A conversation with the team
Have a read of what our creative team had to say on the project.
Adam Grant, Online Editor
“Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland provides a historical lookback through the eyes of those involved in this big moment in history.
The series is incredibly archive heavy, with talking head interviews retelling stories from the Troubles. My brief was to clean up and improve the footage as much possible. There was a real mix of archive footage I got to work with including tape and filmic looking material. The stories being told by the contributors were so powerful by themselves, the footage accompanying these accounts did not need to be massively cleaned up.
As well as wrangling archive, I used Avid Symphony’s extensive toolkit to sharpen faces and eyes to draw the audience to their faces whilst recalled their stories, and painting out any stray equipment that may have appeared in the background. There was one individual that the Producers wanted disguised and obscured; to achieve this we darkened the shot and tracked a shadow on the person concerned.
It was a pleasure to be involved in such a massive project and working with Keo Films was a huge honour.”
Matt Skilton, Dubbing Mixer
“Throughout the mixing process, it was imperative that the archive was treated in a sensitive way. What happened in the Troubles impacted so many people so we had to respectful in the way we treated the archive.
Despite a lot of the archive being from the 70’s and 80’s, we found some of the audio needed to be completely reconstructed with some commentary and music being unusable. Using our vast sound library, I was able to build up scenes using atmos and SFX layered up to give the pictures an extra dimension. I then EQ’d these tracks to change the volume of certain frequencies to make it sound more from the Troubles. We found that sometimes taking all of the SFX away and leaving the music to play alone with the harrowing visuals had a more powerful effect on the audience rather than an SFX-heavy sequence.
It was incredible to work with The Keo Films team and Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland is a project that I’m incredibly proud of.”
