alexschwindt.blog

adobe announces new production premium CS6 suite

Yesterday Adobe announced the forthcoming Production Premium CS6, which will include new versions of Premiere, After Effects, Audition, Encore and Photoshop. Versions 5 and 5.5 both represented major milestones in terms of features, performance and stability. In fact, the increased stability of CS5.5 was a big part of why I finally decided to make the jump to a total Adobe workflow.

So do the new features of Production Premium CS6 represent the same leap forward in visual storytelling..?

rez downtown 2012 - behind the scenes

Last month I had the chance to create a new short film for the RezDowntown campus. (you can check it out after the break) The community recently moved into a new venue, formerly the Crosstown Station, which provided some wonderful visual opportunities. I especially loved the different kinds of available light found there.

One of my favorite things about this project was that it gave me the opportunity to experiment with a number of different post-production techniques I'd never attempted. As a result, this might well be the first project I've ever created that I'd be really happy to see on a 40-foot screen. A big part of that had to do with some major software finessing of the footage in post...

a perspective on gear you do not have

As you can imagine I've gotten a lot of texts, email and Facebook IMs about the fact that Canon dropped the new 5D Mark III last night. (just to get this out of the way, on paper I'm not see that much to make the upgrade compelling) But all the hype brings up a point I think is worth making every so often: the story you're telling is a lot more important than the gear you have, or do not have.

I know that sounds a bit strange coming from someone who's trumpted video-DSLRs as being "revolutionary", but here's the deal: the Canon 5D Mark III is actually the price we consumers are now paying for the 'accident' that was the Mark II...

magic bullet denoiser II review

Yesterday Red Giant released Magic Bullet Denoiser II, which was enough for me to drop whatever plans I had for the evening. Over the past few months I've been wrestling with the amount of noise I'm getting out of the H264 compression inherent in DSLR footage, and I was already shopping around for different solutions to the problem.

I'd tried out the original Magic Buller Denoiser, but it just wasn't stable enough within Premiere and After Effects. Turns out that the software code didn't entirely belong to Red Giant, which meant they weren't able to fix the problem themselves. Their solution was to build a new completely new denoising program from the ground up.

So how well did they succeed?

dslr filmmaking roundtable

At this year's Sundance Film Festival Adobe hosted a panel about technology and storytelling that's really worth giving a listen to. (check it out after the break) The group includes some of the filmmakers and producers behind "Avatar", "Hugo", "District 9", and the upcoming "Act of Valor", and it's amazing just to hear about them using widely available technology like the Canon 7D and After Effects.  I just found this to be really inspirational - hopefully you will as well.

Give it a look...

"tom's story" short film

Porn addtiction is one of the most pervasive problems we face in our society, yet it's something no one really wants to talk about. It takes a lot of courage to be willing to stand up and share your story about your battles with pornography. And while Tom Ryan's story is more dramatic than most, it's far from being a unique problem.

Check out "Tom's Story" after the jump...

new city launch video

Over the weekend I had a chance to shoot a short film for New City Church's official launch. I really believe in the people behind this, and I can't wait to see how this church impacts Shawnee Mission.

Check it out after the jump...

a final cut editor goes adobe

Those of you who are regular reader of this blog will know that while I started out on Sony's Vegas, I really became a filmmaker using Apple's Final Cut Pro suite. Sure, by 2009 it was starting to get a little long in the tooth, but that was ok because what it lacked in horsepower it made up in stability and usability.

Even better, FCP was THE industry standard. Its enormous market share meant that third-part hardware and software makers could invest huge amounts of time an effort into FCP-compatable add-ons, knowing that if they created something good and useful a sizable market would be open to it. There was a lot of security there for aspiring filmmakers.

Then Apple had to go and laid the epic goose egg that was FCP X...

adobe speedgrade impresions

A few months ago Adobe announced that they would be aquiring Iridas' SpeedGrade color grading suite. While the details are still sketchy as to how exactly it would be incorporated in the Adobe software family, they seem to be indicating that it will probably be bundled into the forthcoming Production Premium CS6 suite.

As you can see from the video below (after the jump), this is a killer move for Adobe. One glaring piece of functionality that's been missing from the Adobe vidoe workflow is a professional color correction suite. But is Speedgrade as it exists today really the right step into the future..?

creating a technical color grade

Over the past month or so my friends Rob Webster, Kathleen Sylvestri and I have been working hard on a new promo short about love, sex and marriage. What's made it great has been finally having an excuse to make a short film entirely within the world of Legos. (you can check it out after the jump)

One of my responsibilities on the project was color grading the final results. This presented a unique challenge as there wasn't anywhere stylistically to take it. For the sake of the story and the the tone of the composition those yellow Lego faces needed to stay in their correct color space. This wasn't a project to go all 'hipster' on.

What this piece needed a good Technical Correction grade without adding any Style Grading. If that last sentence seems at all confusing then this is the tutorial for you...