Some Quick Links

Movie Draft SE is a Mac Scriptwriting program available at the Mac App Store. It's currently $29.99, though they say the introductory price is ending soon. You can download a non-saving demo from their website



Learned from a 48 Hour Film Competition; Robin Schmidt writes about his experience on the Sci Fi London 48 hour film challenge:
While we’re on the subject of mistakes, we were really understaffed for the first day of the challenge and should really have brought more people in to help. We were actually overstaffed on the sunday and yet still missed a proper focus puller and soundman. Nonetheless, we did still manage to get the film in on time.
WideOpenCamera: 48 HOUR FILM CHALLENGE: ATMOSPHERIC – THE WRITEUP



This is troubling: OWC, a seller of upgrade parts for Macs, reports that there's a problem upgrading the internal hard drives of the latest iMac's:
From our testing, we’ve found that removing this drive from the system, or even from that bay itself, causes the machine’s hard drive fans to spin at maximum speed and replacing the drive with any non-Apple original drive will result in the iMac failing the Apple Hardware Test (AHT). 
In short, replace the hard drive and the fans will constantly spin.
OWC: Apple Further Restricts Upgrade Options on New iMacs



Visual Effects. An article at Red Giant's blog explains how some of the visual effects on "My Sucky Teen Romance," were done.
We discovered (after the fact) that the aviator glasses our evil vampire was wearing were reflecting the sound guys arm in some of the shots. We had to figure out a way to remove them while not making them completely black. Using the keyer in Colorista II’s secondary correction, I was able to take the sound guys arm color and bring it back to a color that more closely matched the nearby areas in the reflection. Then, I manually tracked the lens area of his glasses and used them as a track matte on a solid that brought the overall levels on his glasses down. Then the shot was handed over to our colorist.
RedGiant: Visual Effects for a Sucky Teen Film


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