Anything Anymore

Wanting to achieve the highest quality images while staying within their budget, Writer/Director/Producer Gene Celso and Director of Photography Justin Chin elected to shoot their short Anything Anymore using a Canon XL-1 with a PS+Technik Mini-35 adaptor for 35mm cine lenses, and perform their color grading using Color Finesse.

Check out the before-and-after images to see examples of Color Finesse in action.

Bend It Like Beckham

For the hit indie sleeper Bend It Like Beckham, Visual Effects Supervisor Scott Billups was faced with the task of putting the head of a teenage girl onto the body of a six-foot-tall soccer player, and making it look convincing. Complicating matters was the fact that some of the footage was video and some was film.

Billups used Color Finesse's Color Match feature to make sure that skin colors matched so that the mix of film and video was invisible to the audience. Billups says "Color Finesse greatly aided our Bend It Like Beckham work" and that it has "the most sophisticated set of color tools this side of a da Vinci."

Check out the screen shots of Color Finesse being used on Bend It Like Beckham.

Dust To Glory

Dust to Glory is filmmaker Dana Brown's (Step Into Liquid) new feature-length documentary on the 36th Annual Tecate SCORE Baja 1000 desert race. After an off-line edit using Avid, the on-line was done with Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, CineForm's Prospect HD, and Color Finesse, creating an HD digital intermediate and 35mm filmout for the entire 90-minute movie, using all desktop technology.

Footage of the grueling 32-hour race was shot on a combination of 35mm, 16mm, and Super-16 film, Sony HD F900, and mini-DV video cameras. Over 55 cameras were used in all. Color Finesse was used to grade footage from all of the different sources to create an aesthetically consistent look, as well as for creative enhancement of the project's look.

Colorist Henry Santos spent two months on the Dust to Glory project. When asked about his experience with Color Finesse, Henry said "It was pretty kick-ass."

Le Marais (The Marsh)

By combining 35mm film acquisition with a high-definition digital intermediate process and a 35mm film output, Le Marais combines the richness of the film image with the great flexibility of digital manipulation.

The film's web site contains numerous "before and after" images in the Behind the Scenes section. The DVD extras also contain several clips of Color Finesse being used to grade the film.

Mid-Century

Shot using the Panasonic J-HDC27 VariCam high-definition camera and starring John Glover and Faye Dunaway, Mid-Century uses green screen and CGI elements extensively, making precise color correction essential so that all elements will properly match for a convincing composite.

For one particular scene, Glover and Dunaway were to be composited together, but one had been shot against a green screen and the other a blue screen. While each looked fine on its own, put together their skin tones did not match. Visual Effects Supervisor Scott Billups used Color Finesse to achieve a match, taking advantage of Color Finesse's movable split preview to be able to directly compare the skin tones. Screen shots showing the process can be seen here.

Additional discussion on the use of Color Finesse on Mid-Century can be found in Scott Billups' article The Power of Plug-Ins in the Fall 2002 issue of MovieMaker Magazine.

The Velvet Devil

An original dramatic musical from Saskatchewan, written by and starring Andrea Menard, about a Metis singer in the 40's from a small Indian community who comes to Toronto to find fame and fortune. It aired on Canada's CBC program Opening Night.

Color correction for The Velvet Devil was done by Java Post Production in Regina, Saskatchewan in 1080i HD. Company president Jack Tunnicliffe says "At Java Post we rely on Color Finesse 2 for the highest fidelity color correction available in Final Cut Pro and Adobe After Effects."

 

Xtracurricular

Girls meet boy. Girls like boy. Girl builds giant robot to smash other girl.

Xtracurricular combines the conventional teen comedy with equal parts action and science fiction and adds a hint of anime to create a uniquely entertaining film experience.

Shot on a Sony CineAlta HDCAM on a microbudget, finishing Xtracurricular entailed extensive post production for effects and color grading. Visual Effects Supervisor Sean C. Cunningham calls Color Finesse "an invaluable color correction tool."