Spent

“Spent is a show that was inspired by experiences in the writer and lead actor Michelle De Swarte’s life and career so for me it was important to be respectful of the story and the themes in the show. There are a lot of layers to the show with the different themes and comedic elements, so I really wanted the writing to shine through and be the focus.

I had a conversation with Michelle about the script and what she wanted me to bring to the grade. We decided a natural grade which reflected the real world was the look we wanted to achieve. The series was shot by Tony Miller and his incredible cinematography really shone through and captured South London in a cinematic way.

The tools on Baselight allowed me to have total control of the pictures and I was able to tweak the grade to what Michelle and Tony had in their visions for the show. The great lighting allowed us to create the natural grade whilst also softening up some of the pictures and adding in some subtle warmth and love into the scenes between Mia and her family.
It was an honour to work with Michelle, Tony and the team at Val, it was a joy to grade and I can’t wait for everyone to watch the series.”

“With all scripted shows, the dialogue drives the story so my primary focus was polishing the dialogue and eliminating any clothing rustle and any clicks or pops in between edits. There were multiple microphones capturing the sound and dialogue on set; I used the boom microphones to capture the room sound and then auto aligned the lav microphones on the actors for tighter and clearer dialogue sound.

After finessing the dialogue, I was then able to build up the background soundscapes which the clients and I wanted to showcase the London feel. In scripted projects, there is more creative license to build these worlds and to do this, I used various atmos tracks and ADR. For the scenes set in more social environment, I used reverb tools on the music track to give the impression the music was playing out in the bar or club for example.”