Senior Colourist – Ross Baker
Bright, Fast , Colourful…..sums up the look of Le Mans: Racing is Everything but with natural time of day and low level lighting changes shot throughout the series, getting a mixture of source material which was not captured within HDR to look bright, took some work! By using the DVO Clarity tool unique to Nucoda, the video noise introduced in low light footage and exasperated by HDR was reduced and the grain removed from archive shots to improve the overall quality. DVO Pixel was well utilised to remove the dead pixels from the on board Go Pro cameras that also feature throughout.
Director James was very keen to push each show to be captivating, engaging and representative of everything that is the excitement of Le Mans. A multitude of Saphire plugins helped use the narrative of each story as a guide before VFX were applied to steer the action.
James Cregeen – Head of Operations
Working in HDR and wider colour gamut than standard HD broadcast standards provides a whole new tool set to our creative teams. This allows us to make the most of the detail and dynamic range captured in camera, enabling the creation of images that are much closer to the natural colour and detail we see in the real world.
Senior Sound Supervisor – Jay Price
The brief for Le Mans was to build a bold soundtrack that encapsulated the raw power of the Le Mans cars and use this to energise each episode.
The biggest challenge from an audio point of view was that the sync sound was unusable as most of the footage was shot mute or contained extraneous noises form the external surroundings. As as result all car sounds in the show had to be built up from scratch using specific fx recordings of the Le Mans cars. Each and every car sound had to be 100% authentic to its make and model in each of the three Le Mans categories. Whether it be interior or exterior passes, we meticulously ensured that we stayed true to the unique sound of the individual cars.
The visual style of the show offered several opportunities for creative sound design – cars slowing down and then speeding up as they pass by as well as ghost-like long exposure shots at night. To create an engaging and dramatic experience for the viewer, original recordings of the cars were manipulated using several pitch shift, delay, doppler and reverb effects. Le Mans in many ways is a sound editor’s dream project and I’m very proud of what we achieved on the show.
Online Editor, Flame: Rob Grainger
Post Producer: Marie Valentino
Post Supervisor: Louisa Sutherland-Smith
Le Mans: Racing is Everything Launches on Amazon Prime on Friday 9th June.