Blue Complete Post-Production For 'My Holiday Hostage Hell'

Blue post-production has completed the post-production for 'My Holiday Hostage Hell'.
Produced by Prospect Pictures, the six-part docu-drama series airs at 10pm on Wednesdays on Virgin 1.
blue completed the online, grade, sound mix and voice-over.
The series explores true accounts of holiday terror experienced by ordinary Britons who have been violently kidnapped and taken hostage whilst abroad. From the Columbian rebels in the legendary Darien Gap, to Indian credit card raider gangs and rebel bandits in the Liberian jungle to Al Qaeda in Iran, the gritty, hard-hitting series takes an in-depth look at the hidden dangers that can lurk in any foreign trip.
According to blue's dubbing mixer Phitz Hearne, one of the biggest challenges was melding together archive footage and location shots to make them part of the same sequence. He explained: "In the West Papua episode, one of the interviewees shot their own camcorder footage, which was combined with location shots. We had to make it all sound like part of the same sequence by cleaning up the old, 'hissy' footage and track laying it with the location shots.
The series was nicely shot and the sound well-recorded which made our workflow much easier."
Matching up different types of footage also proved to be a challenge during grading, especially for box-in-box scenes where the screen is split into four or five boxes with different material.
blue colourist Richard Fearon said: "Each box had a different location and with each location there were different formats.
"We had to make it all look seamless and match up footage from archives, location shoots and even camcorders."
With each episode set in a different country, Fearon had the opportunity to give each one its own look, depending on the location and story.
He said: "For the episode set in India, we gave the start of the programme a colourful grade and tried to capture the natural feel of the environment.
"But when the kidnap took place, we changed to a darker, moodier feel.
"The episode set in the Liberian jungle had more contrast and a jungle feel to it. We set each look early on in the grade and stuck to it."
Sarah Cox, Production Manager at Prospect Pictures, said: "My Holiday Hostage Hell' is a gritty, hard-hitting series and the post-production needed to reflect this. This is the first project we've worked on with blue and we knew it would be a challenging job but we're pleased with the result."
(KMcA)