Blue posts BBC2’s new reality doc ‘The Monastery’

Full-service post-production facility blue has completed the postproduction for two promos for BBC2’s forthcoming reality TV show, 'The Monastery'.
Produced by Tiger Aspect and commissioned by the BBC's religion and ethics department, The Monastery is reality TV-style documentary aimed at understanding monastic life and the role of religion and belief. The show will see five young professionals taken out of their busy, modern, fast moving metropolitan environment and sent to live in a monastery.
The Monastery is also being billed as a personal spiritual journey and the two promos aim to convey the idea of a person making their own individual journey through life.
In the promo – a 30 second version and extended 40 second version – we see a lone man coming up an escalator in slow motion. In contrast, crowds of people are rushing at high speed in the opposite direction.
The footage was shot on 35mm film. In around six hours of online sessions, blue’s Tristan Wake enhanced the resulting sequences.
“The idea was to create a very monotone feel, primarily made up of shades of grey, rather than have something that was vibrant and colourful,” Wake explained.
blue’s Rich Martin carried out sound design for the promos where the idea was to convey the stresses of everyday life such as commuting on the tube.
“It was quite a stylised brief for the sound design; we wanted to represent the outside world through the sound track,” Martin said. “It was a really nice job and the voiceover was done by Terence Stamp, which is quite noteworthy.”
Telecine work for the promos was completed by blue’s George K using Spirit.
Jon Dennis, Director, BBC, said: "I'm delighted with the team from blue, as this was a really big job in respect to scale, effects and audio.
“Blue brought to the table an enthusiastic, dedicated and what was most important to me, very talented bunch of guys - and brought to life exactly what I wanted on the screen as a director."
The promos have aired on BBC2 since 1 May, in preparation for the programme’s air date of May 10.
(GB)