Someone is Making Money

Interesting story here.  Arianna Huffington is being sued by bloggers who created free content for her site, which she recently sold for $315 million.

So, let me get this straight.  If you create content for free, whether out of passion or because you think it will lead to paying work, someone else is going to take what you've done and try to make money off of it regardless?  Really, I've done plenty of free work and I understand how it is used in the entertainment industry to grow your career, work with awesome people or do things that you may not have been able to do otherwise.   I still do free work for people I know and like, it's fun to have a shared passion with old and new friends.

But, it's not a business model.  Unless you can make up for the no income part with volume.  I am constantly amazed that there are people out there who don't understand that if you don't make money, you won't be creative because you aren't sustainable.  Being able to sustainably support yourself is an ongoing radical act of creativity. When you're 25 and living in your parents' house it doesn't seem so important but it gets clearer as time passes.

Surprisingly, to people who take a  more black and white view of life, I welcome the new world into which we are heading:  low-cost or free content, aggregated by companies and fed back to consumers at a profit.  It's what people seem to want, and the idea that people are interested in what each other have to say is encouraging.  Even if what they have to say isn't always well-formulated or presented in an artful visual manner, there are some moments of real clarity that come out of this cauldron of living culture.   

My only message is: keep your eyes open, and make wise choices for yourself.

Who Comes Up With These Anyways?

 Home, suite home

This Wall Street Journal blog post lists the "Top 10 Dying Industries."  Included in it is Video Post Production Services.  Has post production been hit any harder than any other aspect of the entertainment world?  I am really curious as to how they measure this.   These kinds of lists are kind of silly: best company in the world to work, best place in America to live.....How do they measure this, is it only large post-production houses, what do they consider Video Post Production Services....sometimes it's amazing the authoritative tone that these things take on without any supporting information.

Happiness, like opportunity, lies in the eyes of the beholder, whether it's in Irvine or South Philly,  in your home post suite (i.e., bedroom) or at Deluxe.

Guide to Prepping Sequences For Color

Don't even go there

I have revised my guidelines for prepping a sequence for color grading in Color.  I decided to create a comprehensive reference that would cover nearly all scenarios, so it should hopefully be a timesaver.  I also included detailed instructions for accomplishing each required step, including the dreaded Media Management function.  It is written to be accessible for most skill levels.  So, relax, and tame that timeline.

Yes, there is a new version of Final Cut Pro coming out sometime "this spring." And yes, there are wildly divergent ideas of what direction it is heading, iMovie Pro, Final Cut Interactive.....when it happens, it happens.....

Anyway, it's available here for everyone to download and use. Cheers!

And as always, please feel free to feed me any corrections, comments, etc.

2011 Documentary Colorist Reel

This reel focuses on the type of color correction issues particular to documentary film making: underexposure, improperly color balanced footage, mixed light footage, low bit rate footage, high contrast footage, etc. Rather than create a strictly beauty reel, I want to show real world corrections on footage representative of the difficult footage that sometimes comes in from the field.

Documentary filmmakers tend to care more about things like what can be done when a celebrity interview has been shot in three different color temperature light sources rather than creating a flashy look (although we do that sometimes as well). Please let me know what you think.

You can view it at full resolution here.  Please turn scaling off if you view on full-screen mode, or it won't look correct.

There is also a narrative film reel coming soon.

The song is "AirBjork " is by Moe Pope & Headnodic. It is from the amazing compilation "Bjork Remixes" available for FREE download here.

Festivals

I've been pretty lucky the past year or so, as far as the people with whom I've been able to work.  A few of the films have made it to the major festivals.

The latest announcement was that Smut Capital of America will be screening at Tribeca this year.  Ben Leon and Michael Stabile did a really good job of creating a short film about a complicated subject.  Ben deserves a lot of credit for editing it visually in a more evocative rather than literal way.  I was the colorist on this film.

I did production work on The Union, which will open the Tribeca Festival.  It's an understatement to say that I was lucky to get to work on that.  And, I also did some production work on the third film, Troubadours, which screened at Sundance this year. 

Upgrades and Soderbergh

OK,  I am going to be upgrading my website with new reels, photos, and other info, but wanted to share some of the good stuff that has been happening.

The color grading room:

I'm particularly proud of the fact that I made the dimmable D65 fixtures myself.

The screening room:

I can playback from the color grading room directly to the ten foot screen.  Schwing!

My friends know that I love Steven Soderbergh's explorations into film structure (here and here). Not to mention, here.  OK, I gotta stop or this is going to turn into a very long Soderbergh post.  Anyway, I was shocked to see this on Twitter.   It makes me sad that the sheer filmmaking joy in Schizopolis no longer burns within him.

A very serious filmmaker

What is Free?

OK.  This is the last product post for awhile.  The reason why I am including it is simple.  We, as media producers, are always yammering about how to actually make money off of our creations. Recent theory seemed to be: give it away now and then someday you'll be able to charge for it or get ad revenue...... now everyone is talking about social and using social to make money.  I still think that sometimes it's just better to make a good product and for people to PAY FOR IT.

Red Giant (and Stu Maschwitz) created a neat product awhile ago, Plastic Bullet, the first (that I know of) iPhone app for easily applying looks to your iPhone photos.  Totally worth paying for, yes?  Hmmm, then some other company came along and made a "free" product along the same lines, supported by annoying adds in the interface, promoted the heck out of it and got some VC money.  It's a fine product, and if you want to get tied into that company's social media experience (which they are no doubt working very hard at monetizing) go for it.  But do I really need a log in to play with some images I've taken with my phone and then wonder how yet another area of my life is being harvested electronically?

Personally, I just want to take pictures and use a clean interface to have fun with them.  And maybe send a couple to friends....and not have every aspect of my personal creativity/relationships commoditized.

Anyway, Plastic Bullet is on sale for a few days at the iTunes store for $.99.  I own it and, despite the recent spate of Red Giant posts, have no relationship with them.  Their products just keep crossing my path recently and I still like to root for the little guy because, well, I'm a little guy.

Also, I recently completed a substantive project using Colorista II.  A post will be coming soon about the good, the not so good and the just plain different of using it versus other color grading products.  I have sent a couple of emails to Stu asking about some technical questions I have about the product. My biggest concern is how it clamps video to make it what appears to broadcast safe.  Hopefully, I will hear back from him before I do the post.