Technicolor London helps paint perfect portrait of Britain in a Day

Technicolor helps paint perfect portrait of Britain in a Day. Ridley Scott's documentary showcases the best of British amateur videography.

Technicolor today reveals how its world leading expertise helped Sir Ridley Scott illustrate modern British life in his ground-breaking new documentary, Britain in a Day.

The extraordinary film offers a 90-minute snapshot of Britain over a 24-hour period, using footage supplied by hundreds of members of the public. Producer Sir Ridley and Director Morgan Matthews invited Britons to document a moment of their life as it happened on Saturday 12 November – from the marvelous to the mundane – and then uploaded the recordings on to YouTube. The aim was to encourage people to use a video camera and then edit the best clips together to create a time capsule of how ordinary Britons lived in 2011.

The clips were shot using several different mediums, resolutions and exposures, so it was down to the experts at Technicolor to grade and edit the chosen raw footage into a coherent and cohesive montage documentary. This process presented a number of challenges as much of the footage had been shot on camera phones which, due to their auto-correction technology, can often result in over exposed footage.

“While there were the usual color and luminance differences you would expect from so many different materials, we also had the challenge of making each section look its best, while still maintaining a flow that the eye could digest over 90 minutes,” explains Technicolor’s Principal Feature Colorist Paul Ensby. “The production editorial team put together a wonderful selection in the final edit using clips from the lowest resolution capture mediums, right up to some of the most professional quality cameras.”

As well as grading and editing, Technicolor provided VFX and completed the HD mastering to BBC specification and international masters.

Technicolor Credits

Producer: Begona Lopez
Editor: Sion Penny
VFX: Sion Penny / Dolores McGinley
Colorist: Paul Ensby