SpeedGrade DI Drives
Pipeline for "The Rebel"

Vietnamese Hit Film Completed Entirely with
IRIDAS' Grading and Finishing System

Munich: June 6, 2007 ... With a record first weekend gross for a domestically produced film, The Rebel is a hit in its native Vietnam and at film festivals. A period drama set in colonial Vietnam in the 1920, the film is the first martial arts movie produced in that country; it is also the first film finished entirely with SpeedGrade DI, IRIDAS' high-end grading and finishing application.

Image Courtesy of Chanh Phuong Films

Postproduction on The Rebel was done at Greenpost, a company with facilities in Ho Chi Min City in Vietnam and Munich, Germany. Two SpeedGrade DI suites were employed: in the first suite the director, Truc 'Charlie' Nguyen, and cinematographer, Dominic Pereira worked to develop the stylized looks for the film, including test composites. In the second SpeedGrade DI suite, colorist Tobias Kavelar did grading and final assembly.

"We wanted to create a desaturated look, like the look of older film stocks," said Johannes Nguyen, postproduction manager for the project. "For flashback scenes as well as turning point moments in the story, we created a more extreme version of that: a grainy look, like an old postcard. These scenes create a total break in the color flow of the movie."

SpeedGrade saves ongoing work as XML files: editable metadata including complete timelines with grades, dissolves, masks etc. This made is simple for The Rebel team to send work-in-progress back to Munich for review and approval by the film's producers. "We found the SpeedGrade workflow so efficient that we immediately began work on our next film, Saigon Eclipse, much of which was completed in parallel with The Rebel," explained Nguyen.

"SpeedGrade has been a significant component in quite a few projects already, including award-winning television programs and Nickleodeon's Lazytown series, which was the world's first all-digital tapeless pipeline," said IRIDAS CEO and founder Lin Kayser. "The Rebel is exciting for us because it is the first feature film completed entirely in SpeedGrade. The quality of the images in this film speak for themselves."

Dong mau anh hung ("The Rebel") was selected as one of the finalists at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival 2007. The Rebel will have its international premiere at the Bangkok International Film Festival on July 21, 2007.

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

To see graded stills from The Rebel and read more about the making of the film visit http://spotlight.iridas.com/200705/

About Greenpost
Greenpost is a postproduction and a rental company specializing in digital film. The company was founded by a team of former ARRI leaders whose experience allows them to combine the analog and digital worlds to produce outstanding workflows and beautiful pictures. Greenpost was founded in 2001 and has facilities in Saigon, Vietnam and in Munich, Germany.

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.