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.

Tags: Colorista II, Magic Bullet, Magic Bullet Looks