Formosa Group and Picture Shop delivered post-production work on the latest season of Charlie Brooker’s dark anthology series.
The long-awaited return of Charlie Brooker’s dark, satirical anthology series has arrived on Netflix. Executive produced by Charlie Brooker and Jessica Rhoades, with production company Broke and Bones Ltd, the sixth season reinvents itself with each new episode, marking the most unpredictable and unclassifiable season yet. Formosa Group and Picture Shop delivered post-production work across all five episodes.
Cr. Nick Wall/Netflix © 2023
Audio
Black Mirror S6 was mixed in Dolby Atmos, a first for the Black Mirror series, on an Avid S6 console using ProTools at Formosa Group’s Lexington St facility by Formosa Group Re-Recording Mixers, Jamie Selway (Episode 1 Joan is Awful, Episode 2 Loch Henry) and James Ridgway (Episode 3 Beyond the Sea, Episode 4 Mazey Day, Episode 5 Demon 79). Formosa Group Assistant Re-Recording Mixers Gibran Farrah and Will Stanton worked on the series with Jamie and James. Full creative collaboration for this project started from the get-go with Supervising Sound Editor, Antony Baymon, and Dialogue Editor, Alex Sawyer. Additionally, Foley was completed by Twickenham Studios.
Each episode had different creative requirements for the sound which was aided by the different Directors and Composers. However, the consistent thread of Charlie Brooker as the showrunner brought the series together.
Cr. Nick Wall/Netflix © 2023
When building the soundscape for Episode 1 Joan is Awful, Jamie Selway and the team had a lot of fun experimenting with the different layers of reality the viewer constantly jumps between; the TV drama adaptation that exists on screen of the average woman’s life versus the point of view of reality from her everyday life. Smashing the different layers of reality together in the end scene when they collapse, allowed Jamie to explore with distorting the characters voices and the atmospheres as the characters morphed between each other back to their original reality.
Episode 2 Loch Henry was also interesting to mix as the film presented itself in many different forms, a suspenseful thriller at times through to sections which were mixed as a promo or trailer for a film that the characters were working on. It made the mix process exciting as it’s constantly switching between disciplines and styles.
Episode 3 Beyond the Sea, mixed by James Ridgway, included the contrasting soundscapes of American rural countryside, creaking antique spacecraft and the silent abyss of deep space. For the final episode Demon 79, the mundane sound of the department store was juxtaposed with the protagonist’s Hammer Horror-style escapades and the Demon himself goes on a vocal journey which required heavy manipulation and sound design of his voice. With a pumping 70s soundtrack, the audience goes on a dark, wild and hilarious adventure.
Collaboration between sound and picture worked well, being in the same facility for seamless changes or updates when required.
Picture
The grade was completed at Picture Shop in London, with Ross Brunton as Grade Assist for the series, supporting the colour management pipeline using FilmLight’s Baselight, with Senior Online Editor Richard Cradick completing the UHD online using Autodesk Flame.
The role of the Online for this show was to act as a support structure for production. Versatility and flexibility were key, with tasks ranging from minor set extensions, shot clean ups, and period environment work to screen composites. At the creative end, the team was tasked with creating looks for scenes in Demon 79 and Mazey Day, in line with the style of the episodes and the action within.
PULSE, Picture Shop’s cloud-based collaboration tool, rendered all shots for the DI conform and VFX pulls. Across all episodes, 8,706 shots were pulled with PULSE, totalling to 883,880 frames.
The PULSE team also supervised the imaging pipeline from the point of capture (Dailies) all the way through to the delivery of EXR shots to VFX vendors and the Picture Shop DI team. This involved working closely with all the external Dailies teams to check that each external Dailies vendor was working to spec during shooting. PULSE also worked with the VFX vendors during the onboarding process (colour loop) ensuring the spec was adhered to, so everything ran smoothly for the workflow and when ready for final delivery.
The series was post-produced at Formosa Group by Sam Stubbing and at Picture Shop by Tom Cushing.
We so appreciate the collaboration we’ve had with Formosa Group and Picture Shop on the sixth season of Black Mirror. Each episode of our series calls for a bespoke creative approach to audio and picture, and the post-production teams rose and surpassed the expectation — passionately and inventive, collaborative and imaginative — at every step of the process.
Charlie Brooker and Jessica Rhoades, Executive Producers of Black Mirror S6
Black Mirror Season 6 is now available to stream on Netflix. Watch the trailer below.
