Red Giant TV
Episode 22: Creating a Summer Blockbuster Film Look
By Stu Maschwitz
June 23rd, 2009
By Stu Maschwitz
June 23rd, 2009
In this week's episode, Sin City's Visual Effects Supervisor - and our new Creative Director - Stu Maschwitz, shows you how to get the Summer Blockbuster look seen in Transformers 2, Terminator: Salvation, and The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3.
View Tutorial
Product(s) Used: Magic Bullet Colorista, Magic Bullet Looks
View Tutorial
Product(s) Used: Magic Bullet Colorista, Magic Bullet Looks
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August 26th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Easily one of the best tutorials I can remember. Not only on a practical level, but also for "seeing" the techniques used in current TV and Film.I just happened to be watching Alias recently and picked up on the palette that Stu explained -- in the CIA "lab" scenes, the scheme emphasizes green/blue for the shadows with punched saturation in the skin tones. In the SD-9 interiors, its the same, but with more of a push towards blue for the shadows.
Very cool.
More please ;)
August 24th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
what camera was used to shot the tutorial footage, REDONE?August 18th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Dimsith- We used Voice123.com for our trailer. The VO artist we used is named David Brewer, and he is fantastic and inexpensive. http://voice123.com/davidwbrewerAugust 13th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Hi!Where i can find voiceovers to trailer...
please help me...i am loking everywhere
August 13th, 2009 at 5:57 am
Great tutorial and it gives you a good starting place. Unfortunately MB Looks isn't fully compatible with Vegas Pro- no power-masking available, I would have like to have tried that. The compatiblity page doesn't show this. Still a great episode.July 27th, 2009 at 7:58 am
Actually i really need to know where do u get your voiceovers? downloaded or recorded?? thanks im in need of help here...July 7th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Mr. Maschwitz, what a great tutorial! Very inspirational, but now I'll have to buy Colorista ;-)Peter, Denmark
July 2nd, 2009 at 7:53 am
Thanks for upgrading the server. I have upgraded my brain to see the iPhone link. Thanks!July 1st, 2009 at 3:59 am
John - there are iPhone viewable episodes. There's a link at the top of each tutorial page to get the video in Tunes. Or you could click on the link for the RSS, and download it directly.As far as speed - this episode caused a major slowdown because of such high demand. We've upgraded pour servers since then.
June 30th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Please post iPhone viewable versions. The flash video took forever to cache and watch on my cable connection on a MacBook pro - it spluttered and stopped and finally I had to download the clip to see it. An mpeg4 version would allow me to watch your videos while ridin in on the busJune 28th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
This was the best tutorial I have taken on RedGiant. Stu and Aharon, thank you.June 28th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
This was the best tutorial I have taken on RedGiant. Stu and Aharon, thank you.June 27th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Nice tutorial.But even after i brought RG Looks..it doesn't work cause i have ATI maybe
June 25th, 2009 at 1:18 am
Some guys know what they are doing. Stu Maschwitz is one of them ;-)Great Tutorial.
June 25th, 2009 at 1:17 am
Hi?I'm in Belgium, sorry for my english.
I am very glad to discover this great website.
I took a trial version of Colorista and Looks. is it normal that i don't have all fonctions that i see in this Stu video?
I'd like to order on of the two but till now i don't find a real difference between Colorista and Looks, can you give some techniques explanations about?
I work in Final Cut Studio 2 and I have Color but till now i have some problems to master Color because it's a little bit complicated and i don't have time to loose. Does Colorista works like Apple Color? Can i work with the both later?
Which is the best way to work with Colorista in other have a real good result, in Final Cut Pro or in After Effect?
Thx
June 24th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
@ Sean Safreed:Thanks for your quick and detailed (somehow doubled?) answer. Maybee you could suggest this 32-bit CC Workflow as an RGTV-Episode one day. There is a lot information in the web about the 32-bit mode in AE, but I couldn´t find something on 32-bit CC, especially on MB/Colorista.
June 24th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
@ Sean Safreed:Thanks for your quick and detailed (somehow doubled?) answer. Maybee you could suggest this 32-bit CC Workflow as an RGTV-Episode one day. There is a lot information in the web about the 32-bit mode in AE, but I couldn´t find something on 32-bit CC, especially on MB/Colorista.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:11 am
Ild,Thanks for asking specifically about the overbrights. This is one issuethat Looks and Colorista can handle easily. First, both tools offer full floating point precision for calculations so any overbright information is NOT simply chopped off at 1.0 but is is preserved for later processing.
In After Effects, you could use the HDR Highlight Compression filter in 32-bit mode to push the overbrights back down into the 0-1 range or in Looks you could use the Shoulder or Auto Shoulder tools to automatically compensate for overbrights. In Final Cut Pro, you could use the RGB Gain or Levels filters to bring the white point back into legal range as long as you set your sequence to process YUV floating point pixels (by choosing Render all YUV Material in High Precission YUV).
Most likely the clipping you see in the screencast is from Stu working in 8-bit mode (to make the update speed snappy) and compression for web delivery.
Hope that helps.
Sean Safreed
Director of Products
Red Giant Software
June 24th, 2009 at 9:08 am
Ild,Thanks for asking specifically about the overbrights. This is one issuethat Looks and Colorista can handle easily. First, both tools offer full floating point precision for calculations so any overbright information is NOT simply chopped off at 1.0 but is is preserved for later processing.
In After Effects, you could use the HDR Highlight Compression filter in 32-bit mode to push the overbrights back down into the 0-1 range or in Looks you could use the Shoulder or Auto Shoulder tools to automatically compensate for overbrights. In Final Cut Pro, you could use the RGB Gain or Levels filters to bring the white point back into legal range as long as you set your sequence to process YUV floating point pixels (by choosing Render all YUV Material in High Precission YUV).
Most likely the clipping you see in the screencast is from Stu working in 8-bit mode (to make the update speed snappy) and compression for web delivery.
Hope that helps.
Sean Safreed
Director of Products
Red Giant Software
June 24th, 2009 at 8:45 am
Loved this tutorial. I posted on my blog for it… http://lostringsattached.com/stu-maschwitz-creating-a-summer-blockbuster-film-lookJune 24th, 2009 at 6:02 am
This is fabulous... in essence, a 30-minute crash course in grading. Well done.June 23rd, 2009 at 10:41 pm
hi thanks for tutorial nice Magic Bullet LooksJune 23rd, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Hi Stu and Aharon,now that was a great introduction to MB and colorista. I enjoyed every minute of it. MB I am coming to getcha!
But I also have a question: At some points it seemed to me that your clips had some hotspots (overbrights) after the CC. For example the actors face in the Transformers example. I assume this was because of the minor quality of your camera or/and format you recorded on. Could you tell us if/what went wrong here? Or is it some issues with my eyes ;)
June 23rd, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Hi Stu and Aharon,now that was a great introduction to MB and colorista. I enjoyed every minute of it. MB I am coming to getcha!
But I also have a question: At some points it seemed to me that your clips had some hotspots (overbrights) after the CC. For example the actors face in the Transformers example. I assume this was because of the minor quality of your camera or/and format you recorded on. Could you tell us if/what went wrong here? Or is it some issues with my eyes ;)
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:05 pm
If this is RG TV out of beta, you need to fire your beta testers...... it doesn't work: the video takes forever to load, and plays a few frames then stops. The other videos of "sand from text", eg, work fine.regards, David, Ottawa