Fifty Fifty and The Greatest Night in Pop (Netflix Feature Doc)

Audio 

Fifty Fifty head of Audio, Gavin Allingham said ‘The Greatest Night In Pop was such an exciting project to work across, for a 90 min film about an iconic song and moment in history, we knew that audio would play a huge part. Conversations started early with Director, Bao Nguyen as we learned that there would be limited source audio. We had access to a mono camera feed that contained the guide instrumental track and the vocals being recorded at the time but no stems were available. In addition to this there was a sole dictaphone in the live room for large parts of the original recording session. This captured unique and precious audio which we used in combination with carefully selected library recordings enabling us to build authentic sounding backgrounds throughout the film.

The feature is a film of two halves, the first being the set up, which features a lot of archive footage that was mute of sound, and so everything needed to be built up from scratch and made to feel in keeping with the visuals, which we achieved through Lo-Fi plugins and EQ. The second half is the recording session itself, which presented many obstacles for Dialogue Editor Richard Gallagher who said ‘the main challenge was achieving a good level of clarity, especially when you consider no one is really mic’d up and they’re all talking over each other, to get around this we had to think outside the box a bit and experiment with Adobe Podcast, which provided us with clean AI generated versions of some of the key narrative lines from amongst the group, which we layered under the original lines to improve clarity greatly and allow for subtitles to be removed’

Bao wanted the mix to emphasise the ever changing feeling within the room. We created an overwhelming soundtrack using layered backgrounds and FX to give a sense of the chaos, excitement and anxiety that was felt by the artists and crew responsible for running the session. We also peppered the mix with sporadic foley clunks and sounds of kit and cables being dragged around the room by the camera crew, which all add to the feeling of pressure. These sections are then juxtaposed by scenes where we created a silent cavernous feel to the room. 

Grade 

Joe Stabb, Senior Colourist said ‘For a film that was majority archive It would require a delicate balance between improving visual quality and preserving the authenticity of the original footage. We soon learnt that the picture finishing would entail diverse stages of colour grading, degradation and restoration techniques and we therefore evaluated and formed a creative internal workflow between the Baselight Grade and Flame Online to use a combination of colour and vfx tools to achieve the results you see in the film. The feature is boldly presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio. This would be the template for all the master interviews and recreation footage. We worked with Bao Nguyen (Director), Caleb Heller (DP) and started grade testing with the master interviews, shot in the original A&M studios, where the original recording of the song was held. It was clear that a vintage look with warm highlights and green undertones would be complementary to the interviews and chimed with the documentary’s subject matter in its current context. Using the Colour Cross Talk Tool in Baselight to mix the RGB channels in the darkness regions and warming the highlights maintained natural skin tones in the subjects faces. As all the MIV’s were locked off refined shading was performed in the grade to maximise the composition in the 4:3 frame to give it a pleasing depth in screen.’  

Online 

Fifty Fifty Lead Flame Artist, Ell Riella commented ‘The film is full of archival footage from inside the studio and our mission was to remaster it with clean up without taking away the distinctive style and feel of the LA in 1984. The production also shot material with the desire that it would blend seamlessly with the original footage of the night, along with varying 80s archive from multiple sources. We degraded some footage and remastered others to give a consistent look so the documentary has the feel of the here and now and less retrospective as a story. Working with our in-house colourist Joe Stabb, we put a through line of consistency between lots of varying media, and that balanced very nicely with the modern-day interviews, all packaged up 4:3 for that extra nostalgia kick. To degrade the recreation shots, we used a combination of compressing the footage, soft focus blurring, adding a subtle VHS channel splits and matching the grain profile of the era.’ 

Director, Bao Nyugen said ‘’ The Fifty Fifty team played an indispensable role in crafting the unique look and immersive experience of our film, expertly blending recreation scenes with archival footage. Joe Stabb and Ell Riella’s talent in visual storytelling ensured a seamless transition that blurred the lines between past and present, while Gavin Allingham’s mastery in sound created a palpable tension that enveloped the audience. Their combined efforts transformed the film into a deeply engaging and intimate narrative, where sound and visuals harmonize to pull viewers into the heart of the story.’’

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