“Before discussing the brief, I watched pre-locked versions of each episode a couple of times to get a feel for the show (understanding the dynamics, content and visuals) and looked for anything that may be sticking out or would need a polish.
On day one I met with the producer Sam Ward, and discussed the creative brief, which was really to make everything as neat and tidy as possible – such as the removal of boom mics, camera stabilising, removing small parts of the set/scenery and crew paint outs.
Getting to work I started by removing all the boom mics, unwanted scenery and performing crew paint outs – for example there is an exterior shot of Greg walking in front of a window and where the crew’s reflection was easily visible. To remove the crew, I used action in combination with the paint tool to create a clean plate of the window, then using the 3d projection application I projected the clean plate back on to the original shot, followed by roto-ing Greg over the top. This leaves us with a beautiful shot minus the crew’s reflection – maintaining that tv magic.
As with any production there is always a large variety of shots from tight close-ups and beauty shots to room pans and zoom outs, which consequently comes with some unavoidable footage de-stabilisation. For stabilisation, I used Flame and more so the auto-stabiliser plug-in which is a powerful piece of kit. For each shot I selected the most stable areas and applied the auto-stabiliser effect, along with manually tweaking throughout (from the beginning to the end) to get the perfect finish.
Finally, I cleared up a small inexactness of continuity in one of the scenes. With one of the prior shots to the scene in question being removed, the presence of smoke no longer had any relevance. I removed the smoke by freezing the frame, followed by comping and tracking the actress back over the top of the shot using flame’s compositing tools (action and paint), leaving us with the desired smoke free shot.
The Cleaner was beautifully shot and the whole series looks wonderful, the production team really did an incredible job. Sam Ward and Tom Marshall (Director) were lovely to work with, they gave me short, succinct notes and feedback – letting me take the lead in the edit. I’m also a huge fan of Greg and many of the other actors involved so it was a real pleasure and a lot of fun working on this show.
For this project I used a Sony x300 monitor and I chose to work in flame for the entirety of the job – due to its superior compositing tools and from my experience with this type of work, I felt like this was ultimately the best finishing tool for the job.”
