David Frost Vs.

In a career spanning more than fifty years, Sir David Frost went from hosting satirical comedy shows to becoming the doyen of broadcast journalists - perhaps the most famous of all time. In 1970, scarcely into his 30s, he was appointed OBE then later knighted in 1993 for services to broadcasting and journalism. He alone interviewed every British Prime Minister from Harold Wilson to David Cameron, and all seven US presidents in office between 1969 and 2008, from Richard Nixon to George W Bush. He spoke to Prince Charles ahead of his investiture in 1969 and to Muhammad Ali, in the US and Zaire, before the famous 'Rumble in the Jungle'. It could be argued that having his own catchphrase, "Hello, good evening and welcome", impersonated both here and in the US, is evidence of his own celebrity but to cap it all in 2009 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Emmys. Small wonder then, that a series featuring never-before-seen and rare archive footage should tell as much about the man and his interviewees as it does about the changing times, fashions and politics over the course of his career. David Frost Vs. is built on an extensive archive of interviews carefully curated over the past decade by his journalist son, Wilf Frost. Sky Post Production’s job was to manage that archive, oversee final post and do justice to a vast array of sources by restoring both degraded pictures and sound for a whole new audience. Under the watchful eye of Post Producer, Oliver Bramley, our talent patiently brought valuable source material back to life to help create this eye-opening series. And here's how they did it...

Oliver Bramley – Post Producer

We were first approached by the David Frost Vs. production team in early January 2024. Knowing the access the team had, the contributors lined up and the talent across the production we were all very excited from the outset. Being an archive-heavy series, establishing a watertight workflow early on was key, both for working with the Archive Producers and managing the physical ingests. The idea was to create a process that was as smooth as possible from the moment that screeners were found. Once this was in place and the Edit team were cutting with the footage, we then started jumping ahead and thinking about what we could do with this archive of varying quality. In particular, what we could use to treat it visually and audibly and how we could seamlessly treat it so it wouldn’t be jarring going to newly shot talking heads and back again.

Liam Stiles – Workflow Supervisor

Documentaries that go heavy on archive footage like David Frost Vs. need a robust archive workflow, so all media and archive was managed by Sky Post on this project, with the offline edit taking place remotely via Teradici at facilities in Central London. This afforded us guaranteed security for the content, as well as complete control over the archive. Behind the scenes a team of specialised Archive Producers was sourcing and downloading, quite literally, thousands of low-resolution placeholder clips, or screeners, from vendors such as Reuters and Pathé – for Frost I counted nearly 5,000 screener video clips and 4,000 still images being downloaded. When the Editors finished cutting the series, the Archive Producers then needed to know what screeners made it into the edit, so they could go ahead and purchase the beautiful high-resolution master clips that you then see on your television screens.

So, what we & the Archive Producers did before Frost set up shop at Sky Post was to:

• Set up an archive log – this served as the central database of archive for everyone involved (Archive Producers, Editors, Assistant Editors, Edit Assistants)
• Set up a naming convention for the video files – this needed to include a reference number which would correspond with the archive log, whether the file is a screener or a master, what it is & where it came from.
• How they were going to supply all this archive to Sky Post. We were working with thousands of clips here so it needed to be quick and easy for the Archive Producers to upload material and just as quick and easy for the Edit Assistants to download and ingest it into Avid. In the end we went with Frame.io, and the Archive Producers would upload everything in categorised batches.

Our team of Edit Assistants at Sky Post got to work with the fantastic Assistant Editor, Cleo Carmen Howard – we took care of the media management side of things (ingests, metadata input, checking items off the log), meanwhile Cleo worked more closely with the Editor and replaced around 1,000 out of those 9,000 aforementioned archive screeners with their corresponding master clips.

There were some archive-related snags, though nothing we hadn’t seen before. Quite a common, and often unavoidable issue with the ‘screener / master’ workflow deployed on documentaries like Frost, is screeners running at a different speed to the master which is due to differences in framerate and the way the vendor has standards converted each clip. So, to avoid physically re-timing the whole edit, which is a massive no-no during the finishing stages of Post Production, we often had to get a bit creative with how we processed masters – for example, could we download a version of the master that ran at the same speed as its corresponding screener, or could we speed-change the master ourselves to match its’ screener without it being perceptible to you, the viewer.

For Frost, we were afforded a schedule that allowed us to have an agile workflow which gave us time to make sure each archive clip got the treatment it needed to look its best – something I’m very pleased about.

Mark Mulcaster – Colourist

My first job was to find a look that would help harmonise the interviews across the series so that, should any of them reoccur in another episode, it wouldn’t feel jarring. The second part of the brief was to try and give the archive some love and, where needed, a rebalance so that it cut between sources more seamlessly and didn’t bump harshly against the surrounding interviews. My main aim was to try and get a consistent look, so I was conscious of balancing the contrast and saturation of the colour with the general characteristics of the archive. Sometimes that meant introducing more saturation and at other times pulling some out so that it would cut well with the preceding and succeeding shots. Whilst it’s inherent in its very nature, we didn't want the video to look overly saturated and ‘video’, so pulling some colour back helped a lot.

The first episode I worked on, which wound up being episode 2, really set the tone for the series with intimate soft lighting and a warm palette. For this documentary, black and white footage would remain as it was, whilst for the colour footage we wanted to maintain the vintage palette of the original material, so I wasn’t looking to apply anything overly dramatic. A lot of the archive was studio-based but came with various, historical technical problems. Some aspects were fixed in the Grade, but for the most part it was left for my colleague, Jon Slade, to fix in the Online.

Key to the success of the project was to have continuous conversations across the process because, due to timing, I didn’t always have the full-res archive in place. For that reason, I would regularly check the hi-res when available to see if it needed a slight regrade, or whether the Baselight grade could be applied easily in Avid. Having that flexibility was a great help to the production who would ordinarily need to either delay the Grade until all the archive was on a picture-locked timeline, or to revisit and regrade those shots back in the Colour Suite down the line. Thanks to our Baselight workflow that doesn’t need to happen.

Finn Curry – Re-recording Mixer

David Frost Vs. is a documentary series that features some of the most iconic interviews from Sir David Frost’s long career and includes a lot of rare and never-before-seen archive footage, offering a unique perspective on history from the 1960s to the 2000s. For that reason, the opportunity to enhance the audio quality of these invaluable interviews and to contribute to preserving his legacy was an immensely rewarding prospect. It was a chance to apply my skills to ensure that the series delivered on its intentions and allowed viewers to fully engage with the historical content.

The brief for the job was to create a high-quality mix that allowed the content to shine. It had to be unobtrusive and not draw attention to itself. In a show like this, the clarity of the dialogue and the story being presented is more important than any flashy sound design. Everything has to be at the service of the material. Having seen cuts of the show before starting my work, I anticipated doing a significant amount of work on cleaning up the archive audio, which I expected to be the bulk of the challenge. Additionally, I needed to add sound effects to any mute archive footage in a convincing manner.

As with the visuals on David Frost Vs. there was a lot of archive audio to work with. The challenge was to tidy up the sound without overdoing it because archive audio should still sound like archive audio unless the goal is to present it as new. However, it's important to remove anything distracting that could take away from the story being told. This meant carefully balancing the need for clarity with the desire to maintain the authentic, historical feel of the recordings.

To achieve this balance, I used SuperTone Clear to enhance speech intelligibility and reduce background noise without stripping away the natural texture of the recordings. SuperTone is one of a raft of new plugins that help clean up dialogue. It's the main one we use at Sky, and I find it has a really natural sound - as long as you don't push it too hard. Like all noise-reduction plugins, if you're not careful, it can end up sounding a bit odd if overused. The key was to apply just enough processing to improve clarity without making the audio sound artificial.

I also utilised SuperTone within the iZotope RX Plugin Module. Using it this way allowed me to target specific frequencies that needed refinement and enabled me to isolate problematic areas - such as resonant hums, harsh sibilance, or frequency specific hiss - without affecting the overall tone of the recordings. By focusing on these specific issues, I could make precise adjustments that enhanced the audio quality while preserving its original character.

I also used iZotope RX for broader cleanup tasks. This involved using the Range or Lasso in the Spectral view to visually identify and remove unwanted noises such as distracting clicks, pops, and bumps. I also employed EQ Match to balance the tonal qualities of different clips, Spectral De-Noise to reduce background noise, and Ambience Match to create a consistent ambient sound across all recordings. The goal was to ensure that the audio was cleaner and more consistent while still retaining the raw, historical feel of the archive material. 

I think it's nice to be able to add that the series has been well-received, which is always pleasing to see when you've worked on something. It got some good reviews in various newspapers which is very satisfying, and reflects well on the show.

Jon Slade – Online Editor

Third party material always poses the most potential for requiring correction in some way to stand the best chance of passing Quality Control and the legacy and archive holdings for the programmes of Sir David Frost were complicated. Alongside the more typical mastering videotape formats of the day (typically 2” Quad), in many instances the only surviving copy might be on a legacy format, or a 16mm film black and white telerecording. A number of episodes also owe their existence to having been recorded off-air by the President Nixon administration.

My career began in the 1990s during the age of analogue videotape and although non-linear editing was just taking its first baby-steps within the industry, I am most definitely a product of the tape generation as well as something of a nerd when it comes to production techniques of the past. Whilst I personally don’t go back as far as the 2-inch, Quad days, I do have a keen interest in the mechanics and technology of video and studio production from the 1960s and 70s. Knowledge which, I assumed, had become utterly redundant. Until now. 

The first episode of David Frost Vs. to reach final post was episode 2, where the varying quality and preservation of the sources became evident. I painstakingly painted out around 400 notable video dropouts or examples of oxide shedding (generally presenting themselves as black lines or tears appearing for a frame at a time) or line sync errors (a narrow pulse that runs horizontally across the width of the frame distorting the image).

In a somewhat personal bid to make the archive really shine, I sought out ways to remove the most egregious and distracting damage, whilst also improving on some of the other faults I was finding. This led me to ‘Phoenix’ by Filmworkz – a trusted tool used by professional restoration facilities. I reached out to the team within Sky Post, who were able to install and licence the product for use on the project. Restoration is a specialised business because it’s time-consuming, intricate and costly. I had to find a way to achieve results within the existing and allotted online schedule, whilst engaging on the very steep learning curve associated with new software. This prompted me initially to set up a priority list of shots to tackle. 

My aim was to remove the technical flaws that were the most distracting of all and to give an overall polish where possible. I didn't want to completely remove all the damage as a small amount is aesthetically quaint. So, some of the third-party film dust/scratching is retained to a degree, although a few instances required a slightly more intensive digital clean-up. Whilst some film light-leakage and a few tramlines may be considered in keeping with the period – heavy black dropouts, non-synchronous cuts, jagged interlacing and other video artefacts do nothing except draw attention away from the narrative. 

It’s not about making 60-year-old material look like it was shot last week in UHD. Phoenix’s speciality is detecting differences on one single frame and patching blemishes over using a motion-estimated alternative frame. It also proved useful at removing colours that were bleeding, and in reducing noise and grain. By the time the third edit had locked and came into the Online, I was working on approximately 70% of the Frost material within Phoenix to some degree or other, alongside a good chunk of the surrounding archive. A lot of the film damage and smaller dropout errors were taken out largely automatically, whereas some of the other video-based errors needed more manual intervention.

Alongside this, the rest of the process was typical of a longform Online. There were routine fixes and tidy-ups to the rushes and other archive, as well as the correction of framerate conversion errors and resizing all shots to fit full frame or within a pillar box without blanking errors. 

It’s been immensely enjoyable working on the series, and it was great to be able to take the onus of enhancing some of the archive in a speedy but effective way, purely for the good of the series, without impacting the schedule or having any cost impact to the client.