Sitting in his basement far from Hollywood in Northern Virginia, Shane Felux was nervous. After successfully making two independent web-distributed movies, Star Wars: Revelations and Pitching Lucas, he was now committed to delivering fifteen episodes of Trenches, a web-based sci-fi series, to Disney's Stage Nine Digital Media. He was used to handling post production himself, but for Trenches he would be relying on LaserPacific to handle the finishing.

Shane Felux had a specific filmic look in mind and wanted the color and appearance of Trenches to draw in viewers. Barry Jossen at ABC/Stage Nine recommended that he talk to Leon Silverman at LaserPacific. Over a series of conference calls Shane met with Leon and other key creative and service members of the LaserPacific team and the partnership began.

Trenches was shot with Panavision's HD900 camera. Technical issues in production meant that LaserPacific's engineers had to develop new methods to remove some image artifacts and give the footage a filmic look. In a completely tapeless digital workflow, Shane would routinely send hard drives with images and VFX in various stages of completion and LaserPacific would then begin work on each episode. LaserPacific would post digital approval files for Shane to review and based on his notes would complete each episode.

“Because I was used to doing everything myself, I was nervous about losing control over the image, says Shane, “Leon assured me that despite the long-distance nature of the collaboration, LaserPacific would work closely with me to ensure that I was completely happy with the results. In fact, during the post production process, I didn't even come to Hollywood!”

One of LaserPacific's most experienced and creative colorists, Joe Hathaway, was assigned to the project. “Joe's work was incredible”, says Shane Felux, “I sent him some frames that I had worked on in After Effects to give him an idea of the direction I wanted to go in. He built on my input and took the look of Trenches to a whole new level.”

According to Shane, Trenches will be released online sometime in 2009.

Read Shane's blog at http://panicstruck.blogspot.com/ or visit the Trenches website at http://www.trenchesonline.com/