Portrait Artist of the Year - Series 11

Now into its 11^th Season, Portrait Artist of The Year shows no sign of losing any of its appeal. Quite the reverse in fact, as the first episode of the new series posted overnight viewing figures of 443,000 - a record for Sky Arts - rising to 900,000+ over the next few days; proving that there's an audience eager, not just for the Arts in general, but for real, live artistic endeavour.

Portrait Artist of The Year clearly fills a deep-seated viewing need but it’s also evidence of the symbiotic and productive nature of the relationship between Storyvault Films and Sky Post Production. Having previously celebrated Portrait Artist of The Decade, featuring winners from the past ten years slugging it out on canvas for the eponymous title, this year we thought we’d celebrate two of the artists from behind the scenes who help to make the programme masterpiece of television. They may be at opposite ends of the Production and Post Production spectrum but Director of Photography (DOP), Jeremy Hewson, and Colourist, Ben Whitney, with their palettes of light and colour are more responsible than anyone for the look and feel of the show. We brought them together on Sky's campus and turned the limelight up to 11! (All behind the scenes photos courtesy of Ben Whitney).

Jeremy Hewson – Director of Photography

I really enjoy filming a broad mix of shows such as Peter Kay’s Car Share, Horrible Histories and Dodger for the BBC as well as Bloods for Sky. It gives me a fresh outlook on every project which is why I love working on Portrait Artist of The Year.

Battersea Arts Centre is a beautiful building full of character and it was a joy to design the lighting for this venue. We only have a day and a half to get the rig built from a bare room - so by the time the trussing and main lighting goes in, followed by the set build and then the closer lights, there are only a couple of hours to adjust and set lights before rehearsals. The lighting team do an amazing job to get it all in so quickly - but as I’m required to be on one of the cameras, I never actually get to watch all the cameras doing their thing until the first show has started and I have the occasional chance to step off the floor.

Usually on a seven-camera multicam shoot, with a lighting rig of this size, you would have a Lighting Director watching all the camera feeds and making minor adjustments to lighting and cameras on the fly to get the best out of each shot. On this show the cameras are ISO recorded (isolated) and not racked so it’s down to the Operators to make sure everything is in order from their end. Thankfully, we have an absolutely brilliant camera ops team from Sky who have all been doing the show for many series, so I know I can rely on them. They’ll all give me a shout if there’s any adjustment or additional lighting needed for a specific interview.

On a drama shoot the on-set Digital Imaging Technician (DIT) will be my main collaborator regarding the look and they will pass on our Look Up Tables (LUTs) to the Edit to be refined in the Grade, but on Portrait Artist and similar shows the log footage (flat, de-saturated picture to give the best results in the Grade) usually goes to the Edit with no LUTs or references to what we’re seeing on set. It’s usually only on drama work or a high-end Doc that I get to sit in during Colour Grading so my working relationships are generally with the Director, Producer, Gaffer and Focus Puller. Having a positive and proactive relationship with the Colourist means being able to relay the thinking behind the look person-to-person rather than mediated through others. As a DOP I’m always thinking about the final look of the show and this process normally starts well before a frame is even shot via discussions with the Director and with the selection of cameras and lenses. For this latest series of Portrait Artist we changed to Sony Burano cameras, so speaking to the Colourist, Ben Whitney, was really important and meant we definitely got the best out of the new cameras.

On this show it’s vital to strike a balance between looking warm and inviting and keeping the colours of the artworks true to how they were painted. To make things more complicated the backdrops of each “cheese”, or portion of the set with a different sitter, are repainted each night to complement the subject - so the brightness and colour of the cheese, and therefore how that effects the skin tones, will change every day. This affects the consistency and quality of the footage that goes into the Grade. As brilliant as the Camera Team are, it means that what we get across the different portions of the set and cameras is not as unified as if I was keeping an eye on them throughout the shoot - so when it comes to the Grade there is more for Ben to deal with as the Edit jumps between the different “cheeses” and cameras.

Another challenge on this show is trying to inject some light, shade and shape on the sitters to create a more interesting portrait. However, the soft wraparound lighting that the artists require to do their work tends to spill everywhere by its nature - so it’s very hard to keep this off the sitter and create some interesting lighting on them. What looks like beautiful, sculptured light to Artist 1 in a cheese will look like flat frontal light to Artist 3. Normally the use of 3/4 back lights would help this - but with the sitter so close to the back wall there’s only room for a very toppy back light. 

There is no DIT on set - just Data Wranglers - so all Ben would have to go on is the Log footage and a Sony 709 LUT in the system. So it was great to have Ben come along to set so he could see what we were seeing and we could discuss the look I wanted to achieve. Then, when I went into the suite after he’d done some initial Grading, we were able to refine what he’d done and talk about any problem areas. For example, the bounce off the coloured backgrounds didn’t seem too bad on set, but in the Grade the effect on skin tones was often dramatic. As a result, for the next series I’ll try to reduce the light levels and bounce from these. Also, our monitoring on set is only SDR. If I was only able to review the grade remotely then I wouldn’t be able to view the HDR properly, so it’s been brilliant to have Ben involved in the show, from visiting the set right through to the final grade. It was also my first visit to Sky in about 20 years - and it was mind blowing to see for myself what a massive set up it now is. It looks like it must be a brilliant place to work.

Ben Whitney - Colourist

When I began working for Storyvault it was as the online editor for Portrait Artist Of The Year Series 2. The Grade was done by someone else in Mistika before coming to me. Occasionally the Director, Southan Morris, wanted to make changes to the Grade in the Online so he suggested the possibility of me doing the Grade as well to provide much more flexibility in making changes right up to the wire if necessary. I was keen to take up his suggestion and, soon after, I started doing the Grade in Avid Symphony.

Then a couple of years after that Sky Post Production commissioned two Baselight suites and the Grading moved there. This was a huge step forward in terms of flexibility, creativity and speed. Baselight offers a wider range of tools for tasks like secondary colour correction, tracking and noise reduction, which are limited in Avid. It uses a layer system, allowing for complex and subtle colour adjustments without needing to create multiple clips or tracks. For example, in Baselight, the ability to quickly draw a shape to isolate a specific part of the image and to track it accurately is very useful. It’s often necessary to grade an artist’s canvas differently to the other parts of the shot, particularly if it’s shot with backlighting or contre-jour. Baselight also offers a plugin, Baselight for Avid, that allows for adjustments to be easily made later within the Avid editing environment.

This year for Series 11, Southan invited me down to the shoot at Battersea Arts Centre asking if I could attend for one of the days. This was to meet Jeremy Hewson, the DOP, to find out about the new cameras being used and to have a look at the different lighting set ups. It’s always good to see what the set looks like in reality and to take photographs of as much of it as possible as these can later provide a neutral reference during the grading process. On top of that, photos of the artists’ submissions on the white gallery wall provide a good anchor for the grade too. These submissions make several appearances in each episode, often some time apart, and need to look consistently accurate.

For me the two key creative relationships for any Colourist are with the Director and the DOP. The Director decides on the look or style of the production and the DOP works with them to realise this artistic vision using camera angles, lighting setups and lenses. The role of the Colourist is to then collaborate with both to achieve and enhance the vision. When Jeremy visited the Grade suite he was able to see the precise effect of the different light sources and how the reflections of the various brightly coloured sitter backdrops affect the skin tones of the sitters and artists. Seeing this first-hand has allowed him to devise a lighting strategy for future episodes which will, in theory, create less light spill and fewer reflections from the saturated backdrops. Having Jeremy on hand was invaluable for me as a Colourist. He was able to clearly articulate his vision for the look of the show and I was able to create a few alternatives while he was next to me, looking at the same monitor. The challenge with this show is to make the changes between cameras as even and unnoticeable as possible while making the show itself vibrant and enticing, and also to make sure the various artworks look as they do in reality on a gallery wall.

We were able to look at the camera output on the monitors using a specific LUT to establish the combined effect of the various lighting setups and camera angles. For example, the portrait gallery wall is initially brightly lit by diffused daylight, colour temperature lights. However, once the competition begins, this lighting changes. Each portrait is then lit by a tungsten colour temperature light and the daylight lights are either dimmed or deactivated. This wall then becomes mainly lit by tungsten with a bit of fill or overspill from the other lights. When Jeremy came to Sky Post we were able to view a selection of this footage in the Colour suite to establish a look that was the basis of the final grade. 

It was such a pleasure to be able to work with Jeremy in his role as DOP because it doesn’t happen on every job. It was extremely helpful to have his insight and experience at my disposal. Quite often the Director and DOP will either attend briefly or send in detailed notes or mood boards to describe the look and feel they want to achieve but either way it’s beneficial to have a good relationship with the DOP. It’s also important for them to know that they can contact the Colourist at any point in order to discuss changes or modifications to the grade before it is committed.

Portrait Artist of the Year Series 11 kicked off on 9th October 2024, and can be watched weekly on Sky Arts or on catch up.