Interview with Walter Biscardi on Magic Bullet Colorista

Walter Biscardi, Owner of Biscardi Creative
Biscardi Creative Color Corrects The Food Network's #1 Show "Good Eats"

Tell me about Biscardi Creative.

Biscardi Creative Media is a full service production company founded in 2001 by myself and my wife Rebecca. Our specialties are high definition post production and animation. All three of our suites are fully set up for high definition editing and graphic design. We have delivered all of Season 9 and Season 10 in high definition of the Food Network’s “Good Eats” which is the number one program on the network.

How did you land the “Good Eats” project?

That was all thanks to the Creative Cow website. I am a forum host for the AJA Kona forum (among others) and there was a posting one day for an Atlanta based editor to assist a local producer / editor with an issue on their editing system. I contacted the person who turned out to be the D.P. of “Good Eats,” which I had no idea was taped right here in Atlanta.

After getting his system up and running, he invited me to the set of the show and after getting to meet Alton Brown and the entire crew I figured that was the end of that. About two weeks later I got a call from the D.P. who asked if I could create some animated segments for the show. He had noticed some simple animated segments that were on my demo reel from some children’s projects.  

I have to be honest and say working on “Good Eats” is a personal thrill for me because it has long been one of my favorite shows on TV and to have the opportunity to work on it and be a part of such a fantastic production crew is just incredible. And thanks to the Number One rule of the series, “He who works on ‘Good Eats’, must appear on ‘Good Eats’,” I’ll be making my national acting debut on an upcoming episode. Now how cool is that?

Why did you choose to use Magic Bullet Colorista over other color correction tools on the market?

I was approached by Red Giant Software after they learned of my problems with another color correction tool. I tested Magic Bullet Colorista for just a day and put it right into production coloring seven episodes of ‘Good Eats.” What I love is the fact that Colorista operates much like the Final Cut Pro 3 Way Color Corrector, but it’s much cleaner and balances a scene much better. The Lows, Mids, and Highlights are very clean. With the Final Cut Pro 3 Way Color Corrector, sometimes a lot of noise is added or I’ll even get a weird solarization type of look if I push colors too far. Colorista stays very clean throughout the entire color correction process.

The addition of the power masks really makes Colorista nice to work with because I don’t have to create a second layer of the same scene and make a garbage matte. To able to add a little highlight to Alton’s face without the need for a second layer of video is a huge timesaver.

The other color correction tool that I was using required an export of an XML and “prepping the timeline” for coloring. This means removing all speed changes, text and special effects and adding time to the Post schedule, which is not what you want when you’re running multiple shows back to back. By using Colorista right inside Final Cut Pro, I’m able to work much more efficiently since the tool is not affected by anything we do in the timeline.

Have you used Magic Bullet Colorista on any other projects?

I have done all the coloring for two episodes of “Assignment Earth” so far and we have another episode starting Post right now. Being an environmental series shot all over the world, it’s definitely a challenge to pull that show together due to all the lighting changes -- from inside to outside to overcast to bright sun. The variations in the scenes call for a lot of balancing and tweaks which we’re able to do easily with Colorista.

We’ve tested Colorista on our standard definition work as well with environmental news stories we post for NBC and PBS under the “Assignment Earth” and “This American Land” banner. Also produced by Gary Strieker, these pieces are every bit as challenging as the full HD series again because they are environmental stories.  In addition to the many color issues, there are always exposure issues and Colorista handles most of these well.

What have been the results?

The best feedback has actually been no feedback. Our work has always been well received and most of our clients knew we were using a very high end, very expensive color correction tool.  Since switching to Colorista, our clients remain very happy with our work and the final product we’re putting out on screen. So for our clients it’s just been a seamless transition over to Colorista.

The time saved over the other correction tool is probably 100%. With a show like “Good Eats” we have so many speed changes and graphics in every episode, which used to take me a good two hours just to prep. Now I spend those two hours actually coloring the show and I’m able to finish the episodes faster than I ever did in the past. That’s good for the client and good for our production workflow.

What do you like most about Magic Bullet Colorista?

Ease of use, Clean filtering and the Masks. If you know anything at all about using the Final Cut Pro 3 Way Color Corrector, then you already know how to use Colorista. It’s a very simple tool to use, yet very powerful in what it does.

Power Masks are just a huge addition for us allowing us to highlight something in the scene without having to resort to another video layer in Final Cut Pro.