SpeedGrade DI Goes to Sundance
Captain Abu Raed by Amin Matalqa Debuts at Festival
Park City, Utah: January 21, 2008 … Captain Abu Raed, the first feature film entry from Jordan, will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2008. Written and directed by Amin Matalqa, Captain Abu Raed was shot on the ARRI D20 and finished with SpeedGrade DI.
Set in Amman, Jordan, Amin Matalqa’s first film tells the story of Abu Raed, a janitor at the airport. The children in his neighborhood believe he is a pilot. Abu Raed humors them with made-up stories of his travels but is soon drawn into the painful realities of his young listeners’ lives.
Clark Graff of Gigapix Studios was technical, production and post supervisor on the film. “When we were shopping around for this project we decided that SpeedGrade offered the feature set and capabilities we needed,” he explains. “Plus we liked the company. If we had a question about an EDL, for example, we just sent it over to Munich and the guys got right back to us. Open communications and a vendor who listens to your ideas are very important to us.”
The film uses three main color moods to support the story. Achieving those looks required extensive use of SpeedGrade DI’s secondaries and tracking tools. “Our director had a very clear idea of how he wanted the film done, right into details which many directors are not aware of,” says colorist Mark Read. Specific musical instruments in the film score and color schemes were associated with different figures. “Mark was amazing,” says Amin Matalqa. “I learned a lot from him and just love what he did with the images. I felt like I could stare at them forever.”
Captain Abu Raed premieres at the Egyptian Theater as part of the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2008, and opens in Jordan on February 6. Read the full story at http://spotlight.iridas.com/200801/
SpeedGrade DI 2007 is part of the SpeedGrade family of non-destructive color grading applications. For more information contact IRIDAS at +49 89 330 35 142, IRIDAS USA at (818) 951-8927, or visit www.speedgrade.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 most major animation and postproduction houses. IRIDAS is an independent, privately held company headquartered in Munich, Germany. For more information, visit www.iridas.com.
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Press Contact:
Eric Philpott | 905 773-6651 | eric@iridas.com
