production blog

I’ve been a huge fan of Red Giant plugins over the years, frequently turning to Trapcode, Particular, Magic Bullet Looks and now Grinder to help me make great looking imagery. So I’m especially excited to say that we have a new partnership with Red Giant Software as their first Red Giant University training partner. They’ve helped us find a great professor, Simon Walker, for our new Red Giant/Final Cut Pro combo course covering using the plugins to make footage look great. Members who are taking the course will also have access to a special offer to get the plugins into their hands at a great price.

This course is on top of new After Effects, Premiere Pro, Cinema 4D, Nuke, Vue, RealFlow, DOP Grip, DSLR Cinematography, Smoke/Flame, and Lustre courses. We also have over 30 repeat courses, so we have a huge variety of offerings this term. For a full listing of our courses this term, check out our course listing page.

To learn more about how fxphd works, visit our frequently asked questions page for details about our program.

As far as the specifics about the new Reg Giant Plugins course, here is an overview and course outline:

RGT201 – Red Giant for FCP

These days, the lines between disciplines are blurring, and art directors and producers are asking more and more from their editors. With the advance of computing power and software capability, the offline and online edits have merged to become the craft edit, where many shots are treated in situ on the timeline. But there’s not always the time (or the budget!) to switch over to your favourite graphics or grading program to complete the job, and it’s not always practical for the modern editor to become the master of multiple programs to be able to complete their work.

We’re excited to partner with Red Giant Software and their Red Giant University program to bring you our first course focused exclusively on using their plugins. Taught by Apple Certified Master Trainer Simon Walker, this course is aimed at Final Cut Pro editors who need to improve and enhance footage, add flourishes, stylise shots, and perform post production and compositing tasks, all on a deadline covers the key plugins from Red Giant Software that will help you deliver technically proficient and high quality work. You’ll precisely grade and colour-correct clips, keep flesh tones accurate, design custom and stylised looks, animate 3D swirls and shapes, add light rays, glows, highlights, perspective shadows and reflections, as well as compositing elements into existing scenes and quickly set the mood of your piece.

From a productivity point of view, all these effects will be achieved from within Final Cut Pro, which really speeds up your workflow and they are especially helpful when you’re on a deadline. The presets in each plugin have been crafted by professionals who use these techniques on high-end production work, and we’ll be covering how to further tweak these settings to create your own custom effects.

And as the weeks progress, Walker will also show you the key parameters in each plugin to adjust, to get the fastest results, whilst also showing you useful Final Cut Pro training tips and shortcuts along the way. While the class listings focus on specific plugins, don’t be fooled by the simplicity. Walker will be layering multiple plugins and effects to bring your imagery to life.

Class 1: Magic Bullet Looks (part 1). Overview of the plugin, applying and configuring looks. Looking at primary corrections, setting the mood of a shot, adjusting the presets, and strategies on applying filters to multiple clips on the FCP timeline.

Class 2: Magic Bullet Looks (part 2). Using the individual tools, choosing a tool for different shots, creating and saving your own custom looks from scratch. Setting up an 10bit timeline in FCP to keep quality as high as possible for grading whilst also avoid banding. Plus an overview of strategies to convert footage into ProRes from various cameras using Compressor and Magic Bullet Grinder.

Class 3: Magic Bullet Colorista. Creating primary and secondary corrections, comparing Colorista with FCP’s 3 way Color Corrector, working with masks for more accurate grading, and how to increase productivity by using Magic Bullet Looks and Colorista together. We’ll look at how to approach grading as well as tips for planning your shoot with the grade in mind.

Class 4: Magic Bullet Mojo. Using Mojo to target flesh tones while manipulating the colour in scenes, and how to separate your actors from the backgrounds whilst grading. Simulating a blockbuster or filmic look and easily adjusting the warmth, colour and saturation of the highlights separately from the shadows. We’ll also be looking at when to use these different tools, and how they fit into your arsenal of grading software.

Class 5: Trapcode Shine. Adding light rays to footage, enhancing and stylising shots. Shine lets you add light rays to footage, graphics and FCP text. We’ll be covering how to enhance scenes naturally as well as creating hyper-real looks. We’ll also look at how to create seamless background loops with the animation controls within Shine, as well as customising the colours of the light rays to match your content, as well as techniques to use the in-built masks to craft your desired effect.

Class 6: Trapcode Starglow. Adding soft glows, glints and shimmering lights to footage. Starglow has the ability to adjust the glows with masks, light settings, and colour controls, and we’ll be covering how to create more interesting looking shots as well as more riveting graphics sequences.

Class 7: Trapcode 3D Stroke. Usually, to create glowing swirling shapes and lines, you have to fire up a graphics package, but 3D Stroke lets you create, taper and animate these elements on a Final Cut timeline! There’s a 3D camera and duplication settings, preset shapes, and the ability to import custom Illustrator files. This plugin is particularly useful for creating lower thirds and animated backgrounds. There are a host of settings to control, and we’ll be covering which are the key ones to achieve the fastest results.

Class 8: Knoll Light Factory. For 100 years cinematographers did their best to try to eliminate lens flares! These days because of the amount of computer generated imagery we work with, lens flares and light artefacts can add more realism to your shots. They can also be used to add dynamism to text or logos and create more interesting transitions. Knoll Light Factory lets you design, adjust and animate multiple styles and types of flares. We’ll be running through adding lens flares to outdoor and indoor scenes (natural and artificial light-sources), compositing light elements with video, and easily tracking and enhancing light-sources in FCP (without keyframes!)

Class 9: Warp. Editors are often called on to ‘fix’ shots and to add in screen elements. Warp lets you composite graphics onto computer and TV screens within your footage using corner-pinning to match the perspective. It also lets you add adding reflections and throw-shadows to graphics and text. These are things that you’d traditionally have to do in After Effects or Motion, but we’ll be analysing when to use them, and how these techniques can be performed quickly without leaving FCP.

Class 10: Radium Glow. With a library of glow types and shapes, multiple sliders and controls, and three different filters within one plugin, Radium Glow lets you add sparkling glows and highlights to footage with the ability to manipulate each glow to create natural as well as stylised twinkles. There are settings that can speed up the rendering times and we’ll show how to make sure that your super-bright glows stay broadcast legal. We’ll also be covering how you can combine multiple Red Giant plugins on the same clip to create unique looks and effects.