At IBC2017, FilmLight is celebrating the formal release of Baselight 5.0, as well as exhibiting the 5.0 color tools across its entire product range.
Offering over 50 new features, version 5.0 has been comprehensively put through its paces over the last year on a variety of real projects with complex workflows. Baselight 5.0 has been at the heart of blockbusters, high-end television series and commercials.
One of the key features in version 5.0 is Base Grade, a new primary grading environment for modern color workflows and HDR.
“Base Grade makes you so much faster in matching and creating stunning looks–in a single layer,” said Philipp Horsch, sr. colorist and CEO at BFS Entertainment GmbH Munich. “The new subdivision of dim/dark shadows and light/bright highlights, each with its own pivot and falloff, basically gives you four keys already integrated in the layer.”
Version 5.0 aims to make grading for HDR even easier with the addition of color space “families,” and the new Gamut Compression tool. It makes moving between color spaces simple and seamless.
“The new color space families make delivering diverse masters really easy,” added Horsch. “With 5.0 I can now concentrate exclusively on the creative job and don’t have to worry so much about the color science.”
“Gamut Compression is so useful, especially when dealing with car commercials, where the LED brake lights often push the saturation too far,” added Mick Vincent, sr. colorist at The Mill, London. “Baselight 5.0 has been so exciting already, and there are so many more tools to try out–we have a great year ahead of us with this system at our fingertips.”
The addition of many new creative features–including Grid Warp, Paint, Perspective Tracker and Texture Equaliser–have also proven to be very popular.
“Baselight 5.0 has made finishing projects much faster and with less hassle–which is key for television content with a demanding production schedule,” said James Perry, editor/colorist on The Dr. Phil Show. “Instead of having to send shots to our graphics department for wire removal or general touch-ups, I can fix them easily in Baselight.”
Martin Tlaskal, lead developer at FilmLight, added, “These are just a handful of many comments from talented colorists, who have collaborated with us on the testing and refinement of version 5.0. It is extremely gratifying to know that our ideas have proven so valuable in practice among the creative community.”
With Baselight 5.0 now launched, the new features will soon be deployed across FilmLight’s other BLG-enabled products; Daylight 5.0, the dailies and media management platform, as well as Baselight for Avid 5.0 and Baselight for NUKE 5.0 in the Baselight Editions range, will enter beta after IBC, with Prelight 5.0 to follow soon. FilmLight is showing all of these products at IBC2017 (9/14-19) on stand 7.F31.
Director, Writer and Actor Perspectives On Making “The Apprentice”
Few movies this year have made as many headlines as "The Apprentice."
Ali Abbasi's film about a young Donald Trump ( Sebastian Stan ) under the tutelage of cutthroat attorney Roy Cohn ( Jeremy Strong ) has caused a stir at the Cannes Film Festival, been threatened with legal action by the Trump campaign and seen its chances for release dwindle before a distributor, Briarcliff Entertainment, was willing to put it into theaters.
Before "The Apprentice" arrives in theaters this weekend, we spoke with Abbasi, Stan, Strong and screenwriter Gabe Sherman about how a very unlikely movie came together and how they hope it's received in the runup to the November election.
Assembling "The Apprentice"
Sherman: I was struck by something people who had worked for Trump since the '80s told me, that during the campaign he used a lot of the strategies that his mentor, Roy Cohn, taught him. The idea came to me a flash. That's the movie. Donald was Roy's apprentice. Let's do an origin story, a mentor-protege story about how this relationship set Donald on the path to becoming president.
Abbasi: With Donald and Ivana, they've never really been treated as human beings. They're either treated badly or extremely good — it's like this mythological thing. The only way if you want to break that myth is to deconstruct that myth. I think a humanistic view is the best way you can deconstruct that myth.
Stan: I went on the ride. And it was a ride, too, because it wasn't a movie that came together very easily. It's a movie I've known of for a while. I originally met Ali in 2019. It was one of those things I thought: If this isn't going to happen with me being involved, it's not going... Read More