You know what’s funny? Everyone I know, my close friends anyway, almost all have a bunch of irons in the fire at the same time, ALL the time and, as I write this, I’m thinking about all my own current irons. So many irons!

I’ve always thought about this work as really fun in so many ways, and still do. That said, the work can be overwhelming at times, and there’s sometimes so many things going on it’s hard to keep track of. When there is a major life event, you take stock of what you have and what you want and, hopefully, as you come out the other side, you have a clearer idea of what your own priorities are. This was one of those weeks, but I’m still here and happy to have Thunderbean as one of my missions in life.

This has been a particularly challenging period here; the giant attempt is to tackle these fairly big projects and wrap them up as efficiently as possible- three Thunderbean ones and two non-Thunderbean ones. Aspects of that plan are going really well. Other pieces are taking much longer than I’d hoped. Mid-Century Modern 3 is done, Rainbow Parades volume 2 is getting closer, and at least most of the materials are scanned on the Lou Bunin set. Lots of special discs are finally getting dubbed, and we’re waiting for our first t-shirts to come back from printing. I know I’ll look back once these are all in the can and largely forget how hard the period was to move everything forward in, but I just wish the bumps were easier to navigate.

I’ve been on the Rainbow Parades, volume 2 set, and running some things by folks on Blu-ray.com, so I thought I’d run some of it by here as well. Iv’e been spending some time working with color a lot more in DaVinci Resolve, and finding the tool sets frustrating even as I gets things closer to where I want the results to be faster. Par for the course. Here are some basic grades from some of the Rainbows going into cleanup, mostly from setting a basic black and white level and tweaking a little from there. These are far from finished and a little most contrasty than where I am right now with the grades, but it gives a pretty good idea of the basic ‘look’ of the series and balance. It’s going to be a really pretty set:

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Earlier in the week I put up a really basic color grade on Blu-ray.com of ‘Felix and the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg’. Since this first, basic grade, I’ve brought it into DaVinci and played around a little more, but I’ll save that for the final set. For now, here’s a little sneak preview of how it’s looking— minus a few final shots (we cleaned up a few shots manually that appear with DVNR here, and a small blank area). I know probably everyone has seen this particular cartoon ad nauseam, but hopefully we’re doing it some (not completed) justice, along with the rest of the series. Digital restoration was done at 4k by Luke Virgin, Allen Jancowics, Sophia Compos and myself. I know a lot of people car about this particular film, so we’re working hard to do it justice.

Again— not the final color grading by any means!

Have a good week all.