Leading facility posts promo for BBC Broadcast’s ‘Inside the Nazi State’

Full-service postproduction facility blue has completed the post-production on the promo for the upcoming documentary, ‘Inside the Nazi State’. The series comprises six 30-minute episodes and will air on UKTV History from Monday August 22 at 9pm.
Created by Laurence Rees at BBC Television History, and commissioned by Andy Whitman at UKTV History, the series aims to shed light on the mentality of those who endorsed the Nazi regime. It comprises archive interview footage from Nazis, and is based around six different themes, one for each episode. One addresses those who came to be friendly with Adolf Hitler, another covers the War in the East, and another focuses on the Nazi propaganda.
Director David McCue and producer Robin Garnet at BBC Broadcast wanted to create a spot which would clearly demonstrate the concept for the series. In the promo – for which there’s a 60’, 30’ and 10’ version – the audience sees a single brick on the floor within a dark and gloomy room. The brick jumps back towards a shattered window, which has the Star of David painted onto it, and into a hand. As the clip progresses it’s revealed that it’s actually reverse footage of a man dressed as a Nazi throwing a brick through a window.
The footage was shot using a high resolution camera called Photron. The camera, which is usually used for industrial purposes, captured the action as 1024 x 1024 images at 2000 frames per second.
It took around two days for blue’s head of VFX, Chris Mortimer, to complete the grade and effects work. Chris blended the high resolution images, relighting some, giving them a haunting and ethereal feel. He also added reflections in the glass window, which is revealed towards the end of the sequence.
“This was an interesting job to work on, not only because of the high production values enabled by the Photron camera, but because of the subject matter too,” said Mortimer. “It’s a really compelling promo, and a clever and evocative play on the destructive nature of the Nazi regime.”
(GB)