The Dyers' Caravan Park

Father-daughter duo Danny and Dani Dyer are on a mission to bring back the Great British holiday (in suitably chaotic fashion) with new Sky Original series, The Dyers' Caravan Park.

Becoming investors in family-run Priory Hill Caravan Park on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, the pair have their work cut out for them as they invest their time and money into this once-great institution. Trying to breathe new life into the industry – while honouring the memories Danny has of caravan holidays from his childhood in the 80s – the duo are soon putting in a lot of hard graft to give the park a boost.

Sky Post Production partnered with Expectation Entertainment to bring this hilarious, heart-warming and occasionally chaotic revival of the Great British Holiday to life.

Read on to discover how...

Vickie Mansell – Senior Post Producer

The brief was to provide Full Post Production for this six-part series following Danny Dyer and his daughter, also called Dani, as they set out to celebrate and revive the Great British Holiday. What could be easier? 

Set at Priory Hill Holiday Park in Leysdown, the series reveals the reality of running a busy holiday park and introduces the dedicated team as well as the residents who keep it thriving. The turnaround time was lengthy as the production was due to follow the Dyers throughout the entire holiday park season — from pre-opening preparations at the start of 2025 through to the season’s close in November.

Having worked with Expectation on a range of productions, we were delighted to be chosen to take on full Post for this series. Although we began with a clear outline of what was required, we knew the story would naturally evolve as key events unfolded throughout the season. Filming took place across ten months, with two to three shoot days per week at times. Managing the media - ingesting, grouping, syncing, and ensuring everything was readily available to the edit - was a continual process. Thanks to Sky Post’s robust infrastructure and the diligence of the Edit Operations team, this became seamless and, ultimately, business as usual. The main challenges for Sky Post were editorial. As the crew got to know the holiday park team and residents, the stories expanded rapidly, resulting in an abundance of material. The priority for the Edit team was to refine this wealth of content down, and to decide what should make the final cut.

The Offline editors worked in a hybrid setup, combining remote working with onsite days at Sky’s headquarters in Osterley, an approach which proved hugely beneficial. Whilst remote editing offered flexibility and focus, the onsite days enabled full collaboration with the wider Post team, as well as with the Series Editor, Ish Kalia, and Executive Producer, Jordan Read. Although Sky Post Editors were not involved in the offline from the outset, we were able to introduce several as the series progressed. Their versatility meant they could immediately slot into the workflow, complementing the existing editorial team.

In Final Post, having Mark Mulcaster on Grade, Chris Hay in Online, and Marek Bielski on the Mix was an easy decision. All three are exceptional in their craft, and each brought their own inimitable skillset to the series, elevating the final product. Overall, the production was a great success and a clear demonstration of Sky Post’s resilience, collaboration, and strength as a facility.

Adam Boys – Post Production Coordinator

Prior to climbing aboard the Dyer train, I had never acted as the sole Post Production Coordinator before so, safe to say, I was more than excited and up for the challenge. Any pre-match nerves were put to bed immediately by Vickie Mansell, the Senior Post Producer on the project, who made me feel right at home.

Having collaborated on previous projects such as Miracles and Dynamo is Dead, I was fully aware of the working relationship between Sky and Expectation, and the deep level of trust rooted in it.

As Post Production Coordinator, my main task was client liaising, from checking in with production over incoming rushes, to ensuring that all of the Editors were set up and looked after. There was never a dull day working on this production, no two days were ever the same and I had to be ready for any challenges which came my way. That’s when exceptional teamwork and communication came into play, something which was seamless across the board. One of my favourite aspects of working on the show was, during those testing moments, trying to make everything fit into place. When it finally did, there was no better feeling.

The Dyers' Caravan Park will certainly turn heads, keep the audience on the edge of their seat and have them guessing what'll come next - it took so much creativity and hard work from everyone involved, but I can't wait for audiences to see it in its entirety. That, I think, will be my favourite moment of all.

Jon Slade – Offline Editor

The Dyers’ Caravan Park was originally intended to follow a traditional edit pattern with each episode having its own dedicated Editor. However, as filming and editing progressed, it became clear that Sky Editors would be an excellent and integral way to build on the solid groundwork laid by the freelance offline team. I was the first of those, having previously worked with Expectation on Dynamo is Dead and Miracles.

I spent around ten weeks with the team, refining most of the episodes to some degree. Particular attention was paid to Episodes One and Two, requiring more extensive rearranging and rebuilding from scratch in places so that the start of this new series would land with audiences in the best possible way.

For this reason, the arrangement of opening scenes posed a challenge as this sets the tone and mood to keep viewers engaged. A lot of elements came and went (and came back and went away again - which is all part of the Offline process). The decision to start each episode with a random short scene as a ‘cold open’ stems from here. You also need to try and get your main stars on site and running as quickly as possible, whilst also explaining the background and history of the caravan park and motivation of the Dyers to get involved in the running of it. Episode One sets the style, so I was tasked to come up with visual styles and motifs to give the series an identity. I devised a re-occurring split screen template, which is used to transition between scenes - and this, along with the GFX style and opening title card were elements of mine which remained unchanged.

Stylistically, we also made some choices as to how choppy the edit might be, and how ‘dirty’ we’d allow the camerawork to be as part of the overall look.

It is clear that Danny and Dani are serious about their venture, despite the rushes being frequently hilarious - so some difficult decisions were made to hone everything down.

Lee Mynett – Offline Editor

Having worked on large-scale productions such as Portrait Artist of the Year, I’m very comfortable navigating significant volumes of material. This series was no exception.

I was initially brought in to cut smaller scenes and pre-titles sequences for insertion into full episodes. However, as the series evolved, so did my role. I began cutting longer narrative sections, restructuring episode arcs, shaping the overarching series narrative, and actioning executive and commissioner notes ahead of Online.

All footage had been synced and grouped by our in-house Edit Operations team, which dramatically streamlined the editorial process. With a robust folder structure and clearly labelled group clips, we were able to locate moments quickly despite the scale of the rushes. That infrastructure was critical, particularly as episodes were not fully ‘set’ and scenes frequently moved around to better serve the developing story arc.

One of the biggest challenges was finding the genuine nuggets of comedy and heart amongst the sheer volume of material. This is where working closely with the Production team was invaluable. Executive Producer, Jordan and Series Producer, Claudia had been on location throughout the shoot and were able to pinpoint where standout dialogue or emotionally resonant moments had occurred, saving time and ensuring we maximised the strongest material.

Maintaining the continuity presented further challenges, particularly as much of the series was filmed outdoors. As scenes were repositioned between episodes we had to be meticulous about weather conditions, seasonal shifts, and environmental changes. Continuity considerations extended to visible developments across the location such as newly occupied caravans filling previously empty pitches, playgrounds and football pitches being built midway through production, all of which required careful management through considered scene placement and B-roll selection.

I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved. For a brand-new project finding its visual language and narrative rhythm, the series has real warmth and authenticity. It’s genuinely funny but grounded, and I think audiences will connect deeply with the cast and their stories.

Jennifer Ford – Offline Editor

I loved the concept of this story. Danny and Dani Dyer investing in a caravan park on the Isle of Sheppey in a bid to revive the classic Great British holiday. What’s not to love? Driven by Danny’s nostalgia for his own childhood holidays, he’s eager to get his daughter caught up in his enthusiasm. Together with the park’s staff, they work to improve the site, attract new punters, and invest in much‑needed infrastructure. Along the way, they rope in some of Danny’s showbiz pals and get stuck into plenty of hands‑on graft, with Danny often spotted wielding a mop.

But it isn’t just about the Dyers. The heart of the story lies in the park’s staff and community: a mix of sceptics, loyal workers, and long‑term residents whose personalities, challenges and humour make the journey as endearing as it is entertaining.

I was brought in to help finish two episodes and get them through the final sign‑off stages. Having worked on large, multi‑editor projects before, I wasn’t fazed by the scale or complexity. I was already familiar with some of the clients too, which made stepping in at short notice and getting up to speed much smoother. 

As I was coming in toward the later stages, my role focused mainly on addressing notes and tidying the edit rather than cutting full scenes from scratch. A well‑established house style was already in place, which made it easy to follow. Once we knew which scenes were changing, everything became about communication. The clients kept us updated on what was shifting and the Editors seamlessly handed scenes between one another whenever needed. That constant, clear dialogue was absolutely essential.

I’m so proud of what we all managed to achieve. It’s a genuinely funny show, but it’s also much more than that. You find yourself invested not just in the park, but in the Dyers, the staff, and the residents too. I genuinely want to know how they all get on next year…which is a pretty good sign. Roll on Season 2!

Nicky Barrett – Offline Editor

With many years of experience editing across multiple genres I was brought in when deadlines were looming. Being able to walk into a project, quickly understand its tone and intended audience and start shaping something that feels both engaging and intentional is something I really enjoy. I also relish the problem-solving that comes with editing. Being adaptable and calm under pressure whilst translating feedback into clear and creative solutions creates a great bond with the client as well as a sense of mutual understanding, so working with Expectation to create new scenes whilst fine cutting on this new series has been a lot of fun.

Working on a brand-new show like The Dyers’ Caravan Park is the most exciting kind of project to be on board. You can experiment and take risks and really try to push the boundaries, something that’s not always possible once a show has established its format over several years. With this being the first season we were able to do just that. Carefully establishing and maintaining the tone was critical. Pacing, music choices, comedic timing, reaction shots and cliffhangers all needed to feel intentional and consistent. We wanted the audience to really feel the highs and lows of the park and be invested in the characters as that’s where I really believe the show finds its voice. 

For me, The Dyers’ Caravan Park is a funny, heart-warming show which I’m proud to have helped bring to life. Everyone at Expectation and Sky Post Production worked brilliantly together to capture Danny and Dani’s rather unique father-daughter bond, full of laughter, highs and lows, and heartfelt moments, while showcasing the charm and chaos of running a caravan park.

Mark Mulcaster - Colourist

When Powerhouse Sky Post Production Post Producer Vickie Mansell first told me that I’d been booked to grade the first season of Dyer’s Caravan park I was immensely excited and intrigued to see how this show would turn out. The premise of a British acting legend saving the great British holiday was a noble one and where better to start than on a caravan park on the isle of Sheppey!

Vickie arranged a day before filming started properly to create a show look and a show LUT that Production could use throughout the shoot. I came up with a few different base looks using Baselight’s Chromagen Look Development Tool which gave several variants to choose from.

The chosen option featured a notably strong contrast curve and high saturation which was quite warm with rich skin tones. I then created LUTs for external and internal environments for both Sony and Canon cameras based on the test clips provided. The various interiors were relatively dark and only lit by what practical lighting there was already in the room. This meant we’d need either a more generalised Look or a separate LUT specific for darker environments. We opted for the latter.

Creating show LUTS assumes that these would be used in both the monitoring on set and in Offline editorial, the idea being that if the shoot is being viewed through the LUT the Director and DOP can get an idea of how the footage will look like in the Offline and subsequently the Grade. It also allows for a level of consistency with camera exposure and when setting colour temperature.

The show was filmed using Sony and Canon cameras, various drones for GVs, Go Pros, and other equipment.  The specific cameras used varied from episode to episode, depending on what was being filmed.  This made some setups quite a challenge with the number of cameras versus the number of cuts. Each show was around 1,000 - 1,250 cuts and had a number of different setups including office chats, on-site walk-arounds, interviews inside caravans as well as various other events which all needed to be captured.

Several months on, the production transitioned into Final Post. Whilst the episode was conformed by our skilled Edit Assistants I went and discussed the Grade with the Series Editor, Ish Kalia, who asked me to give it a fairly natural look yet with some identity. This was an evolution from the show look that had been created months before, so my first task on Day 1 of the Grade was to revisit that look and revise it based on what we discussed. But after some time with Jordan and Ish, we felt the grade was still a bit over stylised for the show. Mulling over those notes and my own thoughts I came back in on the third day of the grade and stripped everything back further. 

We began to feel that the entire show could be lowered in brightness. Jordan wanted the show to feel a bit dark and dingy to begin with, and also colder to represent the time of year. Some of the scenes were captured in bright winter sunshine rather than the typical winter gloom of the UK – so to offset this, I leant into cooling the grade down further and added a fairly aggressive highlight roll off to try and reduce the brilliance of the footage. 

The exception to this gloomier vibe was the opening introduction that I graded to be a bit more optimistic and idealised. The pre-title opening monologue that Danny delivers felt to me like it was looking back at better, pre-Thatcher years where the summers were long and warm and the great British caravan park holiday was the go-to for millions of Brits every year. As the pre-titles went through a number of post picture lock editorial revisions, I revised the grade a little to tone it down a bit to fit closer into the rest of the show, but I liked the abrupt tonal change to a horrible, cold misty and very wet present day. I felt this emphasised and added somewhat of a comic note to the cut.

As the season progressed, I revised the Grade stack further across the next episode. As the season moved from spring to summer the Grade followed suit, however I was conscious not to make the show too bright and summery to maintain that relatively natural looking Grade.
The camera work across the first season remained consistent so I knew what to expect from a new episode. Each show had quite a few different set-ups, many of which were unique to that episode, so there was always plenty to do! 

Each episode had a number of split screens which were used as a transition device to act as a jump in time and/or location. These needed to be rebuilt in the conform so that I could get the context of the split screens as the editors used several clips in each one. Part of the benefit of Sky Post Production’s workflow is the media-less Baselight roundtrip whereby the Grade is delivered back to the Online as an AAF and repopulates the timeline with the Grade applied to each shot but not as newly rendered media. 

The media-less AAF workflow was also put to the test heavily as when back in Online there were some editorial changes coming from commissioning, and these changes could be actioned by Chris without the need to revisit in Grade. This meant that we could be as flexible as possible, and at various points I could go down to advise Online editor Chris Hay with any Grades that may need to be tweaked after a change. 

Chris Hay – Online Editor

Expectation are a great team, and it was fantastic to be working with them once again. This latest production, The Dyers’ Caravan Park, is at times heartwarming, laugh out loud funny and also very endearing. From an Online Editor’s perspective, the show came with the usual issues that I would anticipate from an Ob Doc series such as painting out crew members who had drifted into shot, as well as stabilising and blurring shots. With this being a brand new series, which was discovering its character and rhythm, there was a fair amount of editorial restructuring involved even after some of the episodes had been conformed, graded and had made their way to Audio. This kind of scenario isn’t new to us, and it made sense to make these changes in the Online. Fortunately, I have a strong working relationship with Re-recording Mixer, Marek Bielski, who I’ve worked with for many years so, with a few phone calls and the help of the Edit Operations team, we managed to successfully and painlessly translate these changes through to Audio.

One of our Edit Operations department team members, Jason, joined me for a couple of weeks in Online to develop his skillset. It was good to demonstrate and for him to follow the Online process from start to finish. He also managed to get some hands-on experience and made a sterling job of painting out crew and removing a time defying clock!

Marek Bielski – Re-recording Mixer

This was a new type of format for Sky so everybody was feeling their way through it to a certain extent. This show is not scripted or fixed format so it threw up a number of audio challenges.

The number of people involved was the biggest challenge - anything up to 15-20 different sources at times so navigating that without missing anything must be done forensically. The Editors only have limited time to cut the show and are maybe working to the Sound Recordists stereo mix so a deep dive into the multitrack is required to dig out every necessary word.

Multiple locations in noisy environments was another challenge. You don't want to kill the feel of the show with too much noise reduction but at the same time you need to be able to understand what people are saying with a noisy industrial mower or a machine room or sea and wind noise in the background. I had no choice in some cases other than to be brutal with noise reduction algorithms and then completely rebuild the background from scratch. 

The approach of using music sparsely in the show brings its own challenges. The dialogue and FX have to be absolutely on point or else it will sound like a mess. This involves painstaking, labour intensive editing of multi mic set-ups which require more time than a 'normal' 45 mins of TV, which may have 1 or 2 protagonists and plenty of incidental music to hide all the sins.

I got placement students Matt and Erin involved who proved themselves to be invaluable. Erin bossed it on the conforms and session builds which were complex and involved a lot of thinking on your feet. Matt has shown that he's a very promising dialogue and FX Editor and they both displayed an impressive maturity and seriousness in their approach and application to the work. Their contribution has proved invaluable to the overall product. It has been a real pleasure to give something back and pass on my 4 decades of knowledge to 2 very keen and engaged people.

The nature of this production meant there were a huge number of editorial changes so session discipline and communication between me and Chris in the Online had to be water tight. It's a credit to our systems that there were no errors to speak of and that we achieved an excellent result in sometimes challenging and complex circumstances.

Erin Adams – Trainee Audio Dubbing Assistant

As a Trainee Audio Dubbing Assistant, I got involved with the Post Production for The Dyers’ Caravan Park quite early on, beginning in autumn of last year ingesting and organising the wavs sent over by Edit Operations. The initial slow start up for us in sound did lull me into a false sense of security, I really had no idea how much I would learn because of this show. The Dyers Caravan Park has given me the opportunity to learn new skills and majorly improved both my organisational and collaborative skills, frequently checking in with my fellow assistants, the Lead Mixer and the Senior Post Producer to get info on expectations, and also help when I needed it. Of all the shows I have been able to get involved with, this has by far been the one to push me the most. 

The Lead Mixer, Marek Bileski, has been amazing through the entire process, communicating expectations with me frequently and allowing us to adapt my methods within the timeframe available. At times it may have felt overwhelming, but under the guidance of the mixers Marek and Tom Nursey, I have massively expanded my knowledge of audio postproduction. This series has truly been an amazing. 

From the beginning of the project last year, I was the main assistant providing the project build to hand over to Marek. The time spent on the show enabled me to find tips and techniques to improve our processes which I passed onto my fellow assistant, Matt, which was imperative given the time constraints. Seeing how hard the whole of Sky Post has worked on this is great. It has been wonderful to be part of such a supportive department, and I can’t wait for the next series that I can get involved with!

Matt Welham – Trainee Audio Dubbing Assistant

I have been working for Sky for 7 months now, as a Trainee Audio Dubbing Mixer, on a placement year from University Of Surrey. I have always enjoyed watching unscripted reality shows, so working on The Dyers’ Caravan Park has been really interesting. 

Primarily, my role involved conforming and preparing the project for the Audio Dubbing Mixer for the series, Marek Bielski, laying out the audio for each episode by choosing appropriate microphones for each scene. As the series progressed, I worked closely with Marek, learning new techniques to edit dialogue and voiceover, as well as background and sound effect editing. This enabled me to be able to assist with the audio mix by laying in backgrounds and effects and use my skills to help enhance the sound quality of the show alongside Marek, which has been a very exciting opportunity for me, especially in a show set in many different locations and with such a breadth of sound design opportunities.

I also worked closely with Editor Chris Hay, who was particularly helpful with explaining changes when episodes were re-edited, when shots were changed or new segments were added to enhance the storyline, enabling me to be able to make appropriate audio changes, to ensure each episode sounded professional.

What’s been most exciting is being able to play a key part in a show that I will enjoy watching with family and friends, and I’m really looking forward to hearing my work on TV at home. I have loved the opportunities I have been given to be so involved in the show and learn from such an experienced mixer as Marek. Through his thorough communication and feedback, I have developed so many key sound design and mixing techniques throughout the series and I would relish the opportunity to use these skills and be so involved in future shows like The Dyers’ Caravan Park. I have learned so much invaluable knowledge and developed skills through working on this series which will really benefit me in the future.

The Dyer’s Caravan Park is available now on the newly launched Sky One and Now.