Bandito Brothers Installs
SpeedGrade HD

New Facility Offers Complete Color Grading
and Film Finishing Services

Los Angeles: May 17, 2007 ... When Bandito Brothers opened their doors last year they knew they wanted to include full film-finishing services in their pipeline. After reviewing the options, Bandito chose SpeedGrade HD from IRIDAS. Providing grading and conform, SpeedGrade HD 2007 plays QuickTime and AVI files up to HD resolution and applies color correction and effects non-destructively. It all adds up to a powerful film finishing system for Bandito Bothers.

Before/After SpeedGrade - Click on image to see high-res versions
All Images Courtesy of BFGoodrich (c) MNA, Inc 2007

"SpeedGrade HD offers a feature set and flexibility that can't be met at this price point by any of the other solutions we considered," says Jacob Rosenberg, director of postproduction at Bandito." It gives us everything we need in one film finishing system and for a new facility like ours to be able to offer color grading in house is huge."

The Bandito pipeline was built from the ground up to deliver content for broadcast, film, and the internet. "That means we need a 4:4:4 HD workflow," explains Rosenberg. "We are HD-centric: whether we shoot film or digital, we edit and finish in HD."

Bandito Brothers takes a holistic approach to film work. "We look at the whole workflow from end-to-end," says Rosenberg. "Our colorist is a DP so when he is on the set he knows the tools we'll be working with in post and can plan and execute accordingly. This allows us to offer a higher quality end-result more economically than is possible with more traditional pipelines."

Cinematographer Andrew Huebscher, Bandito's senior colorist agrees: "The way I see it, I have a responsibility to the final grade, whether I am at the controls or communicating to another colorist from a distant location. To be able to speak in this language right from the set creates a shorthand for sharing ideas. I don't have to waste time on someone else's dime figuring out what it looks like if we just 'push the image a little more.' A producer appreciates this efficiency."

SpeedGrade's non-destructive approach to color correction is a big part of the secret. "What's great about SpeedGrade is the portability and open architecture of .Look files," explains Huebscher. "As a DP I like to grade images from a shoot on my laptop. To be able to bring editable color data (not just images) into a color session is extremely valuable. As a colorist, I can play with an infinite number of these look files and 'audition' them for myself or a client."

Before/After SpeedGrade - Click on image to see high-res versions
All Images Courtesy of BFGoodrich (c) MNA, Inc 2007

"One of our first jobs was a series of BF Goodrich commercials," said Rosenberg. "SpeedGrade allowed us to create a gritty, real-world look and match the commercial to the images used in the print campaign."

"The BF Goodrich project required a very treated look," adds Huebscher. "SpeedGrade was totally flexible - sometimes I'd have up 10 or 11 tracks working in one shot. The client would say, 'let's see it without the secondary adjustment and the small mask,' and with a few clicks I could toggle individual tracks on or off to show them the change - without rendering. The clients could see the progression of how we created the look and appreciated this versatility."

According to Jacob Rosenberg, SpeedGrade HD "gives you everything you need in one system. Together with a QuadroFX graphics card from PNY/NVIDIA and the JLCooper panels, we can offer our clients a full color grading suite for finishing their projects."

"One of my favorite features in the program is having individual grading panels for lift/gamma/gain," says Andrew Huebscher. "I can control the mids of my blacks or the gain of my whites independently of the master grading. Additionally, I can specify when gain becomes gamma and when gamma becomes shadow. This is basically like having curve control, only better since much of it can be controlled from our JL Cooper MCS-Spectrum/3000 combo - and not from endless mouse clicks."

SpeedGrade HD 2007 runs on Mac and Windows and is a part of the IRIDAS SpeedGrade family of non-destructive color grading applications. For more information contact IRIDAS USA at (818) 951-8927, IRIDAS (international) at +49 89 330 35 142, or visit www.speedgrade.com.

About Bandito Brothers
Bandito Brothers is a full-service production company based in Los Angeles. Bandito Brothers provides creative development, directorial, production and postproduction expertise to clients in film, broadcast, commercial and new media. For more information contact info@banditobrothers.com.

About IRIDAS
IRIDAS pioneered desktop film-resolution playback in 2001. Its FrameCycler products are now the industry standard for frame-based image review. In 2003 IRIDAS introduced the first non-destructive color correction application. Today SpeedGrade and FrameCycler provide the critical links in an end-to-end pipeline for uncompressed content and color metadata. IRIDAS' applications are used by filmmakers around the world and by most major animation and postproduction houses. IRIDAS is an independent, privately held company headquartered in Munich, Germany. For more information, visit www.iridas.com.