Machine Room continue post work for 'Footballers’ Wives'

The Machine Room are currently working on the post for the latest series of 'Footballers’ Wives', the ITV1 drama about the footballers of fictional Premiership club Earls Park and the glamorous women in their lives.
This is the first series of Footballers’ Wives that The Machine Room have worked on, and continues the company’s good relationship with award-winning independent Shed Productions. The Machine Room recently completed 'Bad Girls' series five with Shed, and are due to start post on series six this month.
Footballers’ Wives producer, Sean O’Connor, said: “I’ve been hugely impressed by The Machine Room on this series of Footballers’ Wives. From the runners to the editors and graders, the staff are a very talented and enormously efficient resource. Nothing is too much trouble for them, and their attention to detail is second to none. They’ve genuinely contributed to making the show look even more glamorous and sumptuous than our two previous series. They’ve made the post-production experience of Footies’ Wives a real pleasure.”
The latest series was all shot on digi-beta and then off-lined at Shed before the conform by Rob Schofield and Ronnie Newman in The Machine Room’s linear edit suites. It then went into smoke for extensive film effects, tracking, green screen compositing, rotoscoping and removal of unwanted objects. Gerry Gedge carried out the final DCP tape grade. Schofield and Newman then inserted the part-break bumpers and titles before producing an international master and a 4 x 3 version.
The Machine Room’s editor, John McLaren, used smoke’s tracking and effects capabilities to complete a number of shots. For example, many of the football and stadium scenes were shot at Tottenham Hotspur’s ground, White Hart Lane. He explained: “In one scene in the players lounge, you could see right through to an empty stadium behind, so we had to comp some crowds into the background to give the match a real-life atmosphere.”
In another scene The Machine Room had to give Jackie (Gillian Taylforth) a realistic looking black eye. As McLaren says, “This was a complex task as it meant extensive colour correction, tracking and masking to replicate the black eye effect over a number of scenes. And then there were the lions we had to comp in from green screen…you’ll have to wait for the series to start to find out what that’s all about!”
(GB)