Smegtastic! Dave’s Red Dwarf Goes Red 4k

14th April 2009

Evolutions, Soho's largest independent post production facility, completed the post production on the Dave channels Easter special ‘Red Dwarf: Back to Earth'. The return of the popular programme was shot on the Red One camera at 4k and contained over 260 vfx shots making it one of the most advanced and visually impacting programmes in 2009.

Produced by Grant Naylor Productions, the three-part series follows the misadventures of the reunited crew of Rimmer (Chris Barrie), Cat (Danny John-Jules), Kryten (Robert Llewellyn) and Lister (Craig Charles) as the last remaining human. 

Doug Naylor, the writer, director and executive producer made the decision early on to shoot on a Red One camera and chose one of Red's first users Mike Seymour of special effects company and online training school FXPHD to act as Second Unit Director and VFX Supervisor. Mike worked with 18 vfx artists around the world on the production.

Evolutions edited the promos and utilised its workflow expertise to post produce the three part series and special ‘Red Dwarf: The Making of Back to Earth' that accompanied it (premiering Sunday 12th April at 9.30pm on Dave). Offline was be carried out by Nick Ames onsite at Shepperton Studios.

Final post production moved to Evolutions where the series was onlined on the Symphony Nitris DX by Nick King, graded on Baselight by Nick Adams, with audio completed on Pro tools  by Mark Owen.

Evolutions set up a bespoke RED workflow for the conform and grade, both using the Red rushes. Colourist Nick Adams used Baselight 4.1 and graded with complete access to all the original media at full resolution.

Simon Kanjee, Managing Director, Evolutions comments: "We are enormously delighted to be working on the new Red Dwarf, especially so as it's at the forefront of the current wave of Red-shot productions."

Smegtastic! Dave’s Red Dwarf Goes Red 4k