the UKs household ‘black bag’ waste by 2020 by encouraging households to recycle, and with over 600,000 YouTube and Vimeo views of ‘Love Story in Milk’ to date, we hope they’re well on their way to achieving their goal.

Get MORE beautiful cinematic looks, now for iPad & iPhone movies

Magic Bullet Movie Looks HD turns your family into movie stars with glamorous color effects inspired by popular films. Our new Movie Looks HD gives your movies even more Hollywood appeal by including all 40 looks from Movie Looks premium packs. Now your purchase includes our popular ‘Blockbuster’, ‘Popular Film’ and ‘Black and White’ looks… for the same $1.99.

• See examples of Movie Looks HD videos
• Go to App Store to buy Movie Looks HD
• Learn more about our mobile apps family

Add a burst of movie magic with these new features:

• Includes all 40 looks from Movie Looks, with no separate purchase required
• Support for Portrait videos (so your dog doesn’t hurt his neck turning sideways)
• Support for videos up to 5 minutes in length (’cause your daughter can’t twirl around forever)
• Fully optimized for the iPad, including support for iPad 2
• Updated trimming and frame selection to simplify your movie setup
• Universal app for iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iTouch, iPad 1, iPad 2

FREE UPGRADE: Do you already own Movie Looks? Then you get Movie Looks HD for free. Go to the App Store for easy upgrade information.