Extreme Iceland

"EXTREME ICELAND is being released as part of Insight TV's "Snow Fest" season. The eight 20 minute episodes follow the adventures of extreme athlete Michael Wilson, as he bikes and paraglides his way around the perimeter of Iceland. In each episode, he faces a unique challenge in order to progress his journey, and to challenge himself and his ingenuity with the equipment he's carrying. We were tasked to extract the best possible footage from the multiple sources available (GoPro, DSLR, iPhone) and create a seamless viewing experience, all in UHD HDR.

Taking the graded conform as a starting point, I always work through, shot by shot, performing various clean-up tasks. Some shots required sky replacement or retouching to remove drone rotors, others required detailed de-spotting to reduce the appearance of sensor dirt spots. Then I perform a horizon-fix pass, and a stabilise pass, before rendering and re-watching.

I used Avid Symphony, working in Rec 2020, Hybrid Log Gamma, outputting to a Sony X300 reference picture monitor. The client is based at Insight TV's office in Amsterdam, so we use the Streambox Chroma 4K to provide them with a permanent video feed, in UHD HDR, at 50p, for the duration of the online session. This allows the client to dip in and out at their convenience, prior the final review.

This series is being executive produced by Insight TV Showrunner Alex Rowe. He's highly experienced in creating UHD content for the channel, and we enjoy working closely together to achieve the very best possible result from the available footage.

The footage was shot at various frame-rates, but delivery was always to be at 50 frames per second. All non-50p material was converted via our Alchemist standards converter. Usefully, we have operational 'watch folders' which allow for 'drop-and-convert' of clips from one frame rate to another. So it's relatively easy for me in the online to replace a shot, even if it's not 50p, by using the appropriate Alchemist watch folder.