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COAST
BBC Post Production Birmingham is post producing the new highly acclaimed BBC Factual and Learning series Coast for BBC Two, which explores Britain 's coastal heritage. With post production spread out across the UK and vast quantities of silent archive footage to draw upon, the project poses a unique challenge.
The 13-part series tours the entire coastline of England , Scotland , Wales and Northern Ireland , while a team of five experts, led by geographer Nicholas Crane, explore a wealth of fascinating human stories through a mixture of expert comment, contemporary storytelling and computer-generated images. Coast celebrates the unique character of the UK 's coastal communities through history, zoology, archaeology and anthropology.
BBC Post Production Birmingham is responsible for project managing post production work, as well as carrying out the majority of offline editing and grading. All of the finishing, plus track lay elements and final dubbing are also being done by BBC Post Production Birmingham.
As is the nature of programme making, production requirements continuously change and BBC Post Production Birmingham's flexibility is crucial to ensuring that the programme makers' needs are met and that the programmes are delivered in time for transmission.
Coast is a pan-BBC production with programmes made by BBC Birmingham, BBC Northern Ireland, BBC Scotland and BBC Wales, with additional material produced by the BBC's Natural History Unit in Bristol . Elements of the series are being worked on in Scotland , Northern Ireland , Wales , Birmingham and London.
A key technical challenge is trying to co-ordinate the several editing teams around the country, many of whom are using different systems to BBC Post Production Birmingham, and making sure that all of these systems talk to each other.
Six programmes are being offline edited at BBC Post Production Birmingham on a mixture of Avid Adrenalins and Media Composers. Two programmes were cut at BBC Cardiff, one is being cut at BBC Belfast, one at BBC Glasgow, two in an external cutting room in Glasgow and one in London.
All the finishing and grading is being carried out at BBC Post Production Birmingham, using an Avid Symphony, apart from two grading sessions which took place at BBC Cardiff. Grader Geoff Hockney explains, “The brief was to provide a natural but colourful look with much emphasis on blues and greens. Coast is a huge challenge due to the large variety of source material; from old to new footage and from underwater to aerial shots. We've made extensive use of secondary colour correction and multiple video layers to achieve the final look.”
BBC Post Production is keeping a tight hold on media management to make sure that every one working on Coast can find their pictures and sound easily. Lead Editor Martin Dowell and Booking Manager David Chan are working tirelessly to co-ordinate media from around the country. The key to its success is having good lines of communication with colleagues around the UK as well as looking ahead to pre-empt issues and deal with them ahead of time. Great care is being taken to maintain high quality pictures throughout the post production process – leading to stunning results.
The BBC Post Production Birmingham team is also providing a ‘Web Review' service, enabling edited sequences to be viewed remotely over the internet by Producers and Directors. This speeds up the post production process and cuts down on the need for tape transfer.
The programmes are being delivered to BBC Post Production Birmingham with the bare bones of the synchronised sound and accompanying music. The sound team is re-creating effects to help viewers feel part of the landscape as they travel around the coast to places of historical and personal insight.
BBC Post Production Birmingham has extensive experience in sound design for dramas, such as Dalziel & Pascoe , The Afternoon Plays and Doctors, h owever Coast is the first factual series the team has track layed.
Coast draws upon a large quantity of archive footage to illustrate the stories, which means there are lots of mute pictures, where sound needs to be created. Dubbing Editor Fiona Vooght explains: “ We are using our extensive online sound effects server to build sound for the silent pictures, to re-tell experiences and give the viewer an idea of how things used to sound. “
She continues, “We researched the coastal areas thoroughly, to ensure the correct natural species of birds are heard in the right places. We layer the added atmospheres and special effect sounds, together with the music and narration to complete the finished sound. It's an intensive mix of reality, drama, story telling and fact, blended to take the viewer on the epic journey.”
Coast was transmitted every Friday and Sunday on BBC Two at 9.00pm until 2 September 2005.
Programme Credits:
Series Editor: Gill Tierney
Executive Producer: Gary Hunter
Series Producer: Steve Evanson
Lead/finishing editor: Martin Dowell
Offline Editors: Mike Bloore (programme 1 and 10) Lauri White (programme 5) Stephen Killick (programme 12 and feature) Keith Brown (part of programme 2) Martin Dowell (feature), Simon Prentice (feature), James Hey (feature)
Tracklayers and Dubbing Editors: Fiona Vooght , Kate Davis , Lynn Hamer and Phillip Crisswell
Dubbing Mixers: Ben Peissel l and Andy Freeth
About BBC Post Production
BBC Post Production, a division of BBC Resources Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the BBC , offers award-winning creative solutions using the latest technology. BBC Post Production facilities are the largest of their kind in the UK . Located in London , Bristol and Birmingham its extensive range of services include editing, audio and telecine. Using the most up-to-date technology in comfortable and inspiring surroundings, the team bring talent and experience to a range of productions, trails and promos. Further info rmation can be found at: www.bbcresources.com/postproduction
For further information, please contact:
For more information, please contact: Kate Adam, Publicist, BBC Factual on 0208 752 6050 or email kate.adam@bbc.co.uk
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