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Andreas was invited to visit the headquarter of Imagica in Tokyo.
Imagica is the oldest Film facility with a history of 85 years of success in the industry. Currently about 1000 people are employed.
Andreas: ‚I was deeply impressed by the level of organisation, friendlyness, perfection and work ethics of my colleagues in Japan.
I advise every young artist to visit Japan and to get inspired by the amazing culture.‘
The Imagica south east asia (SEA) team got the chance to visit all departments and branches to exchange knowledge and experiences.
Andreas Brueckl was very honored to be invited to show his work style and grading tricks to the top graders at Imagica Japan.
The new Audi E-tron TV Commercial was entirely gradet by remote in Imagica/Pinewood Malaysia.
The shooting took place in California, the editing and VFX in Germany and the grading in Malaysia by Andreas Brueckl.
So a pretty international production.
As Kropac Media has a DaVinci Resolve in Munich and Imagica SEA has a Resolve in the Pinewood studios it was a very easy going workflow.
The media was uploaded on a FTP server, gradet in Resolve and for the final rendering we just sent the resolve project file back.
Audi E-tron TVC
Maybe you experienced this situation once.
Once you become successful or do something extraordinary, it might happen, that you face jealousy. In these situations I remember the story about „The egg of Columbus“ and it makes a smile on my face. Hope on yours, too:
Columbus was dining with many Spanish nobles when one of them said: ‚Sir Christopher, even if your lordship had not discovered the Indies, there would have been, here in Spain, which is a country abundant with great men knowledgeable in cosmography and literature, one who would have started a similar adventure with the same result.‘ Columbus did not respond to these words but asked for a whole egg to be brought to him. He placed it on the table and said: ‚My lords, I will lay a wager with any of you that you are unable to make this egg stand on its end like I will do without any kind of help or aid.‘ They all tried without success and when the egg returned to Columbus, he tapped it gently on the table breaking it slightly and, with this, the egg stood on its end. All those present were confounded and understood what he meant: that once the feat has been done, anyone knows how to do it.
from Wikipedia.
ProRes 4444 XQ
Mazze Aderhold, member of the Colormeup! team found a very tricky way to make the new codec PRORES 4444 XQ easy available.
In his example he copies the new codec from Final Cut Pro – X and pastes it into the quicktime folder in the library.
From his Blog:
so.. the new Apple ProRes 4444 XQ is out and there’s quite a lot of people wanting to get hands on it with their favourite editing-, grading-, or encoding application. Now there’s a couple of tools, that already include the codec – but they install it in a way, that only those tools can make use out of it.
Tools, that rely on the standard Quicktime library (to be found in /Library/Quicktime), will not see the codec as an option, when encoding to Quicktime. Also, many people install Apple’s ProApps codec-pack and are wondering where their XQ-flavour is.
Reason for that is simply, that ProRes XQ is not included with ProApps.
So what we will do, is find an application that includes ProRes 4444 XQ, and extract the codec from there in order to copy it the the general Quicktime Library, hence making it available to all applications that use the general Quicktime Library – such as Adobe tools, Quicktime Pro, or Assimilate SCRATCH.
………
More here……: http://www.mazze-aderhold.com/get-prores-4444-xq-on-almost-any-osx-app/
I was invited as a speaker at the FMX 2012 in Stuttgart, when David Kench contacted me.
He was working for the Cinepostproduction in Munich ( I was working there some years before he entered) and there he das the chance to finish his master thesis about ACES.
It is about three years old, but still worth reading it:
LINK: ACES-Thesis
Angry face grading gear
More than one year ago I had the idea of building a case for the tangent elements grading panel.
For a colorist it is simply more practical to work on a bigger grading panel. You need more space around you, the customers have to sit a bit further away and
the design looks just more impressive.
My colleague Cenk Koksal at 1000Volt in Istanbul helped me with the 3D design and I forwared it to the engineer Mazze Aderhold.
If someone could build this thing than he is this man.
And here we go: One year later, many try and errors and a lot of sweaty shirts later he managed to finish it.
At the IBC 2014 he will present it to the public.
See more here: http://www.angry-face.com/
Let us do this job for free
You know these lovely customers:
„Well, I actually don’t have much budget for this project. Maybe we can do it for free. This would be great. You know, I will come with the next really big project definitely to you and we do it together. And then money is not a problem.“
Answer:
That’s great. I will support you. Yo let’s do it this way: You come with the really big project first, we make an incredible job together and then, afterwards I make your small project for free.
…customer lost his voice…
People who know me also know that I am obsessed with setdesign and the color of the wardrobe to get a specific look for your movie.
Yes, the colorist can support this look but to reach it when the environment is shot in a totally different look is nearly impossible.
Here is a great website with many examples of why they choose this clothes for this set: http://clothesonfilm.com/
I found this blog and was really amused.
As you can see below I wrote a blog entry, called ‚5 reasons why professionals don’t work on free projects‘.
Chris Jones took the customers side and gives tips how not to frustrate the colorist.
So actually you can say if you follow Chris‘ rules you don’t have to read my ‚5 reasons‘. Nice one:
http://www.chrisjonesblog.com/2014/07/nineteen-working-professionals.html
5 reasons why senior artists don’t work on arthouse films, directed by newbies
Well, we all know this emails:
Hi, I really love your work…. (artists thoughts: ok, slimy what do you want?)
We are working on a documentary, featurefilm, whatever….. (artists thoughts: really? Never heard that before)
Our DOP is xxxxxxx, who recently shot xxxxx and won an award….. ( (artists thoughts: I never heard of this guy and defenitely never heard of this award?)
We really would like to grade with you. Actually we had a little budget so we can’t pay you, but maybe you want to support us.
(artists thoughts: Ah, yes. So you spent all your budget on catering, transport, the Hotel for your famous student DOP and I have to work for free for you?)
So here are the reasons:
1. Is it worth?
Ask yourself if anyone will watch this film in the cinema or on tv. It doesn’t have to be your own taste, but at least someones taste.
If no one will ever see this film, there is no reason or any benefit for a senior to work on this project.
2. Psycho games
Some so called directors use their film (if you can call it that) as a psychological journey. Or in other words as a therapy.
You shouldn’t be part of that psycho thing.
3. No money.
Really? No money at all? Did the director sell his bike, car, macbook for this film? Did he cancel his last holiday to have money for the post?
If not, why should you help him out? If someone really loves his project he will bleed for it. If not, forget about it.
4. To much ego.
Believing in the own project is a good thing. Thinking that your low-budget film is BEN HUR vol2 is freaky.
As senior artists you have years of experience and newbies should be glad to listen to you.
If a newbie doesn’t listen at all and knows really everything better, run as fast as you can. Winter is coming…
5. Wrong expectations
They shot with no money, without any thoughts about their setdesign and costumes and available light was enough for them.
In the grading room they want a blockbuster look which is not possible, of course.
Then they get unhappy and talk about „more layers and depth“. Especially when one scene by chance has depth and a look, because their set was naturally
built like that. Then it will be pain in the ass.
They see this look, are stuck to it and want it in every scene. When you explain them that this look is based on their set colors, they don’t believe you.
So far so god. If you really like the pictures or the story and love the filmmakers: DO IT!
If any! of the above circumstances appears better keep your hands away and your midn clean.
Happy grading,
Andreas