The Overlap On Tour - Series 2

Peter Green – Post Producer

We were very pleased to welcome back Buzz 16 Productions and The Overlap on Tour - Series 2 after the outstanding success of the first series. From a Post Production point of view this looked like being a fairly straightforward project although we had an incredibly tight turnaround from receiving the rushes to getting the Offline edit started. The rushes arrived on the Saturday afternoon and the production wanted to be editing first thing on Monday morning. This was the expectation two weekends in a row and our Edit Ops team managed to turn it around on both occasions so that the Offline team could hit the ground running.

All four Offline edits were running simultaneously with each working on a different episode. With TX in mind, Episode One went into Final Post first and then each episode followed suit for four weeks in a row. Chris Hay had an awful lot of work to do in the Online with a huge amount of painting out of crew members to do. Given the dynamic nature of the filming there were a lot of people in shot for a lot of the VT sequences which Chris described as one of the hardest Online edits he’s ever done. We’re lucky to have such strong relationship with each other at Sky as Chris was having to work closely with Mark Mulcaster in the Grade to have everything ready by the deadline. With the tight turnaround and multiple back-to-back episodes, Marek Bielski in Audio was also doing five days a week, flat out for four straight weeks and was incredibly busy…but I’ll leave him to explain all that.

Liam Stiles - Workflow Supervisor

After working with Buzz 16 on Series 1, we had a roadmap in the lead-up to Series 2, specifically on how we would all work together to deliver an even smoother production second time around. This year’s VTs, Studio shoots and Edit were on a tight schedule, so we utilised LucidLink so that production could send over material from abroad, internet connection permitting. Due to variable internet we often returned to our Plan B – which was to send all the raw footage over to Sky on SSDs.

At our end, it’s important to form an alliance of Edit Assistants for projects where you envisage challenges occurring despite careful workflow planning. That way at least people will keep talking and will remain across a project’s quirks, nuances and pitfalls. No matter how much you try to workflow things out, 99 percent of the time something doesn’t go to plan! So, communication, working closely together, and applying brain power and forethought in the moment is key. We made a group chat – which at times was a cacophony during the ingest & final post stages – but it made the handover processes way, way simpler and ensured that key information wasn’t lost in the ether.

A lot of people in Edit Ops had a hand in this project ranging from sussing out hard drives, to unprecedented hitches in the grade preps & conform - Diana Olszewska, Irene Ofosu, Zak Jaques, Caitlin Hattersley, Jamie Foster, Jason Gallacher and Issy O’Brien all deserve a mention. Kudos also to Post Producer Peter Green, as well as Post Production Coordinator Francisca 'Kika' Ribeiro Paiva for keeping everything on track.

Marek Bielski – Re-Recording Mixer 

I always look forward to working with Buzz 16 and a returning production gave me a great opportunity to develop our partnership. On a production like this it’s all about your relationship with the client. There has to be trust going both ways to make the room as comfortable, creative and productive as possible. Producer Jamie is a veteran from another Sky staple, A League of Their Own, and Kate I knew from multiple series of The Russell Howard Hour having worked on all six series before.  Luke, the Exec Producer, is terrific because he knows exactly what he wants and trusts you to deliver your best work with minimal input, which is great on such a technical production. The Overlap On Tour is a really good show and certainly fits into the idea of what I would call ‘premium content’. With that in mind the Mix needs to reflect the aspirations of the Producers and Commissioner.

A show of this nature, which is essentially up to six people constantly talking over each other, has the potential to be a huge challenge. Luke's ambition for the sound was that his 80-year-old mum should be able to sit at home and enjoy the show without the need for subtitles. I agree. A show like The Overlap doesn't work unless you can hear exactly what everyone is saying. A lot of the humour relies on sly and quiet asides from Roy Keane and being able to follow the story from Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville whist they’re yelling at each other. This does mean that music and FX have to make way more than usual. Traditionally, the music is loud in these kinds of shows to hype the excitement but the dynamic between the guys is natural and free flowing, meaning music doesn’t need to carry the energy. As a result, this involves painstaking roll-your-sleeves-up dialogue editing, listening to every word and balancing the levels in order of importance to the scene.

The locations proved challenging as well – outdoor Olympic swimming pools, working harbours, on-board racing yachts in a thunderstorm, at busy beaches and in noisy restaurants. All of these situations involved cleaning the dialogue as much as possible for which I use a combination of tools including Supertone Clear, which is a non-generative, one-shot plug-in that removes background noise with very few variables, and Izotope, which is an incredibly powerful, multi-functioning and multi-faceted tool for noise reduction, de-reverb, de-plosive, re-balancing and a host of other functions.

Once I’ve done all that I’m then on to rebuilding the background for the dialogue to sit in convincingly. I have deliberately not driven loud music over the top just to hide the flaws but kept the dialogue as clear as possible. In the exciting bits with no speech that meant I was then able to use a lot of really dramatic FX to enhance the music. Bass drops, booms and whooshes - things that you would normally associate with Promos - were sprinkled in liberally to contrast with the straight-up speech elsewhere. I also used a lot of long, rich reverb to help transition between scenes.

Luke and Jamie were very appreciative of the work that was put in and very happy with the sound of the show. They could finally hear a lot of action and speech that was lost or muddy in the Offline edit. The Editor doesn’t have the time or resources to sort out this level of detail but that's why I sit in front of a mixing desk - to ensure our clients, and in turn our viewers, are happy with Sky Post Production, and that we continue to have success on screen. I really enjoy working on this show – it’s definitely one of the most high-profile things we do so to deliver a top mix is very satisfying indeed.

Mark Mulcaster – Colourist

Season 2 consists of 4 x 45minute episodes with various activities at each location, all shot on four different cameras, including an Arri, a Sony FX 6, drones and GoPros. As with the first season there was also a multi-camera studio record to create the links between each VT which needed to be blended into the overall show. Each episode had two days of Grade time, including the signoffs, with the brief the same as season one; to give the show a fun, glossy, and vibrant look that also ties into the cities and, for the studio record, to balance the nine different ISO cameras.

The VTs were cut at a pretty fast pace which made it quite challenging in terms of numbers of cuts per episode, but once I was able to balance between each camera per set-up, it was pretty consistent. Each episode focused on a European city filmed earlier in the year with some of the B-Roll having been shot prior to or after the talent and the change in overhead conditions was significant. It was unfortunate that the production didn’t have the best luck with the weather but that gave me the opportunity to brighten up flat and overcast scenes in Rome and Barcelona which, had the production arrived one week earlier or later wouldn’t have needed to be a consideration. The drone footage was Graded to try and give the wow factor for each city, so I pushed the vibrancy especially in ensuring, where possible, that the seas always looked blue as well as the skies.

I really enjoyed the challenge of Grading Overlap again. It’s such a funny series to work on and the production team are so easy to work with. Signoffs were hugely enjoyable and were done on site at Sky Post.

Chris Hay – Online Editor

The Overlap On Tour Series 2 is a returning show so we had an idea of what to expect. Primarily, that means the normal technical expectations of any Online edit which features studio set-ups interspersed with live locations as well as ensuring that everything passes our rigorous QC standards. The main note from the Producers was to get rid of as many in-vision cameras and drones as possible in the time available. This was a two-day Online, including sign-off and delivery which meant lots of painting needed to be done, and fast! Many of the cameras were hand-held and thus moving all the time with crew and drones weaving behind people and objects, meaning some very tricky painting out was required. The clients let me know what they were after in terms of what to paint out and fully appreciated the time constraints we were under.

To achieve results quickly, I use Avid Effects such as the Paint Tool and Animatte, but I also use After Effects Content Aware Fill which can give some amazing results at pace.

Given the tight turnaround I needed to keep in constant contact with Marek in Audio and Mark in the Grade. I wasn’t able to supply Marek with Online pictures as I would normally do but we’ve worked a lot together in the past and there’s always good communication between us which really smooths everything out and makes sure we deliver on time. Final Post at Sky is a well-oiled machine, and we’re well used to delivering quality at speed.