By all indications, the 7D begins shipping next week. Amazon is once again accepting pre-orders. I’ll let you know when I get mine!
One of my fxphd shots with nothing more than Mojo applied
Magic Bullet Mojo
If you watched my tutorial on achieving the “Hollywood blockbuster look” using various color correction tools, you probably noticed the consistent theme among the very different example films I showed you how to match—the ubiquitous cool shadows, warm highlights look. Whether the film is bleached of all color (like Terminator Salvation) or super saturated (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen), and whether it is overall warm or cool, modern films have zeroed in on a color correction style that tends to preserve skin tones and set them off against a cooler backdrop.
The same shot before Mojo
It’s more than possible to achieve this look with Colorista or Magic Bullet Looks (check out the Blockbuster preset—it’s been there since day one). But sometimes you just want to spruce up your footage quickly and easily, without a hundred presets to peruse or a powerful colorist’s interface to manipulate.
Sometimes you just want to take your footage that already looks pretty darn good, and give it a little bit of… Mojo.
Magic Bullet Mojo from Red Giant Software is the pocket-sized screwdriver to Magic Bullet Looks’s cordless driver drill. It does one thing, and does it quickly and easily. It gives you that Mojo thang with just a few simple sliders to adjust, and ships with presets for popular looks.
Unlike Looks and Colorista, Mojo is a bit of a one-trick pony. It’s simple and easy and priced to be an impulse-buy at $99 US. One license allows you to use it in Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, Avid, After Effects, and Apple Motion [UPDATE: Now Sony Vegas as well!]. Mojo is also now a part of the Magic Bullet Suite.
Mojo has some cool new features that you’ll recognize from the tutorial video. Since it’s all about skin tones, Mojo has simple sliders for emphasizing, cleaning up, and adjusting skin coloration. It even features a helpful overlay that gives you the same kind of skin-tone guidance for which expert colorists rely on their vectorscopes.
Here are some preemptive answers to questions you might have about Mojo:
Q: Isn’t this look just a cheap gimmick? Just a trend that could pass in a few days/weeks months?
A: Maybe, but in another way it’s an evolution of practices many years old in color correction suites around the world. Is it overused? Sure, but that’s because it works. Personally, I love the way it looks, when done tastefully. We provide the tools, you provide the taste. Try turning the Mojo slider down instead of up when you first apply it.
Q: I applied Mojo but my skin tones aren’t popping.
A: Your faces might be underexposed a bit. Try reducing Mojo Balance—it’s the control that determines what’s a shadow and what’s a highlight. Skin tones tend to fall right in between.
Q: I tried the demo and Mojo makes my footage look terrible.
A: Mojo is designed to work with footage that’s pretty solid to begin with. If what you need is color correction, then reach for Colorista. If you love the way your footage looks before Mojo, try the “Mojito” preset—it’s just a little bit of Mojo.
Q: Why do the sliders have more range in FCP than in After Effects?
A: Actually, they have the same ranges, but in After Effects we can have the slider min/max be different from the absolute min/max. I wish FCP would let us do that too, because the ranges we show in AE represent a “sweet spot,” and the values outside those ranges are kind of pushing things into the red a little.
Q: I already have Magic Bullet Looks, why do I need Mojo?
A: Because you don’t open a walnut with a jackhammer. In my own experience, Magic Bullet Looks is occasionally a bit to much overhead for a quick-turnaround project. Mojo is so quick and easy that I reach for it all the time, saving Looks for those occasions when I want to invest some time into my color grading.
Q: Will you tell my clients I’m using it?
A: No. It’ll be our little secret.
Dublin's People
Two days ago I wrote of the Canon 7D that “there is no Reverie video to erase all doubts about its capabilities.” Philip Bloom has changed that with Dublin’s People.
Yes, it’s a camera test more than a short. You could even call it Bokake. But it looks freaking great and should be enough to convince folks that you can have your DOF cake and eat it too with an APS-C sensor, as long as you’re willing to invest in fast glass.
Philip did everything right, including sticking to a 180 degree shutter (1/50 at 24p and 1/100 at 50p) and thinking of the frame rates other than 24 fps as opportunities to overcrank for 24p playback.
I took the Canon 7d, Zacuto Tactical rig, Z-Finder V2 and one lone lens, a Canon 35mm f1.4, which becomes more like a 50mm lens on the 7d…
Image wise, it’s very similar to the 5dmkII. Sure it isn’t as sexy image wise, but it is pretty close. It is a tad less sensitive than the 5dmkII but only just. This is as expected due to the smaller sensor. Also I would say it is a little bit noisier image wise than the 5dmk2. But not too much.
For me the thing i love most about the camera is the different frame rates. I can shoot full HD 24p, 25p and of course 30p BUT really excitingly I can shoot 720p 50p and 60p which although when played back at normal speed locks horrible and video like to me it means you can easily tell your editing system to play it back at 24p or 25p or 30p and get a lovely in camera slow motion. I have missed slow motion since using the 5dmk2 so much.
More here.
Log in to Vimeo and download the 1080p24 original and watch it big. The 7D is gonna do just fine, flaws and all.
With the 7D You Might Just Be Forced to Use Your Filmmaking
In my announcement day post I made an argument in favor of the new Canon 7D, a camera I haven’t even seen or used, and for which there is no Reverie video to erase all doubts about its capabilities. For balance, here’s the real quick case against the 7D.
I said of the 5D Mark II that “Buttons and features and resolution charts just had their asses handed to them by sex appeal.” In other words, the video that comes out of the 5D Mark II can be so emotionally stimulating that we forgive its rather egregious shortcomings.
The 7D has many, but not all of the same shortcomings as the 5D Mark II. And while an APS-C sensor is lovely for filmmaking, in that it is so similar to a Super 35 film frame, another way of looking at the 7D sensor is that it is an adequate size for filmmaking, where the 5D’s is excessive.
The 5D Mark II’s excessive sensor size allows excessive sex appeal (in the form of shallow DOF). Enough, for some, to outweigh its downsides.
The 7D’s about-right sensor size means that its shortcomings, such as rolling shutter, poor resolution, excessive compression, and video-as-afterthought features and ergonomics, will stand out much more than they have with the 5D.
You can’t drench your 7D shots in sultry shallow DOF delight quite as easily as you can with the 5D.
So you might actually have to start doing some filmmaking.
The 5D has prompted a ton of “beauty reels,” but not many narrative films. I’m guilty of this too, calling my first 5D short a “camera test” to let myself off the hook for not telling a story. Maybe the 7D, with its more conservative sensor size, will make it less tempting to create another seven-minute boke-porn reel (bokake?), and remind people that audiences want to know what happens next, not what’s going to be marvelously out of focus in the background next.