Dan Lebental, A.C.E. Discusses Editing and TouchEdit & Steve Wright presents Color for Digital Artists
On Jan 13, 2013 history may have been made. At least the face of editing has had a major surge forward into the future. Dan Lebental, A.C.E. chose the Los Angeles Post Production Group to showcase his NLE for the iPad called TouchEdit. This was certainly a meeting to remember!
With a record number of attendees, members and new members flowed in from fighting traffic on the 405 to grab a cup of warm coffee from the Showbiz Cafe and some engaging conversation with fellow post production professionals.
The evening began with an extremely informative presentation from Master Trainer Steve Wright who shared with the group valuable information about color for digital artists. As with his previous presentation on Nuke at last year’s January meeting, Steve laid out a very practical and methodical look at how color really works when it hits a digital environment.
We learned about color (or lack there of) in the real world and how our eyes and brain create color. We learned how color behaves, additive and subtractive color theory, color temperature, contrast ratios, RGB vs. HSV, Luminance and Chrominance, color curves, clipping, gamut, bit depth and more in under an hour! Truly amazing.
Steve also generously offered attendees a $10 off discount on his amazing “Color for Digital Artists” webinar which he kindly extended to the whole group until 1/31/13 using code LAPPG10.
Then, Alex Schwab from the Showbiz Store & Cafe thanked us for holding our meetings at their venue and also told us how the LAPPG is their favorite group because we have such wonderful members! After some great networking (it was great news to hear so many people had new jobs to start the year) we got ready for a ride into the future.
Dan Lebental, A.C.E. began by giving some of his background explaining that he started out as a musician in the 80’s who wanted to compose music for films but ended up taking classes in film and becoming a music video editor. He edited MC Hammer’s first music video! He shared how he went from editing music videos to editing narrative film including his work with Director Jon Favreau. And then he spoke about the editing process and how when he started working on more VFX heavy movies his days were getting longer.
The excitement in the room was palpable as we all knew that we were being privy to a big game changer. This app, at the reasonable price point of $50 is an iPad touchpad tool that allows for rough editing from the comfort of your couch or as Dan tells it “your hot-tub!” It is still an early version 1 but hosts many useful features including timecode. Later versions are to include more advanced syncing capabilities with your main NLE. The idea is that you can make edits and changes and then link back to the main editing app for the final tweaks and exporting. It will eventually have a close cloud integration and allow for collaboration as well.
This app, coming from a professional like Dan, means that it will be built right from the start. It has features that Dan often wished for as a working editor himself. And his ideas for the future growth are paradigm shifting. LAPPG is proud to have been the first to share Dan’s new vision for editing with the post production community!
