SPS were commissioned to provide full post-production on the fifth season of Sky News’ Hotspots: On The Frontline – the hard-hitting documentary series (x5 45-min episodes) that goes behind the scenes of some of the biggest news stories of recent times. The brief was to support Sky News’ season reporters, Stuart Ramsay and Alex Crawford, as they illustrate the dangers, complexities and emotions of reporting from troubled spots around the world.

As the series started with an Afghanistan special, visited locations such as Namibia, Haiti and Guatemala, and ended with an in depth look at the climate crisis, Hotspots S5 was one of the most demanding series yet so keeping specialist documentary editors and key talent on for continuity was vital.

With so much footage coming in from across the world, coupled with an incredible amount of archive from the Sky News libraries, all of which were in various resolutions, formats and frame rates, a stringent workflow was needed from the outset and the offline started out fully remote. When the team reached final post, the world began to reopen and production teams and talent were able to get back into the suites for sign offs.

The project was completed in just over 6 months, editing in Avid Symphony (online) & Media Composer (offline), grading in Baselight and audio mix in Pro Tools, and delivered for transmission on Sky Documentaries in January 2022.