Magic Bullet Suite

2009

Magic Bullet Backstory

Born At The Orphanage

Magic Bullet made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001. In 2000, Stu Maschwitz and Jonathan Rothbart left Industrial Light & Magic to fulfill their dream of making movies, and founded The Orphanage, an effects house in San Francisco. Their background in high-end visual effects technology and film school experience led them to the conclusion that it was possible to make high-quality movies without shooting a single frame of film.

Their objective, of course, was to tell interesting stories but use simple DV cameras and Adobe After Effects software to give a DV movie the same feel as film. The challenge was that DV cameras lacked the high-end production quality and the organic look and feel of traditional film. After many late nights and much trial and error, Stu developed the complex algorithms that could enable DV video to get the frame rate and the "look" of a movie shot on film. He called it "Magic Bullet."

The Magic Bullet software combined both a frame rate conversion system to convert DV video (usually shot at 60 fields per second) to film frame rates (usually 24 fps), and a look tool that allowed the user to transform the harsh and sometimes overly saturated look of DV video to the subtle look of film. The Orphanage used the Magic Bullet technology on their first short film, which debuted at the Sundance film festival in 2001.

Branching Out

Magic Bullet Suite v1.0 was released to the public in November 2002, and in 2003, The Orphanage partnered with Red Giant Software to help with distribution and development of Magic Bullet. Almost immediately after its release, users began clamoring to use the toolset directly inside the tools that they used the most: their video editor. In June 2004, the Looks Suite plug-in portion of Magic Bullet Suite was spun off separately and called Magic Bullet Editors.

With support for Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, Avid Xpress Pro and Sony Vegas host applications, Magic Bullet Editors gave users the ability to create Looks inside their video editing timeline. Magic Bullet Editors also included Misfire, a new set of plug-ins for simulating film damage. In October 2005, Magic Bullet Editors 2 was released and really took off, with dramatic GPU-based acceleration that delivered real-time SD rendering and playback. Overwhelming popularity led Adobe, Sony, and Panasonic to bundle versions of Magic Bullet with their software and camera products.

Since 2004, Magic Bullet users have demanded a color correction tool that was fast, easy to use, and which had the same quality as Look Suite. Staking out a new area for Magic Bullet, Magic Bullet Colorista debuted in December 2006 to rave reviews. Colorista features a common color wheel interface for correction using the Lift, Gamma, Gain color model; and masking features that can confine a correction to a selected area. Colorista takes advantage of the user's graphics card to deliver serious speed and power. Users of every stripe have flocked to the tool and used it on broadcast spots, including 7 episodes of the Food Network's Good Eats show; national commercials for Kanomi and Qualcomm; and independent films, including Corey Rosen's Walls and Windows.

What's Next

Now Magic Bullet is changing the game again. The Magic Bullet line now includes four separate products: Colorista, Frames, Looks and Instant HD for color correction and film output like you've never seen before.