Our Team
Find out what our creative team had to say about the project.
Andrew Cloke, ENVY Colourist
“The brief was to maintain and replicate the glossy and high-end finish that we previously created for season one.
Before starting on the project, we did a test-grade, looking at sample footage from each camera setup; here I assessed the footage shot by shot alongside my prebuilt tools and custom LUT, making sure they would best enable me to create the predetermined style and fulfil the brief to the highest standard.
From here the goal was to seamless tie all the footage together, as there are several formats used in the production (drone, rig camera and psc) it was important to seamlessly intercut the images together and make them as unified as possible.
On the same note with shots being captured on different devices, in different environments and at different times of the day there are always natural discrepancies e.g light becoming duskier in the afternoon. By performing some gentle light tweaking you can maintain shot congruence and show different shots from the same day without them appearing vastly different. This was important to maintain continuity throughout each of the episodes and sustain the natural progression of the narrative.
I also I implemented the occasional sky replacement and pushed the interstitial scenes to keep everything within the sunny/sexy retreat theme and maintain the up market & glossy aesthetic.
The camera crew did an amazing job getting the perfect exposure throughout the production, this can be especially tricky when filming in bright/direct sunlight, which can be very unforgiving and often leads to over exposure – dark shadows and extra bright highlights.
The programme producers were an absolute pleasure to work alongside, they had a clear vision for the show and facilitated us to really create the best visuals possible for season two. Throughout the post process we had regular reviews, tweaking as we went along and on site viewing – the team sat in a separate room using a comparable monitor so that they could see a true representation of the final grade and could give live feedback to me using the speakerphone system.
To perform the grade, I used Baselight and Aces on a Sony x300 reference picture monitor.”
Ben Ormerod, ENVY Dubbing Mixer
“The main idea of the brief was to build on the success of Series 1. We discussed making the most of the music mix to drive the scenes but really, we wanted to keep the vibrant style of the series and just refresh the sound design.
One of the consequences of shooting in such an amazing location and creating a production which has so many unique/spontaneous scenarios is the amount of uncontrollable ambience/sound that will spill into post-production. Luckily, the island was not overrun with cicadas and the sea was calm by the beach, which was an extremely smart choice as it meant the exterior scenes were nice and quiet and required less cleaning.
With that being said I spent a good amount of time in the mix cleaning the tracks of unwanted rustle, clicks and bumps as well as off camera sound and background noise so the viewer is not distracted by the level of editing and so the dialogue & thus the narrative could take centre stage in the mix.
I mixed the series in 5.1 and Stereo on a 32 fader Avid S6. Once the dialogue mix was working, I added some distant waves and a bit of sea breeze, but it didn’t warrant a lot of Atmos in the mix.
In terms of the sound design mostly it needed to be smooth and lush so the title sequences and montages could feature bass heavy waves topped with close up water detail. I also added some reverb on the freeze frames and additional sound effects to elevate the track – complimenting the in-show humour and style of the edits.”
Barrie Pease, ENVY Online Editor
“For the on-line of Too Hot To Handle Series 2, we were tasked with maintaining the sun-dappled sheen of Series 1.
The pandemic obviously meant a slightly different approach to filming though – with a greater reliance on fixed-rig footage and longer lenses requiring more stabilisation throughout – to perform this Stabilisation I used a mixture of standard Avid ‘Stabilize’ and ‘Region Stabilize’ or Boris ‘Optical Stabilizer’ plug-in.
THTH utilises a range of glows, wipes, composite layers, analogue picture break-up, ‘pause-button’ & distortion fx, dissolves and picture-in-picture split-screens to create its look. To achieve the analogue distortion and ‘pause-button’ FX I utilized Sapphire’s ‘TV Damage’. Alongside this full-frame text, overlaid prize-fund gfx and countdown-clocks serve to explain the rules and ramp up the jeopardy.”
