Pablo comes to Pemberley for Christmas blockbuster TV mini-series

Pablo comes to Pemberley for Christmas blockbuster TV mini-series 20 Dec 2013

Death Comes to Pemberley, one of the most eagerly anticipated programmes in the UKs Christmas TV schedule this year, was entirely post-produced at LipSync Post in London, with color grading and deliverables carried out on one of the facilitys three Quantel Pablo color correction and finishing systems by Senior Colourist, Stuart Fyvie, who completed the grade on all three one hour episodes in just nine days.

Based on the novel by PD James, Death Comes to Pemberley was written as a sequel to Jane Austens classic novel Pride and Prejudice. Pemberley is co-production of BBC Drama Productions, Origin Pictures and Screen Yorkshire, and was directed by Daniel Percival (Waking the Dead, Strike Back, Hunted, Crossing the Lines). Set six years after Pride and Prejudice in 1803, the dramatization combines the best of classic British costume drama with a murder-mystery theme. The series will air as three one hour episodes between Christmas and the New Year on BBC1 in the UK, with international distribution to follow in 2014.

This is proper top-end TV - high end drama; the kind of thing the BBC does so brilliantly - mini-films with feature film production values, said Stuart Fyvie Its a logical extension of the kind of work LipSync does for movies - but just with not as much time available so you have to crack through the grade.

I sat down on the Pablo with the Director of Photography, Steve Lawes (Sherlock Holmes, Hunted, The Street, Skellig, Strike Back), initially to set up looks for certain scenes - blocking the grade - daylight, afternoon, evening, day for night etc - laying down broad strokes. We then went through a second pass to smooth it all out across all the scenes - its an iterative process. DOPs love working with us at LipSync because theyre in charge and whatever they want to achieve, we have the tools and experience to deliver it, all in a relaxed atmosphere thats naturally conducive to the creative process.

Pablo is a fine colour correction system, and its perfect in attended sessions. What it also uniquely offers us is a great workflow; I can make subclips and replace shots, and I can edit on Pablo - it has really solid editing tools that I invariably need in grading sessions. Equally importantly, when youve finished the job on Pablo, its finished - clients can leave with their deliverables. On other systems, you have to wait for the render after the grading session, which also locks up the system, so you cant then get on with the next job until its finished. With Pablo it will import and export in the background while youre grading, saving further time. All this made it possible for us to grade the three episodes of Pemberley in just three days each, Fyvie concluded.

Pemberley was mostly shot on location in stately homes - Castle Howard, Harewood House, Chatsworth House - rich, contrasty settings, said DOP Steve Lawes Lighting those kind of spaces to any extent is not practical for a production of this size, so I modelled my approach on a technique favoured by the Dutch Old Masters, using contained pools of light and taking advantage of bounced natural sunlight coming in through large windows. I used ARRI Alexa cameras throughout, which are particularly good for low-light night scenes - often illuminated with just candlelight. I had a Sony OLED monitor on-set and used the same LUTs when we went into the grade at LipSync, so I knew exactly where we were starting from. When working with colourists, the most important thing to me is that they can get the results we want out of the system quickly and intuitively, and Stuart Fyvie and his Pablo certainly delivered this. Stuart also brought a welcome fresh eye to the material and looked at it from a story-telling point of view; its not just about the colour!

Death Comes to Pemberley will air on BBC 1 in primetime on 26th, 27th and 28th December

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