CL I NK | DRAMA
We step inside indie studio LA Productions to learn how its post workflow was streamlined for Clink, 5Star’s all-new female prison drama
WORDS JULI AN M ITCHELL / PICTURES CH5
I t’s not every day a television crew draws inspiration from a mother who gave birth in jail as part of the pre-production process. For Clink , a new hard-hitting ten-part drama set inside a women’s prison, it was all fundamental groundwork. Liverpool-based LA Productions set out to create an honest, accurate portrayal of life behind bars for women in the UK. “When Channel 5 commissioned the prison drama, we had less than ten months to come up with
IMAGES Clink has an all-female cast and is predominantly written and produced by women
“Due to the timescales involved, we kept the process in-house, including research,” Deane continues. “We modelled Clink on a real prison, with all our stories based on real inmates and actual events. We interviewed a multitude of female prisoners who were very honest with us. We actually had to tone down some of their stories as I don’t think viewers would have believed them!” BRAW
challenge was the show’s fast turnaround. Each episode was shot over the course of a week, with four editors and two assistant editors assembling the offline in DaVinci Resolve before then taking two and half days with the director to complete the fine cut. “We initially tested a proxy workflow in the edit. However, we quickly realised that we were wasting time we didn’t have. The BRAW files were small enough that we didn’t need to transcode proxies; instead we fed all our dailies straight into the Resolve timeline. It instantly freed up an assistant editor to help with things like metadata tagging, which made it easier down the line when it came to finding material to cut promotional trailers.” “We also used adaptive tracks for audio, so that when all the audio from the sound recording came in, we could ensure that only the guide track played out for the editors,” he continues. “All the other information was there, but we didn’t have to mute it and spend time choosing target tracks, which further sped up the process.”
a concept, film it, post-produce it and get it on television,” begins series script editor, Sarah Deane. As well as having a female cast, the show was predominantly produced by women; six of the seven writers and the majority of the directors are female. Former Brookside and Emmerdale actress, Gillian Kearney, makes her directorial debut in the series, which is produced by Donna Molloy. The BRAWfiles were small enough that we didn’t need to transcode proxies Shot almost exclusively in Liverpool, Clink was lensed by DOP Tim Pollard with the Blackmagic Ursa Mini Pro as principal camera. For acquisition, director Gary Williams and Pollard opted to use the 12:1 constant bit rate flavour of Blackmagic Raw and post-production was then completed by LA Productions’ in-house team, led by Patrick Hall. According to Hall, the biggest
WATCH CLINK ON CHANNEL 5’S CATCH-UP, MY5
JULY 20 1 9 | DEF I N I T ION 39
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