06 Oct October Update

So it’s been an interesting few weeks, It seems like I’ve been saying that a lot and I keep thinking of that old Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times” but it is none the less true. Dublins gone back into lockdown and it looks like the rest of the country is going to follow but sure we’ll keep going the best we can. If they do shut everything down again I’ll be sure to be out with the drone.

Since my last update I’ve had two shoots assisting the lovely people at Tiny Ark, Submitted two projects to Tg4’s Ignite program, edited one promotional trailer, Finished editing a live gig for a band in Scotland (more on that later) and gotten back to work on my doc on the legacy of The Field “In The shadow of the Bull”.

The Ignite Scheme looks interesting. “The scheme is project-led, and will support the progression of the selected projects and their teams, through training that will focus on the development process of documentary, from inception to exhibition. The scheme will foster a new generation of non-fiction creative documentary talent from all over the island of Ireland to pursue their first or second feature, and to provide them with a platform to develop the spectrum of skills and knowledge required to succeed as a feature documentary filmmaker on an international level.” So it looks like the selected film makers will get much more out of it than just funding, fingers crossed we get at least one project in. Not sure what the notification date is.

Anyway one thing I have been very happy with lately is three new pieces of software I have been working with called Look Designer 2.0, Grain Lab and Colour Lab AI. I had mentioned in previous posts that I was doing grading courses taught by Dado Valentic and part of that course was we got to beta test these pieces of software. The first two are plugins for DaVinci Resolve while the third is a stand alone program and I would highly recommend them to anyone who does their own grading. Check out the link below for more information on them.

https://colourlab.ai/look-designer/

Three of the shots in these pictures (Taken from the promo for the Doc “Searching for Maria”) were shot on the Sony A7sii and three of them were shot on the RED Dragon. They were graded using Look Designer 2.0 emulating Kodak 5217 Vision 2 200T film stock printed on a 2398 Modern Negative.

I’ll be trying out Colour Lab AI on the next project I shoot so hopefully Covid won’t postpone it too long.