A House Through Time

Client: Twenty Twenty

Talent: Grade and Online by Steve Alexander

Brief: Complete the grade and online for a 4 x 60-mins series using a combination of first hand testimony, archive film and documents. Each individual film discovers the story of different residents of a single house in Liverpool, from the first owner to the present day.

How it was done: With well shot and lit footage, the over-riding request for the look of the series was to “feel like you’re having a long soak in a warm bath” using Baselight Editions. With the life story of real people being told, we used colour to add emotion and moods as the stories unfolded, often with strong casts of blue or orange in the archive as well as the newly shot footage. At times we needed to change day for night as well as making generic exteriors look like they were covered in fog. For the online Steve used a wide range of effects in Avid Symphony to merge the archive and graphics into each programme. As every episode told the story of a different time period, Steve tried to merge these elements into the film by making them feel as if they were ‘of the time period’. With different directors and numerous stories for each episode every film needed different treatment and effects while keeping true to the series style.

Watch it: Four episodes on BBC 2 starting from January 2018.