10 Years Of Darkness: ISIS & The Yazidis

It was standing room only as 10 Years Of Darkness: ISIS & The Yazidis played to a packed house of specially invited journalists and politicians at an advance screening of the latest documentary from Sky News. They were there to watch the results of a decade-long investigation by Special Correspondent, Alex Crawford, into the plight of the Yazidis, a religious minority of Kurdish-speaking people, brutally targeted by the ISIS regime in Sinjar, Northern Iraq. To carry out the genocide of the Yazidi people, the terror group’s preferred method has been the murder of men and boys, and the enslavement and forced marriage of women and girls. The Sky News team followed the trail of destruction, uncovering stories of those women and girls held captive, including that of Kovan who was just 14 when she was abducted by ISIS fighters over a decade ago. Alex Crawford: ‘Their stories were pretty repulsive and shocking because, whoever you are, the idea that you would be enslaved by men or bought and sold between men is the peak nightmare for women. That hit me in the face right from the beginning.’

Sky Post Production has worked closely with Sky News to bring this important story to the widest possible audience and 10 Years Of Darkness: ISIS & The Yazidis represents the chance to give a fuller account of the horrors faced by the Yazidi population. Journalists, producers and camera operators have risked life and liberty to uncover painful and disturbing truths, and Post Production are proud to have played a part in the vital dissemination of such a shocking narrative, which may finally achieve the prominence it deserves.

10 Years Of Darkness: ISIS & The Yazidis is a hard watch looking, as it does, down the barrel at the very worst that humanity has to offer. But it's also a story that deserves more than just a five-minute update on the nightly news. As Alex Crawford puts it: ‘This isn’t an exposé because it is not just a slight indiscretion, it is systemic abuse and rape on a massive scale.’

Michael Town – Post Producer

We were approached towards the end of 2024 by the Sky News longform team to work on a new documentary led by their Special Correspondent, Alex Crawford, about the systematic slaughter of the Yazidi people. It was to be delivered in HD and 5.1 with an open-ended TX date so as we approached year’s end we worked closely with the team to provide enough flexibility going into the New Year to perfect the story and ensure they were happy with their final result. 

This wouldn’t be the first Alex Crawford documentary to come through our doors so I knew from the outset what kind of project this would be. Not just from a visual and audio perspective, but also the kind of story the News team would be looking to tell, so we needed to make sure it was handled by people we knew would understand the project from the get-go. With that in mind I picked a team who would be immediately familiar with this type of film. Given their technical backgrounds, as well as their history of working on News Docs, Julien Wilcock in Online, Monica Ramirez in Audio and Mark Mulcaster for the Grade were the perfect fit. As a result, when production then moved into Final Post we were off to flying start and managed to turn the project around within a week.

Despite the often difficult subjects covered by Sky News, our team’s enthusiasm for working on important stories like these shines through which is something I’m really proud off here at Sky Post. I’ve Post Produced several documentaries for them now and each time we finish I’m always enormously grateful to them for the trust they put in us in helping tell these stories that so often go unnoticed. It’s always a very collaborative process working with them, and this time was no different, producing a very moving and thought provoking film. I’m very proud of the part we’ve played in bringing the story of the Yazidi people further into the light.

Julien Wilcock – Online Editor

10 Years of Darkness: ISIS & The Yazidis, delivers an in-depth portrait of a community that has faced unimaginable violence. In this 60-minute documentary, Alex Crawford chronicles the systematic slaughter of the Yazidi people by ISIS since 2014, the mass abductions of women and children, and the ensuing humanitarian crisis that still reverberates today, with many Yazidi women still enslaved 10 years on.

The documentary features raw footage from Crawford’s extensive reporting over the course of a decade from the Middle East, particularly in Syria, giving audiences a first-hand look into war zones and how people who are subjected to terror try to piece together their recovery. It also features the story of Kovan, a young Yazidi from northern Iraq whose life was overturned when she was abducted by ISIS militants at the age of 14, and Farida Khalaf, a Yazidi author and human rights activist whose village, Kocho in northern Iraq, was attacked by ISIS.

The brief from Sky News was to improve the quality of the archive as much as possible. As some of the material was extremely graphic and, in some cases, very sensitive, we needed to apply some blurring to protect viewers as well as the identities of some of the contributors. The biggest challenges were the varying formats and quality of the footage. As filming took place over a period of 10 years, and because some of the footage was recorded in very volatile locations where reporters couldn’t go, there was substantial variation in quality. We also received a lot of amateur propaganda material which was very old and, in some cases, filmed on mobile phones. Luckily, I have some extremely powerful tools at my disposal allowing me to pick the best software to fix any given issue. Avid, Baselight, Da Vinci Resolve and After Effects all came into use at various times throughout the Online to improve the quality of the footage in the documentary. I spent time correcting frame rates, aspect ratios, fixing blanking errors and stabilising material to make sure everything was correct for the viewer. I also had to replace a lot of stock footage with the hi-res versions and to also add motion to some hi-res stills.  

It's always a pleasure working with Mark Mulcaster and Monica Ramirez. Their skilled work on the Grade and Audio really elevates the final documentary. We all work together brilliantly and it’s a real bonus to have everyone working in close proximity, allowing us to make any changes quickly and easily. On top of that, the clients were great. They came in for the briefing and explained everything clearly. They were on-hand for any questions and dropped into the edit whenever I had anything to run by them. Once we had the final Audio mix and everything else was complete, they came back in to watch the finished documentary for sign off and delivery and were really happy with the end result.

Mark Mulcaster – Colourist

Working on films for Sky News is always a humbling experience. From a craft perspective you always need to remember your role in the wider production which is to help to elevate the story as best you can. The documentary covers ten years of reporting on the terror and slaughter of the Yazidi people, and it was important to get that narrative to air as realistically as possible to preserve the emotional impact.

As with many of the documentaries from Sky News that come through us in Post, the creative direction was: 'avoid being too heavily stylised.' That means not distracting the viewer by drawing too much attention to the Grade, so a large part of my role was about helping to keep story honest and real as well as creating a sense of consistency. 10 Years Of Darkness contains a number of interviews shot at different times using a similar set-up and background from which the full-frame graphics took their cue so the visual style needed to flow with the graphics so that they didn’t jar when cutting to similar backgrounds. The interviews were nicely shot so it was a case of balancing them with one another and trying to get any pickup interviews to look consistent with the main interviews.

We wanted to lean into the historical nature of the older archive and separate it out from present day. This was achieved by slightly desaturating the colours and giving it a bit of a bleach bypass feel, not to create a full on ‘flashback’ look but to help visually create that separation. Archive footage varied in quality as the cameras used by Sky News have vastly improved in the last 10 years. That's alongside the ever-improving quality of user generated content (or mobile phone footage). This in itself helps to distinguish the change over time, but care was needed not to make the older footage look worse than it already did. One scene which stands out, and occurs towards the end of the film, is of Alex Crawford looking over some of the photos of women still being held in captivity. The original shot was quite stark and I felt it needed to be made more sombre to reinforce the seriousness of the situation and the desperation of these women. In a News documentary that's something a Colourist can do without taking anything away from the realism of the subject.

It makes me proud to work on a documentary such as this this and I have the greatest respect for journalists like Alex Crawford who won’t let a story drop just because it’s no longer making headlines. In fact, it makes their work even more important and is a reminder of what continues to go on in the wider world. My hope is that the story makes an impact and that somehow the remaining women are able to return to their friends and families soon.

Monica Ramirez Leon – Re-recording Mixer

10 Years of Darkness is a raw, emotional, and honest look at what the Yazidi people have gone through—and what they’re still going through.  I was introduced to this project early enough to familiarize myself with the narrative, which allowed me to visit the offline edit and discuss it beforehand. The brief was clear: help bring to life a story that reveals the full scale of the horrors the Yazidi community has faced during this 10-year ordeal, through intimate, first-hand accounts. It quickly became clear that this was going to be something deeply human and difficult, but incredibly important.

I’ve been collaborating with Sky News for a long time from Hotspots to, most recently, The Beast as well as The Last Hospital: 30 Days In Myanmar and it’s always exciting. They consistently support serious, frontline journalism, and 10 Years Of Darkness is a perfect example of that. It’s one of those projects that really sticks with you, both emotionally and creatively. 

The hardest part was listening to these stories over and over during the mix. What Yazidi women and children endured—and, as Alex Crawford puts it, are still enduring—was horrifying. From a technical standpoint, the challenge was dealing with audio from all kinds of sources: camera footage, interviews, ISIS propaganda videos, each with its quirks and quality issues. 

To get the mix right I relied on a solid toolkit to handle the variety and condition of the audio. Izotope RX10 is brilliant for cleaning up noisy or damaged recordings, Supertone Clear gives extremely good vocal clarity and I also like to use Waves plugins for overall mix shaping. The music mixing also played a huge role, helping to bring emotion without overwhelming the narrative. The creation of a textured soundscape using natural atmospheres and layers helps ground viewers in these real environments. 

Was it tough to work on? Absolutely. But these are the kinds of stories that need to be told, and it’s an honour to play a part in bringing them to life. I'll be watching when it airs, seeing the final mix live is always a proud moment.