The Icarus Maneuver is a short film that takes place in the Axanar Universe produced and directed by Mark Edward Lewis. It will be released March 31st and give fans a glimpse of what is to come later this summer with the release of the next two episodes of Axanar.
I’m once again amazed at the power of Color Timing – or Color Correction as we sometimes say.
You have to understand that generally what comes out of a RED camera uncorrected, looks like grey-sludge from a lab in the deuterium tanks on the bottom of the secondary hull of the Ares. After taking what comes out of a RED camera and giving it a “basic grade”, so that at least it’s watchable, you just get used to what it looks like over the course of post production. Nobody does anything else to the grade of the picture until VFX is done with it, or picture is locked. For me as an editor and post supervisor, as long as the client is happy with the general idea, nobody says much about the luma, chroma, hue, blacks, whites or anything else. Our eyes get trained to look at story, performance, and nuance.
But when you get a fresh pair of eyes on the picture – who also possesses the skills and talents necessary for color timing, it radically changes the feel of a movie or picture.
I’m no color timer. I get the concept, and even have the tools, but nobody should bring me on to time their project. The “before” pictures are me doing a basic grade off of the Red sludge/Log I got…and, yes, gave us a good feel for what I was going for: a suspense submarine movie completely shot underwater (in this case red alert).
What Bing Bailey gave me after his work as our color timer on “The Icarus Maneuver: the Four Years War” was that and more. Just a completely gripping set of visuals reinterpreting perfectly Geoff Fagien‘s artistry at the camera, and giving it a powerful beauty, grit and terror, ever-present, whilst the story unfolds.
Incidentally, save me, Bing has been with Axanar the longest and has his indelible mastery on Prelude, and several of the Kickstarter videos…not to mention being DIT on the Prelude shoot. And I might mention that he has timed more than a small amount of my own projects.
I just wanted to show you all an unsung part of the post production process which, like foley, ambiences, and re-recording, adds the last, desperately important, otherwise-overlooked mastery-minutia to the process of film delivery. And one about which I’m quite happy today!
Mark Edward Lewis
Director & Producer,
The Icarus Manuever
Excellent
Well done!
Thank God for Color Correction!
This looks outstanding!! Thanks for posting!
Good work!
Wow! Very impressive!