I really mean ‘design like a pirate’, but that is a rarely explained talent of sea marauders and conversely, we all know about this famous day.

Another pirate fact that has recently emerged is how Red Giant Psunami was used in a sexy video teaser for Hayden-Harnett bags called Pirates Everywhere!. This fashion video was created by filmmaker Stephen Dirkes and his production company Obscure Object Films, in collaboration with photographer Tal Shpantzer. The new fashion bags are part of Hayden-Harnett’s Disney Signature collection and influenced by the popular Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

“Pirates Everywhere!” Opening Title Animation

Stephen wrote in his company blog, “Posting about “Psunami” the video effects plug-in I used to create a 3d ocean for the titles because its both Prefab and Pretty Fabulous!… A super simple 3d animated ocean generator that I found really useful because its both very simple to start something and yet gives you quite a few parameters to work with… “Psunami” is the go to plug in that offers tremendous bang-for-the-buck and goes beyond being just a quick fix.””

You can read Stephen’s step-by-step use of Psunami on his blog page and learn more about Obscure Objects Film here. Of course, if you are in need of some booty for Talk Like a Pirate Day, Hayden-Harnett bags is ready for your shopping needs. Arrr!

Using Magic Bullet Colorista II and Magic Bullet Looks, NY-based Christopher Smith created the powerful and dramatic film ’Suicide Kids’. His reel above shows a great use of Colorista, and Christopher himself said,

“I’m a big fan of Red Giant Software – used Colorista and Magic Bullet nearly exclusively to color correct ‘Suicide Kids’, as well as for most other shorts and music videos I’ve worked on in the last couple years. Really incredible how easily and extensively you can manipulate color with those plugins!

• http://www.suicidekids.com
• http://www.thethingsitdoes.com/

It was inevitable that someone would create a Trapcode Particular Reel and put it to They Might Be Giant’s song Particle man (They are my favorite band, btw), but even without the soundtrack, this Particular Reel from Chris West is awesome.

We asked Chris what possessed him to make a reel highlighting just his Trapcode Particular work, and he said:

“I’ve wanted to put together a Particular reel for the past several months due to a high volume of producers asking  for examples of projects I’ve worked on using Particular. I was finally pushed to cut the reel when a friend of mine put my Particular skills in question. I challenged to him to a Particle battle and served him the next day with my reel.

I’ve been using particular for several years now. The first few times I used it for some sparkles and fairy dust effects. I then started to realized how powerful and robust Particular was.  From adding simple dust and atmosphere into a scene to wild vfx Particular has seemingly endless possibilities. Particular is an essential for any serious After Effects artist. “

That’s some serious love for Particular, and some seriously cool work to boot.

Think you can top that? Post links to your best Trapcode Particular work in the comments below, and we may feature it here in the blog!

The NAB 2011 show was April 11-14 in Ye Ol’ Vegas. It’s the biggest annual US-based show for broadcast artists and their vendors. If you’ve been paying attention lately to digital media news, people have been posting their videos and photos and opinions. For instance, Studio Daily’s blogger Scott Simon did a great South Hall round-up and Stu Maschwitz, our Magic Bullet Creative Director, covered Apple’s big FCP X announcement in his ProLost blog.

Aside from seeing new technology, I asked people at Red Giant what they love about NAB. (This potentially sounds like a Coca-Cola commercial, but bear with me.) Here are post-NAB thoughts and Red Giant booth photos from some of my favorite coworkers. Interestingly, our photos all seem to be taken with iPhones. Guess everyone was completely taken with the launch of our two new mobile apps, Movie Looks and Noir, and forgot to grab those DSLRs. Oops.

Left to right, Aharon Rabinowitz, Harry Frank, Andrew Cheyne, John Kerr and Micah Sharp:

From Aharon Rabinowitz, our Director of Community and All Bets Are off boy wonder, shown first from left, “The reason I go out is to meet the people who use our products. By putting faces to the amazing work I see on-line every day, It recharges my love for what I do.”

A big Red Giant shout-out goes to Harry Frank, our inhouse motion designer of Gray Machine fame, shown second from left. Harry came to NAB four days after he had a baby — well, you know what I mean — so he is this year’s Trade Show Rockstar. Look for his adorable new son in Red Giant promos to come.

From Andrew Little, Red Giant Cofounder and enabler of the booth, “This was the busiest and most  energized NAB in 5 years. My head is still spinning. It’s still the best place to meet potential partners, generate some new product buzz, meet our customers, and have fun.”

Andrew being interviewed by… someone important:

From Beth Manning, our Sales Manager and booth coordinator extraordinaire, “NAB is always an exciting week for Red Giant. It’s a great opportunity to show our new technologies. We get to see old friends and customers as well as meet folks new to Red Giant. Folks come to our booth with praises, ideas and complaints and we like to hear them all!”

And for me, Debbie Rich, our tech writer and today’s blogger, NAB is an annual creative pilgrimage, kind of like going to Burning Man. I make my way to the desert, see a lot of cool art and technology, meet up with people I really like but only see once a year, have some drinks, and stand around figuring out what party to go to next. It’s awesome. See you next year!

Beth with Simon Walker, our QuickTip Guru and booth, ummm, babe:

In case you didn’t hear, this little thing called the NAB 2011 show happened last week in Las Vegas. The event was full of great product announcements, friendly faces and alotta industry buzz. All three combined into our favorite part of the show, which was learning that Red Giant won two awards for our Colorista family of tools.

Studio Daily’s Scott Simmons did a lively roundup of the Winners and Losers at NAB. Guess which category our new color corrector, Magic Bullet Colorista Free, is in! Scott wrote, “Winners: Color Grading… The free version was a popular concept: Red Giant Software introduced Colorista Free, a CDL-compliant plug-in for basic primaries only.” Read the list of Scott’s Studio Daily winners here.

DV Magazine gave their prestigious Black Diamond Award to Magic Bullet Colorista II, the full-featured version of Colorista Free. The award “…recognize[s] outstanding achievement in the advancement of the art and science of video technology… A select panel of engineers, editors, and production and post professionals joined the magazine staff to judge the Best of Show awards for DV.” Read the list of DV’s Black Diamond winners here.

Justin Harder is an amazing director in Venice, California who moves fluidly between cell animation, 2D/3D motion design and directing live action. His work has been shown in venues ranging from the global festival OneDotZero to the Taschen Logo Design Vol 2 book.

I recently spoke with Justin about the Tea Party video he did for the singer Kerli, which was composited with After Effects and uses our popular Magic Bullet Looks for color grading.

Kerli ‘Tea Party’

Justin said, “Kerli was one of those projects that came together fairly well as planned, considering the budget wasn’t that accommodating for what I wanted to achieve. Kerli and all the characters I created were a lot of fun to work with on set and in post. We had an amazing die-hard crew that worked around the clock to make it happen, and my thanks go to everybody.”

“I used Looks in After Effects because its the best color corrector out there. It gives your work an edge – something you wouldn’t find by just using hue & satch, levels and color balance, which is what I would normally use.”

To really understand Justin’s mastery, here is the original Tea Party green screen edit before the keying, effects and Looks were added.

See more of Justin’s work on his Vimeo channel, including this new portfolio montage that he recently cut. Many of the works in the montage also make use of Magic Bullet Looks. As Justin said to me, “What projects of mine DON’T use Red Giant or Trapcode software?”

I discovered Rowena Dugdale and her love of Plastic Bullet when she posted beautiful images she had photographed and plasticized on her Red Ruby Rose blog. Rowena worked Plastic Bullet images into some of her gorgeous handmade silk clutch bags, and I wrestled the opportunity to write about them because, well, Aharon Rabinowitz can just go write about hardware stuff!

Here are Rowena’s original Plastic Bullet photos for her Zebra and Chandelier clutches:

And transformed into Red Ruby Rose silk clutch bags:

The Zebra and Chandelier designs are captured directly from Plastic Bullet. Rowena told me, “The zebra print is a PB photo of a suede silkscreen textile print I created at college. I grabbed my iPhone just to see how it would photograph through PB before scanning but it looked so great through the phone I used it as is.”

(more…)

Tell a story with cinematic looks on iPhone, iPad & iTouch

Building on the success of Plastic Bullet, we are expanding our family of mobile products with two new apps that apply beautiful cinematic color treatments. Magic Bullet Movie Looks adds instant Hollywood appeal to movies on iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS, making them look like they were shot for the big screen. Noir applies rich black-and-white and dramatic lighting to photographs on iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPad, for an easy and fun way to tell a story. Movie Looks and Noir were designed by filmmakers and professional colorists, and bring a decade of experience in crafting industry-standard color tools directly to your mobile video and photos.

Get Plastic Bullet for free

For a limited time, we are offering our signature iPhone app, Plastic Bullet, for free to celebrate the expansion of our mobile app family.

• See examples of Plastic Bullet photos
• Go to App Store to download Plastic Bullet for FREE (Regularly $1.99)
• Learn more about our mobile apps family

Magic Bullet Movie Looks

Turn your family into movie stars with glamorous color effects inspired by popular films. Cue the soundtrack, ’cause you’re the superhero behind the lens, adding warmth and character to your iPhone movies in a few taps. Movie Looks adds cinema treatments designed with the same tools used by professional Hollywood filmmakers.

• See examples of Movie Looks videos
• Go to App Store to buy Movie Looks (Only $2.99)

Noir

Don’t just take a photo. Tell a story. Noir lets you transform your photos with beautiful, dramatic lighting and instant results. Peel away the color to a cinematic black-and-white, apply a lovely tint, and then light up your subject. Noir is a fun and easy way to create images that tell a story – with instant, beautiful results.

• See examples of Noir photos
• Go to App Store to buy Noir (Only $2.99)

Director, writer and producer Paul D. is delighted that his remarkable new promo for Thomas Dolby’s Toadlickers, has been nominated for not one, but two Webby Awards. The Webby’s are the Oscars of the internet so this is quite a big deal. The video was filmed at last summer’s Maverick Festival and color graded using our Magic Bullet Suite, so here at Red Giant we are doubly excited.

According to Paul D, the Toadlickers track “is about a group of scientists who live in the hills of Snowdonia, get high licking toads, get the munchies and come out at night to raid sweetshops.” (Now how would a musician know anything about this?)
 
About his Magic Bullet process, Paul explains, “With the final cut complete, it was time to move to a grade for which Red Giant Software’s Magic Bullet Suite 10 was used. The black and white sequences were handcrafted with a mixture of Looks & Misfire and the video as a whole was graded using a combination of Colorista II and Looks (all running as Premiere Pro CS5 plug-ins). This was the first time I had used this brand new version of Colorista and its significant new functionality came in handy, especially its impressive masking and keying, which proved invaluable.”
 
Read the full behind-the-scenes scoop in Paul’s Making Of Part 1 blog post and his Part 2 blog post.

These ‘Making Of’ articles are very interesting, as Paul goes through his process of doing three separate photoshoots for the Dolby band, the toadlicker actors and the animal puppets. He talks about lighting around different weather conditions, his choice of camera equipment, the VFX compositing deets, and hunting down props that include the ever-elusive ‘Eat Me’ sweets.
 
Toadlickers is nominated in the ONLINE FILM & VIDEO > MUSIC category of The Webby People’s Voice Award. Closing date for votes is April 28, so there’s still time to get your vote in. You can vote for Paul D on the Webby site. See Paul D’s portfolio here and Thomas Dolby’s music here.

USE COUPON CODE: NAB2011

Looking for a sure bet? You cannot find a better deal than our NAB sale, happening this week in Las Vegas. We want to show our appreciation by extending the show sale to all our dedicated fans. Every item in the Red Giant store is now 20% OFF. This includes plug-ins, already-discounted suites, and our incredible Guru Preset Packs.

Feel free to share this announcement with your friends and co-workers so they can benefit, too. That’s a jackpot for everyone!

7 Day Sale: This 20% OFF sale runs through Sunday, April 17, 2011 until 11:59 PM PST (California). To find out when the sale ends in your time zone, visit the World Clock site.

How To Buy: Go to our store. Enter Coupon Code NAB2011 during checkout to redeem your discount on the page titled Review and Submit Your Order. (Note: The coupon code field appears after you have entered your credit card information and hit Continue.)

Like us on Facebook to save even more. Get more info.