Magic Bullet Suite Film Wins at Sundance

San Francisco, CA,-– My Flesh and Blood won theSundance Film Festival's Audience Award for best documentary. The film,directed by Jonathan Karsh, used The Orphanage's software application,Magic Bullet Suite, to achieve a cinematic look that was key to winningthis prestigious award. Magic Bullet Suite was used on two filmsappearing in this year's competition, and made its debut at Sundance in2000 with four digital video film shorts produced by The Orphanage. Ithas since been used to transform the looks of more than two dozenfeature films.

This year, My Flesh and Blood, a Chaiken Films andHBO/Cinemax feature-length documentary, and Night Light, a filmshort directed by Eric Escobar, were selected for the festival. UsingThe Orphanage’s Magic Bullet Suite, Karsh and Escobar gave theirfilms the cinematic look that was key to their prestigiousselection.

Karsh’s documentary, My Flesh and Blood, is about 11special-needs children and the woman who cares for them. The film ispunctuated by beautifully shot scenes of children enjoying themselveswith abandon at a swimming pool party, regardless of theirdisabilities.

Karsh shot My Flesh and Blood on video for budgetary reasonsand ease of shooting. Since the documentary was going to air ontelevision, it was important to avoid having any video stutter. Thefilmmaker turned to The Orphanage and its proprietary software, MagicBullet Suite, to test several options for frame rate conversions forthe entire movie.

"Since the final output for Chaiken Films and HBO/Cinemax was not tofilm, several options were possible for achieving a cinematic look. Aprogressive 30 frames per second was the chosen master. This offered anice hybrid between the look of video and film—adding a smoothercadence to the final master," said Aaron Rhodes, Lead Magic BulletArtist at The Orphanage.

Night Light is a story where love, theft, cosmology, andlight pollution collide in the dramatic story of hope in the face ofadversity. Ten-year-old Charlie, a budding astronomer, just wants tosee the stars one time without the distortion created by the brightlights of the city. One night, Luis, Charlie’s older brother,makes a courageous sacrifice to grant Charlie his wish.

Filmmaker Escobar shot Night Light in NTSC format on DV tape,but really wanted the 24P cinematic look of film. After experimentingfor weeks and not achieving his desired results, Escobar turned toMagic Bullet Suite to solve his post-production challenges.

"Magic Bullet does an amazing job at de-interlacing and conformingyour interlaced video to 23.976 frames per second—the same asfilm. It has an outstanding de-artifacting filter that smoothes out therough, blocky edges that can result from DV compression. MagicBullet’s Look Suite offers sophisticated color and filtrationcontrols that allowed me to quickly develop a set of unique cinematiclooks for my movie. I was also able to save these setups and rapidlyapply them to multiple clips," said Escobar.

Pricing and Availability
Magic Bullet Suite comes in two versions: Magic Bullet Suite StandardDefinition (SD) for $995 USD, supporting NTSC and PAL video solutionsand Magic Bullet Suite High Definition (HD) for $1,995 USD which has noresolution limit.

Magic Bullet Suite is sold exclusively through Red Giant Software.Browse to www.redgiantsoftware.com foradditional product information.