The Joy of Magic Bullet August 16, 2008
Posted by ifsstech in 3rd Tier, 4th Tier, Editing, Miscellaneous.trackback
As with any area of digital production practice makes perfect. The only way to build skills in a particular area – be it editing, sound or motion graphics – is to get hands dirty with the tools.
For elusive reasons the art of colour grading is often treated is some sort of sacred cow, perpetuating a myth that you cannot achieve good results if you’re specialist colour gradist using dedicated hardware systems.
This is such utter horse shit.
With some fundamental understandings of how to avoid clipping, some time to practice, and a pair of half decent eyeballs in your head there is no reason you can’t get great results for your film on a basic computer, even a laptop.
Oh yeah, and Magic Bullet helps as well. 
The internal logic of Magic Bullet is so beautifully constructed with the metaphor of the Camera itself that it presents as a very easy software to engage with.
To help with that process and point at some specific techniques and processes I’ve gathered together here some video tutorials and resources on colour grading with MB.
An overview tutorial covering the nuts and bolts of MBL.
Brief run-through with before and afters.
Great technique using multiple layers of the same short and moving through different MB Looks to create a pretty sexy sunset.
This Video is from RedGiant themselves and is designed as a getting Started vide for MBL
And This video is a click-thru tutorial by Magic Bullet inventor Stu Maschwitz.
A set of three videos from George P. Schnyder working through key features of MBL.
Your right, MB Looks makes the Grading and creation of a special look a lot easier and intuitive. I graded a whole Feature with it that got a extreme Look, nearly Comic-like. But I also used it on some Takes for just minimal tonal changes for mod creation and it’s a great tool for that kind of things to. If you get the Suite you also get Colorista with it, which ich a nice tool for this minimal changes or to get rid of a tint in post (or add one)
Maybe some of your readers would like a more insight View about the Software. I made a 3 Part Video-Tutorial-Series about it: http://extreeeme.org/extreeeme/extreeeme/video-of-the-day-003-looks-preview-presets.html
The Links to the other two are at the bottom of the Post under the Video. Hope you like it.
-george
Thanks so much George. You’re dead right about Colorista. We use it extensively at the IFSS. In fact its the first colour grading tool I teach. When you start racking multiple Coloristas together with masks you can get some amazing results. Thanks too for the links to your videos on MBL. Ive added them above.
Cheers
Mike Jones
[...] Wonderful – Your ad here, right now, for as low as $0.00 The International Film School Sydney has a great Post in their Blog about Magic Bullet Looks. They’ve embedded and linked a lot of Videos, including my 3 Part Introduction. If you are [...]