10 years ago things use to be so much simpler… As a Colorist visiting IBC you only had 2 choices in color correction, DaVinci 2K or Pandora Pogle. We would spend ½ day looking at each, another day looking at Telecine machines. We all used Sony CRT monitors so nothing new to look at there so we continued our research in the IBC bar!
Today couldn’t be more different, I counted over 15 different grading systems, 6 film scanners, 4 Film recorders, numerous monitor and storage options plus a host of digital cameras.
The big news from Autodesk was that Flame, Smoke and Lustre users will now be able to upgrade to the other 2 products. This pretty much means the end of Lustre as a stand alone product but will see it’s potential users increase as it becomes a color tool available to all the existing Flame and Smoke artists/companies. I think a small moveable control surface such as the Wave or MC Color would be ideal in a multi system room. The Flame and Smoke pen and tablet guys really only need the balls, not all the knobs!
The Foundry showed their new product “Storm”. It will run on a Mac and is a total dailies solution for r3d files. It offers a more up market solution than Red Cine-X, offering primary and secondary realtime grading, audio syncing, saved memories and looks. Currently it is supported by the MC Color controller. A beta version will be available in November.
Digital Vision released their new control Precision surface, it looked very nice but I didn’t get a chance to try it, Kevin say’s it’s great.
All the grading boxes have added 3D stereo tools some more refined than others. The Baselight utilises Trulight to match both eyes while Mystica lets you plot a number of color values on to one eye then it auto matches the opposite eye using those values.
The DaVinci Resolve on Mac has finally shipped. It is initially supported by both the Resolve surface and the Tangent Wave. No XML support yet, but judging by the amount of TV stations I demoed to it is only a matter of time before it appears. I am normally pretty hard on the kit I demo at shows, I never tread lightly around the system, so was very impressed when I failed to crash the system, not even on the set up days!
Arri and Colorfront have a new dailies solution called “Colorfront on set Dailies”. Not released until Q4 2010 it has auto sound syncing, primary grading, metadata management and multi format deliverables. It is to compliment it’s Alexa and D21 cameras. I especially liked the very large easy to see interface, just what you need at 3am when doing dailies!
Tangent Devises the UK team behind the CP200 and Wave control surface had a concept IPAD grading surface on display which was controlling Apple Color. It had 3 balls and rings, which could be moved independently of each other. Great idea for onset grading or reviewing your grades on the back couch with your clients.
It was great to see so many different applications using a control surface. This means more work for Colorists even if it is at a very low level. Remember primary grading is at the heart of everything we do as colorists, get that right and you have the base to make beautiful pictures.
