The Beast

A new documentary tells the story of The Beast - or The Train of Death - an infamous freight train that carries thousands of migrants on one of the most dangerous journeys through Mexico, towards the US border. Fronted by Sky News chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay, it tracks the human stories on board, as it follows their journey. Created by the International Emmy Award-winning team behind The Last Hospital: 30 Days in Myanmar, it couldn't be more timely following president-elect Donald Trump's recent victory.

With immigration forming a key battleground during the US election, the film will look at the human side of an issue that is being touted as the centrepiece of Mr Trump's agenda. Stricter immigration enforcement across the region, as well as escalating cartel violence along the route, means the journey is now more perilous than ever before. It explores the challenging situations that led migrants to flee their home countries and considers the implication that mass migration has on US policy - particularly in this election year.

With unparalleled access, Sky News offers a rare insight into the lives of those making this treacherous journey, risking everything for a better life. The documentary sheds light on the personal toll of mass migration and understands the humanity behind the migrant headlines and numbers as it follows this difficult and dangerous journey.

The Beast is available on Sky Documentaries and Sky News from Friday 22 November. For a short excerpt click here

Michael Town – Post Producer

We’ve been working closely with the documentary team from Sky News for several years now and over that time they’ve trusted us to work on a wide range of projects. That has included focusing on stories close to home such as the UK election and public sector strikes, but also those further afield following the resistance movements in Myanmar and the ongoing war in Ukraine. So, after quite a heavy focus on UK politics at the start of the year, when the production team came to us at the start of the summer with the concept for a new documentary, we were all very excited to get stuck into a project which we knew from the outset would have a really important story to tell.

Initially, all we know was that it was a story about migrants travelling through Mexico to the US border on board a freight train that has been nicknamed The Beast by the migrants who make the perilous journey. With a tight deadline in mind, I knew this would be a challenging project to work on for our teams, not only from an editorial standpoint but technically as well, so it was especially important to make sure we had the right team for the job. It was noted early on that there were various similarities with the previous documentary The Last Hospital: 30 Days in Myanmar, which had recently enjoyed huge success and acclaim with a win at the International Emmy Awards – it made sense to try and replicate that again with a similar approach.

David Ormston was the natural choice as both Offline and Online Editor having worked with Sky News Docs regularly over the last few years. David immediately understood the way in which the story would need to be told and came in with the kind of collaboration that would be needed to work out the right approach to take. As we moved through the various stages of the Edit, he was then able to guide the Offline with Final Post in mind so that we could pre-empt any difficult scenes

David Ormston – Offline/Online Editor

I was working on another documentary for Sky News when Long Form Producer, Helen Clifford, approached me to talk about a special project. She gave me a rough outline describing it as a current affairs/travelogue/human interest story. The basic brief was to create a 30- or 60-minute piece about Stuart Ramsay’s latest investigation, following a mythical goods train that travels up through Mexico and whose carriages are used by migrants crossing the country in the hope of reaching the US. It turned out to be so much more than that.

This is the story of a journey, and the train is undoubtedly at the core, but we follow amazingly courageous people as they try to complete the trek across Mexico against the odds. A young boy of fourteen travelling on his own who Stuart found at a Mexican checkpoint, a Grandmother travelling with her entire family, and a woman, eight months pregnant, with her husband. They were all dealing with unimaginable hardship on a journey to what they were hoping would be a better life. There is danger, heartbreak, courage and raw emotion throughout the programme.

The Beast was entirely constructed from original material making the impact of the story that much more immediate as it keeps you ‘in the moment’ with the people involved. This was especially important because the shoot was so dangerous for the migrants, and for Stuart and his team putting themselves at huge risk by riding ‘The Beast’, sitting on top of the speeding train, night and day with no safety measures and often in the pitch black.

Helen and I worked closely together and found a good balance of collaborating in the suite and then working separately, dividing our time and then catching up when we needed to review. There were also times when Stuart Ramsay and his producer Dominique Van Heerden would come in and work with us as well, or we would have a Teams call with another producer, Uli, in Mexico, for any additional filming that we needed. The main challenge from an editing point of view was the language barrier. Around eighty percent of the footage was in Spanish, a language in which I can order a beer, but little else. But I’ve worked on foreign language documentaries many times before, set in places as far afield as Russia, Ukraine and Afghanistan, so we followed a well-trodden path ensuring that everything went to translators who then sent us timecoded transcripts which we then imported into Avid for editing and subtitling. Luckily, our Dubbing mixer Monica Ramirez is also Spanish speaking which was a real bonus with the audio mix.

Being both offline and online editor is not something that we normally do. It’s good to have a second pair of eyes on films like this, however, for The Beast it made the process easier. I was well aware of any challenges from the offline and able to fix some things before the programme was even picture locked. The main thing I added in online was some stabilization to a few shots but from a personal point of view, it was great to be able to see the programme through from start to finish, experiencing first-hand the amazing work done by Monica in Audio and Mark Mulcaster in the Grade. Working with Post Producer Mike Town is always great as he’s really proactive at mitigating potential issues. In this case the only one we really had was that the delivery was moved forward by a day to hit the deadline for submission to the RTS Awards. It’s much more than simply a question of vanity because any major awards, such as Stuart’s recent project The Last Hospital: 30 Days In Myanmar which won an International Emmy, are crucial to promoting these stories to the widest possible audience. They also ensure that future projects are looked upon more favourably and are more likely to be approved.

Mark Mulcaster – Colourist

I saw the original Sky News story that Stuart Ramsay put out in June and thought at the time that it would make an interesting documentary. I had no idea that it would become a bigger story and that I would be involved in the Post Production until some months later. La Bestia is a mammoth freight train that travels north from Southern Mexico near the border with Guatemala, right up to the border with the United States of America. Because the train travels vast distances, it’s perfect for migrants to ‘hop’ on and ride the rails all the way to the US. Whilst it sounds romantic the journey is fraught with danger with the train travelling at high speed over 1450 miles, the migrants exposed to the elements and with the risk of being caught by the Mexican authorities or drug cartels. That risk is very real and is why The Beast is also referred to as “The Train of Death”. Ramsay and his team do a fantastic job in finding the people that we follow along their journey and that the viewer can really connect with. The unplanned, chaotic aspects of the migrant communities at times produce some of the strongest visuals and it’s in those moments when the camera tries to settle on individual faces that we are reminded that they are all humans; men, women and children who just want a better life. It’s my job to ensure that we can read their anguish and fragility in a shot that may only last a second or two.

The turnaround time for the grade was just a single day so it was a huge positive having worked with Helen Clifford and the team before. Getting extra time in the grade isn’t always possible so part of the job is managing the client’s expectations and ensuring you meet your delivery deadline. Knowing the level of production that Dave had been working with and having viewed the picture-locked, offline sequence ahead of time meant I could enter the grade knowing what was lying in wait me. The film was predominantly original shot material from four main sources: A Sony FX6, a Panasonic GH5, GoPro’s and a drone. With a job like this you need to be efficient, so once I’ve looked at the film and have a sense of the cameras being used and their quality and essence, I try and work out a look that’s not too complicated and that I’m not likely to battle against. This means I pick out different scenes to audition the look against and then check a number of aspects of the grade on the shot. For example, how is it handling the contrast? Are the skin tones faithful or will I need to do more secondary adjustments to fix them? How are overly saturated colours being handled and do I need to build additional steps to fix those? Then, when I’m relatively happy that I have a look that’s not going to detract from the film and gets me close to where I want to be, I build a grade layer stack in Baselight. This has all the things I regularly use like shapes on the left and right side of the screen with my preferred level of softness and feathering, vignettes and highlight recovery keys etc. This is so that I’m not having to repeat so many actions shot to shot. I apply that across the entire film and then make a start. For a film like this it makes sense to work linearly as it’s a journey and the locations will inform the grade to some extent.

The sign-off was booked in for about 3:30pm so that gave me six and a half hours to grade and then check the grade before Helen came in for a viewing and also action some PSE (photosensitive epilepsy) fails during a couple of scenes. With a runtime of about 45 minutes and a total of 687 cuts, I had to grade the film, check it back, do a final client review and then deliver back so that it could be prepped for online overnight, all in one day. After the grade sign-off I would revisit markers which had I left on the timeline during the viewing so as not to stop or slow down the sign-off. Any smaller things that I felt I could improve upon without dramatically changing the grade I would tend to do once the client has signed-off.

A grade like this one isn’t overly stylised. Ultimately, it’s a news piece and too heavy a grade would detract from the legitimacy of the film. However, I leant into the dusty warmth of the South American visuals we were seeing and so lifted the blacks and gave a soft roll-off to the highlights. There were a couple of important scenes shot at night and the aim there was to lift the images to make them more easily viewable as well as trying to lessen the impact of the handheld strobing torches the Mexican authorities were using. When we first encounter The Beast rolling out of the darkness, I wanted to create a sense of scale as well as an imposing image, so I rolled the highlights back and let them really bloom out, so that they looked more like balls of fire heading towards to the screen. That was probably as artistic as I got, with the exception of some sunrises and sunsets.

The workflow we employ in Sky Post is robust but flexible and makes allowances for possible final, creative adjustments to the edit after the grade and during the online. The grade should always be technically correct and meet the client brief but there will almost always be times when you wish you had been able to spend a bit more time on a scene. I have a good understanding when working with Helen as to what she is looking for from the grade and so that meant I could try and pre-empt any form of requests during sign-off and just view the film and make any final adjustments where needed. Besides the time aspect the only real issues were the extreme strobing from the hand-held torches. The fix is pretty limited, so I reduce the highlights and the contrast in either portions of the image using tracked shapes or across the entire screen. I employed Baselight’s Deflicker tool which smoothed some of the flashing as well. It won’t remove the strobing, but it helps reduce the severity of it.

Dave Ormston did a great job with cutting the story and bringing out the emotion of the scenes in offline. Sadly, the audio mix tends to happen at the same time as the grade so I very rarely get to hear the final mix in the suite but having worked with Monica on numerous other productions I can’t wait to listen to it as she always does such a wonderful job.

Monica Ramirez – Re-recording Mixer

When I was asked to mix The Beast, a documentary about the perilous journey of migrants traveling aboard freight trains across Mexico, I was immediately drawn to its raw and powerful story. As a dubbing mixer, I thrive on the unique challenges that news documentaries bring, and this project was a great opportunity to use my native Spanish-language skills while tackling some complex audio challenges.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Sky News Documentaries before, including The Last Hospital: 30 Days in Myanmar, which recently won the International Current Affairs Emmy award. That experience made me even more excited to be part of the team on The Beast. In the past, I worked on Hotspots: On the Frontline for five seasons, which gave me invaluable experience in the complexities and emotions of reporting from high-risk areas around the world. That project marked my introduction to news documentaries, and I’ve been hooked ever since

Mixing The Beast came with its own set of challenges. The opener, in particular, required a creative mix of library sounds and field recordings to capture the raw power of the train. The constant noise from nearby motorways and occasional train tracks made dialogue clarity a real concern throughout the project. Using tools like Waves C4 for dynamic range control, iZotope RX10 for noise reduction, and Supertone Clear to enhance vocal clarity, I was able to ensure the interviews stayed clear and intelligible, while still preserving the environmental authenticity.

The Beast offers a powerful, necessary perspective on the migration crisis, and while it’s a tough watch, I’m proud to have played a part in telling its story through sound.