Crop it Like it's Hot

For some reason I've created a new Fusion Macro. It's a tool to help match color levels across elements in a composite, and it goes by the catchy name of cropCompare.

cropCompare lets you define two zoomed-in windows on your image to enlarge, visually compare alongside one another, and even graph the values of. It's designed to assist in matching the black levels of two disparate elements in a comp, but it can be used for all kinds of image analyses.

Add the cropCompare node downstream of your comp and view it. You'll see four position controls and two little windows in the lower right of the image.

You have separate Show controls for Crops 1 and 2. For each Crop, you define its location and Sample Size and choose where on the image to overlay it and how big. Put them next to each other and maybe bump up the Gamma the Crops control to make sure your values are matching.

Or, to really make sure, turn on Do Graphs. You now have an RGB graph of the centerline of each Crop. Want to see those graphs unobstructed? Check Do Graphs and Only together.

For the graphs to look their best, please enable Fusion's HiQ mode.

Please give it a try and let me know what you think!

Download O-cropCompare_v2.2 (8kb .rar file)

Preorder, Like, Only the Best Book on Compositing Ever

Mark has created a truly practical guide to film effects compositing in the least-expensive and arguably most feature-packed compositing application available. Yours Truly contributed a chapter on training your eye.

There are books that will learn you After Effects, and there are books that claim to learn you film compositing. If you put them all in a blender and let the juices ferment under the heat of a thousand suns, you would have a snifter full of Adobe After Effects 6.5 Studio Techniques.

Preorder now before rabid fans tear my chapter out of all existing copies like the Britney Spears photo spread in Rolling Stone that one time.

Three New Books for the Clicking and the Buying

Passengers on the right side of the tram will notice three new books topping the recommended reading list.

OK, The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook has been mentioned here before, but now it's o'r yonder where it belongs.

Sin City is about to take theaters by storm, and after working on it with Robert Rodriguez I am reminded of how inspiring and educational his book Rebel Without a Crew is. Sin City is based on three graphic novels by Frank Miller — Sin City, The Big Fat Kill, and That Yellow Bastard.

If earning $7000 by subjecting yourself to medical testing is a little much for you, try the entertaining kick in the pants that goes by the title How to Make an Action Movie for $99. I'm not kidding, and neither is the author. It's as provocatively titled and darn near as useful as the excellent How to Write Movie in 21 Days.

I'm Here to Vipe the Vindows

Enough comping nerdistry — time for some digital filmmaking!

Last week I directed some spots for the most excellent site gamefly.com (I have been a customer since they launched — think netflix for games). We shot with the Viper FilmStream™ camera, recording directly to HDCAMSR tape.

Here's me (center) with my badass DP Ketil Dietrichson (left). Photo by Mark Chiolis.

The Viper shoots 10-bit log, uncompressed 4:4:4 1920x1080 24p. In other words, word. It's not ideal to shoot to tape, as even SR has some subsampling. But we have an SR deck and, hey, it's a TV commercial.

More to come as I figure out how to post this sucker.