Creative Review: space, music icons and warring gangs

 

Jump was commissioned by the BBC to create the brand for this weekend morning politics show. The broadcaster didn’t want it to look like a news show or that it was coming from a news studio, but it still needed to have a connection with the news family.

It wanted the brand to be fresh, energetic and more conversational, while still containing a ripple of news branding. The BBC also wanted Laura Kuenssberg to appear in the opening sequence.

As well as the title sequence, wipes and end cards, Jump created the style for the programme graphics, headline sequence and Viz templates.

A big part of the delivery was the screens that feature as part of the set.

The work on these included animating backgrounds for the main interview and desk areas. The screens help to create a unique style for the set and the show.

Jump senior designer Sam Clarke says: “Our concept is based on Laura being our guide. She takes us on a journey past UK landmarks, just as she will through the subjects of the show. A simple line travels with her. The environment is light and featureless until Laura is present. There are landmarks from all the nations of the UK, and not just the obvious ones. We start with Westminster, as it is the main link with the political side of the show.

“The buildings are given shape by shadows that are cast as if light is emanating from Laura,” he continues. “The animating line fills in the detail representing the dialogue of the programme. It is loose and conversational rather than hard and intimidating.”

Russell Mann, technical director at Jump, adds: “The landscapes were created in C4D. An illustrator then made some 2D drawings over the top of them. These had to be painstakingly turned into vectors and then turned into 3D lines that still maintained the integrity of the original drawing.”

Laura was filmed against a green screen, using prop stairs and a leaf blower. To help the action fit the CG environments, Jump made an animatic with a simple 3D Laura before it did the shoot. Jump shot the green screen at a much higher resolution and higher frame rate than was needed to give it as much control over the action as possible.

“The set design took a lot of development as we had to get the landmarks in the right position so that the directors had enough freedom to frame guests how they wanted,” says Mann. “We didn’t want guests to be framed with a London Eye halo or Big Ben sticking out of their head.”

OnSight delivered post-production for this concert film following global superstars BTS. It was overseen by post producer Joana Coelho, with colour by (freelance colourist) Steve Atkins.

Having the BTS production team based in South Korea created a new challenge for OnSight to ensure client input during the online process. To resolve this, OnSight colour graded the 4K Dolby Vision film in real time, streamed live from London to the BTS team in South Korea using Streambox.

OnSight senior online editor Adam Sample completed the finishing process, with Alfie Mitchell as edit assistant and Danielle Kidd as digital asset co-ordinator.

Atkins says: “The whole team at OnSight were really supportive at creating an effective solution for this grade. They put a lot of effort into researching and facilitating the process, choosing Streambox, which allowed us to remote grade live and direct to South Korea in real time. This proved an effective way to collaborate with the director and producer.”

This 60-minute documentary about the Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer was post-produced by Storm. The facility provided end-to-end post, including ingest, offline, online, grading, graphics, audio mix, QC and delivery.

A wide range of cameras were used, including the FX9, FS5, A7S, Blackmagic Pocket Cinema and iPhone. Storm also received several hours of 4K UHD performance footage filmed on various cameras, including Red. These were processed in different ways, with the Red footage transcoded in Resolve.

Storm provided a full hybrid set-up for the project (via Parsec), so the editors and edit producers had the option of working remotely. The dubbing mixer worked in Pro Tools to ensure the music was emphasised and that the source quality was as good as possible for the final film.

The online and grade was completed using DaVinci Resolve. The editor used Resolve Neural deinterlacer combined with noise reduction and also dipped into Fusion for invisible screen replacements.

Produced by Pulse Films and Sister, this British action-crime drama series follows the struggles between rival gangs in London. It is loosely based on the 2006 video game of the same name. The Look completed post-production of the second series of the drama.

Colourists Thomas Urbye and Grace Weston worked with lead online editor Tom Boyle in UHD, HDR and SDR. Lead series director Corin Hardy asked The Look to carry through the series one look but also use its proprietary image tools, including digital grain, lens aberrations and RGB distortions, during certain fight sequences to give a tunnel-vision effect.

The grain tools were used across the project, controlled scene by scene using luminance keys to ensure a natural level throughout, without fizzing on skies or overly distracting on low-light scenes.

The series had more than 1,400 VFX shots from multiple vendors, which were reviewed on site during the grade, and also viewed live remotely in HDR on iPads. Dolby Vision v4 was used for the HDR to SDR conversions.