Top 24! in the 24 Hr Film Race Competition

Luke and fellow filmmakers at Chinese Takeout Films just placed in the top 24 for the 2013 24hr Film Race! It was a challenge creating a fully written, shot & edited film within the guidelines, which were announced at the beginning of the 24 hr period. Their film is entitled "Looking Glass." We hope it wins! 

Created in 24 hours
Theme: time travel
Prop: an egg
Action: crumpling a piece of paper

"The Ancestor" animated music video by Darlingside

As some of you may know Pamela is also an artist and illustrator. She recently had a huge opportunity to help create an animated music video for the band Darlingside, with two friends Abe Dieckman who did the amazing animation, and Timothy Hahn, producer. She created the background paintings and textures, as well as many of the individual assets: trees, clouds, plants, stars, furniture etc. It turned out beautifully and the team is so proud to share it! It was just mentioned on Cartoon Brew, Everything Animated, Maimed and Tamed, and was a staff pick on Vimeo! We are trying to get the word out so please share it in as many ways as you can.

"The Ancestor" by Darlingside – Official Music Video from Crazy Lake Pictures on Vimeo.

credits
music by: Darlingside
director: Keith Boynton
producer: Mike Lavoie
producer/editor: Timothy Hahn
lead animator: Abraham Dieckman
lead artist: Pamela Goodman

Color Grading: Bad Examples

Color correction and color grading contribute greatly to the look and feel of a film. Color correction refers to fixing problems that occurred in shooting, such as poor white balance or over exposure.

Color grading is the process of creating the final "look" of a film. It's typically the final stage of a film, after the edit is complete and locked.

A while ago, I watched the new "Resident Evil" film on a 13 inch Macbook Pro while on a flight to Minnesota. I nearly laughed aloud during one action sequence where some very sloppy color grading was allowed in the final film. In one action sequence the main character leaps through a bunch of zombies, and you can clearly see a "power window" (selective color grading on a specific area of the frame). It follow the character through the shot, to emphasize her in the scene. It's poorly done however, and was very obvious even on my small laptop- I can't even imagine how bad this would look in the theater experience. This blue aura seen in the screen grab below follows her through the scene.

Throughout January and February, I will begin my most involved and time consuming color job ever. I will be the colorist on a feature film Trash and Progress shot by DP Jessica Fisher (who shoots weddings with us!) and directed by Abe Dieckman. I am very excited to be working on this beautiful film and it should be a tremendous learning experience for me.

We have switched our studio to 100% adobe software, as Apple has fallen behind in my opinion. I am however choosing to color grade this film in Apple Color, a very powerful application that has seemingly been discontinued. I will update the blog with the status of this film.