What if you could combat ageing and discover the full potential of the human body?
Global movie star Chris Hemsworth explores this revolutionary idea in Nutopia’s new National Geographic original series, ‘Limitless with Chris Hemsworth’. New scientific research is shattering conventional wisdom about the human body and offering fascinating insights into how we can all unlock our body’s superpowers to fight illness, perform better, and even reverse the ageing process! This science is put to the test by Hemsworth, who is on a personal mission to learn how to stay young, healthy, strong, and resilient. Undergoing a series of epic trials and extraordinary challenges in order to understand the limits of the human body, he’ll learn firsthand how we can live better for longer by discovering ways to regenerate damage, maximise strength, build resilience, supercharge memory and confront mortality.
Halo provided Picture and Sound Finishing Post Production.
Showrunner, Ruth Shurman said, “‘Limitless with Chris Hemsworth’ is about how we can all enhance our health and make the most of life for as long as possible. We wanted to convey all the visceral excitement and jeopardy of Chris’s epic physical challenges, but also bring our audience into lots of more intimate, personal moments. Using the full capacity of sound and picture was vital to the sense of drama and contrast I was looking for.
The series combined meticulously planned, lavish footage shot on Sony Venices and Phantoms, with very raw home movie material grabbed in the moment on iPhone or C300. I needed the team at Halo to integrate these sources without compromising on beauty or losing the honesty and sense of immediacy, so the audience could relate to the authenticity of Chris’s experiences. Another challenge was finding a way to harmonise transitions into other stories from around the world and our animated graphics sequences, which use a vintage anatomical pop-up book style to explain biological processes. This could all have been jarring stylistically, so attention to detail in post was crucial.
The team at Halo entered into the project with impressive enthusiasm, commitment and skill. Colourists Katherine Jamieson and Paul Koren created a distinctive look for each episode while retaining a stunning yet realistic series style. We had aimed for a rigorously uniform master interview spec for every contributor, but the vagaries of remote filming and an array of crews meant a lot of crafting was needed in the grade to create the uniformity we wanted. The dubbing team did a brilliant job of creating a rich soundscape that added new depth and vivacity to our sequences – and they worked hand in hand with our music editor to weave our composer’s music around the scenes. Online editor Tom Young was swift, ingenious and tireless throughout, and a great partner in the incredibly detailed delivery process.
The project was managed end to end by Jon Osborne, who worked round the clock to answer questions, deal with requests, respond to re-scheduling, and handle our many changing notes and requirements with great calm, commitment and focus. Thank you, Team Halo!”
Colourist Katherine Jamieson said… “Limitless was always going to be epic! The series follows bona fide superhero Chris Hemsworth on his mission to test and better understand the limits of the human body.
Darren Aronofsky and the team at Nutopia wanted the series to be rooted in reality and not stray too far into the over-stylised film world, We used the natural beauty of the locations filmed to bring this sense of epic drama whilst remaining true to the brief. We were gifted with some spectacular photography to work with, however it was shot on a multitude of formats over many of the worldwide lockdowns so the grade needed to tie this all together, creating harmony across the footage. We could then build an epic natural beauty look on top of this solid foundation, shaping the cinematic vision that we see in the final shows.”
Colourists: Katherine Jamieson & Paul Koren
Online Editor: Thomas Young
Sound Design: Tom Foster
Dubbing Mixers: Simon Hill, Gerrit Swanepoel, John Rogerson, Tushar Manek & Sam Castleton
Post Producer: Jon Osborne
Halo Sales Exec: Matt Locke
Limitless will tx on Disney + from 16th November 2022