Editor Adam Garstone writes for TVBEurope on the edit and grade for the BBC documentary which aired on BBC1 on 15th July
By Contributor
Published: July 23, 2021
Editor Adam Garstone writes for TVBEurope on the edit and grade for the BBC documentary which aired on BBC1 on 15th July
target=_blank title=Share on LinkedIn class=share-linkedin>
Directed by Tim Kirby, Our NHS: A Hidden History tells the untold story of the UK's National Health Service. David Olusoga meets overseas nurses, doctors and health workers, who in spite of hostility and discrimination, came to Britain and transformed the NHS.
The documentary was edited and graded during lockdown by experienced editor Adam Garstone. Garstone specialises in long form documentary and has previously worked with the BBC, Channel 4, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, amongst many others.
Garstone worked from his home studio with an assistant, with the director able to attend the edit in between lockdown restrictions. The team utilised DaVinci Resolve for post production, including: media management, edit and grade.
I'd used Resolve for entire projects in the past, but this was a real test of its capabilities, says Garstone. Creating a broadcast quality project for the BBC, of this size and scale, with such a variety of footage, demanded a great deal from the NLE.
Interestingly, the team worked entirely in an online workflow, doing away with an offline to streamline the process through edits and approvals.
Increasingly, executive producers like to see a programme that looks and sounds as close to finished as possible, says Garstone. We used online camera material throughout the entire edit, graded as we went and even developed a soundtrack.
This meant that when submitting the edit to the executive producers, it was in a place where it could be judged accurately. People respond to things viscerally, when you can present an edit as final, a producer can make decisions with confidence.
The programme tells the story of the NHS through a series of interviews with people from BAME communities in the UK, extensively talking to camera and directly to presenter Olusoga.
With many interviewees providing extensive in-depth dialogue, we used timing curves to create pauses, explains Garstone. We'd use the optical flow to decelerate footage for a few frames ahead of a cut. It created a natural beat to the piece, and prevented it from getting choppy.
We used a similar process in creating the soundtrack. In Resolve you get sample level editing, even in the edit page; you're not stuck to frame boundaries. You can slip something by a frame, simply by zooming in and dragging it. It's a benefit of working in a contained environment and enabled our online workflow.
With the focus period of the film spanning from the late 1920s to the present day, the programme relied heavily on archive footage from many different sources. The archive footage ranged from 16mm film at 24fps, to beta cam, up to HD and everything in between.
Getting the archive material into the media manager and linking it to the edit was easy, says Garstone. We had a few decisions to make in the settings and converting frame rates, using optical flow or moving to the nearest frame, but it was a straightforward process.
In the grade, the A camera was of a higher standard to the B camera, which was mainly used in interviews to create an additional angle. Filmed during covid restrictions, the B camera was often set up in positions where operation was difficult, which resulted in footage requiring focus and exposure adjustments in post.
Garstone explains the linear workflow enabled for an intuitive corrective process. Working in Resolve meant we were only a click away from the Fusion, Fairlight and Colour pages. We could check if a piece of out of focus footage could be saved, animate a still, or add in a sound effect, with just the click of a button and in a matter of minutes.
The colour balance was very different between the cameras, particularly in the reds and blues. If someone was wearing a pink or a purple dress, the B camera would render that as red or orange.
The difference in colour science between the two cameras meant that we needed most of the tools available in Resolve's colour page. From selective keys to motion tracked shapes, to sharpening, says Garstone.
Interestingly we never really locked picture, because offline blended into online. There was never really a final stage of transition. Because we could easily make the changes that people wanted, they were happening all the way up until the last minute, concludes Garstone.
Our NHS: A Hidden History aired on BBC 1, Thursday the 15th of July 2021.
Most recent headlines
22/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Neerav Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
22/12/2025
Hitting the bullseye: Sky Sports readies itself for the biggest PDC World Darts ...
22/12/2025
Unique skillset: Bringing new directors to the world of darts at The Worlds with...
22/12/2025
Gravity Media prepares for a flight of fancy with the PDC World Darts Championsh...
22/12/2025
One hundred and eighty: Gravity Media on hitting the production bullseye at the ...
22/12/2025
The Famous Group's Jon Slusser on Fascinating Fans Through Immersive Content...
22/12/2025
ESPN's Meg Aronowitz on Continuing High-Quality Broadcasts of Collegiate Spo...
22/12/2025
ESPN Takes Data-Driven Storytelling to New Heights with MNF Playbook with Next ...
22/12/2025
For a decade, popular German podcast Fest & Flauschig has hosted an annual Chris...
22/12/2025
Paramount Scores Largest Share Increase Among Distributors as Paramount and CBS...
22/12/2025
New multi-year deal integrates Roku's data to fuel Nielsen's measurement suite
Roku gains access to Nielsen's streaming ratings, showing The Roku C...
22/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
22/12/2025
Berklee Wrapped 2025: Our Top News and Stories A look back at a year highlighted by faculty milestones, major film and television projects, Bob Dylan's ho...
22/12/2025
Partnership integrates complementary satellite data and AI analytics to enhance security, infrastructure, and environmental monitoring solutions for global cust...
22/12/2025
Workflows allow you to create a sequence of planned events which may be added to your template(s) or inserted directly into your sequential or background playli...
22/12/2025
Monday 22 December 2025
Sky extends PGA TOUR partnership until 2029, as Sky Spo...
22/12/2025
Back to All News
Global Anime Hits and New Releases Take Center Stage at Jump Festa 2026
Entertainment
22 December 2025
GlobalJapan
Link copied to clipboar...
22/12/2025
Siobh n McSweeney, Rory McIlroy, Elon Musk, Catherine Connolly, Jim Gavin, Ivan Yates and Traitor Paudie Moloney lead new characters for Callan Kicks the Year 2...
22/12/2025
Winner announced in the picturesque surroundings of Wicklow's Avondale Tower and Treetop Walk
Andrew Trimble wins the show in his first series as coach
Th...
22/12/2025
The 2025 winners have been announced today, Sunday 21 December, for Ireland's largest choral competition Choirs for Christmas hosted by RT lyric fm.
Ove...
21/12/2025
Back to All News
Legoshi and Haru's Story Reaches Its Finale: BEASTARS Fin...
21/12/2025
John Shortt named Young Sportsperson of the Year Kerry are the Team of the Year
...
20/12/2025
Atomos announced the immediate availability of a new firmware update for its Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX monitor-recorders, unlocking ProRes RAW recording from the...
20/12/2025
CJP Broadcast has completed the digitisation of the European Gymnastics tape archive, converting 328 tapes containing more than forty years of recorded material...
20/12/2025
Bitmovin, the leading provider of video streaming solutions, today announced the launch of the Stream Lab MCP Server, to give AI agents and large language model...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Barack Obama Includes Laufey on His 2025 Favorite Music List The former presidents roundup of books, music, and movies includes a song from the Berklee alums ...
20/12/2025
Study reveals a key hormonal circuit in the kidneys Scripps Research scientists identify the protein that helps kidney cells regulate renin, providing foundatio...
19/12/2025
With Playout Release 2025.4, ToolsOnAir continues to push professional playout w...
19/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Diversified's Jared Timmins on AI for Broadcast Sports and Cre...
19/12/2025
2025 SVG Summit Audio Recap: Say What?The Audio Production and Distribution Workshop at the SVG Summit 20 took on issues including speech intelligibility, Next-...
19/12/2025
Gamified fun: Channel 5 on its NFL Big Game Night ambitions with Hungry Bear Med...
19/12/2025
College Football Playoff Preview: For ESPN, Round 1 is a Fantastic Yet Familia...
19/12/2025
AWS's Jason Dvorkin on Developing Partnerships With the NBA and PGA Tour, Em...
19/12/2025
Netflix Kicks Off Packed Sports Week with Paul-Joshua Fight Before Shifting to N...
19/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Nareev Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
19/12/2025
Mounted to the pylon of an AH-1Z Viper helicopter, a Red Wolf vehicle successful...
19/12/2025
L3Harris technology for the SDA Tranche 3 Tracking Layer program will provide in...
19/12/2025
Partnership brings Nielsen ONE measurement activation directly into XR's adv...
19/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
19/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
19/12/2025
Berklee Announces Spring 2026 Signature Series This season's highlights include the Gospel Extravaganza, the 40th International Folk Festival, special gue...
19/12/2025
Performing arts centres across the globe have doubled down on live production infrastructure in recent years. For venues like the Queensland Performing Arts Cen...
19/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
Editor Adam Garstone writes for TVBEurope on the edit and grade for the BBC documentary which aired on BBC1 on 15th July 
