Now in its 19th series, the BBC’s The Apprentice continues to attract millions of viewers who tune in to watch the latest mishaps of the candidates hoping to become Lord Sugar’s next business partner.
Each episode follows a set format. The task, where Lord Sugar assigns a business challenge focused on sales, marketing or strategy; the results – where the teams are presented with the outcomes and their performances are evaluated; and the boardroom – when the losing team defends their decisions, and the weakest candidate hears the dreaded, “You’re Fired.”
It’s important for a show that’s been on air since 2005 to stay fresh, and much of that can be achieved through its look. Andrew Cloke, senior colourist at ENVY Post Production, began working on The Apprentice towards the end of series 17 and has gone on to grade the last two seasons. At the start of series 17, the show’s production company, Naked, a Fremantle label, decided to take advantage of new camera technology and upgrade their workflow using Sony cameras. This led to an update of The Apprentice’s look, showcasing the new technology.
Cloke starts work on the series once the cut is locked, grading it in Baselight. The Apprentice has its own identity with the colour blue featuring prominently throughout. “It’s not always about dialling the colour up,” he explains, “it’s just about getting it to sit in the right place and creating the right feel. The boardroom is the one consistent thing through the whole series. One of the challenges of the grade is that every episode has lots going on, and then you’ve got the boardroom at the end.”
Creating the LUT
To help keep the colour of The Apprentice consistent, Cloke created his own Look Up Table (LUT), which is essentially a table of numbers that can change the colour, contrast, and other properties of an image. “I built it using 3D LUT creator, which allows me to use tools that weren’t available in Baselight. The way I use it is a bit more subtle than creating a finished look. I pull hues together without affecting contrast or saturation too much, to curate the palette of different shows. So I can be flexible with a mixture of footage in the Baselight. I always think of it as a bit like choosing a film stock. It gives a consistent thread through myriad days and locations in a way that’s efficient and more subtle than a heavy handed look.”
Cloke is very structured in the way that he works on The Apprentice. He typically has one and a half days to complete his work on each episode. “The first day is generally just me unless there’s something special needed for that episode. Sometimes, if there are very particular notes, there will be a discussion before I start and we might do some tests. But generally, it’s a full day on my own, then half a day to finish followed by the review in the afternoon of the second day.”
On day one, Cloke will typically focus on the challenge part of the episode, working towards what he describes as the show’s “known quantity,” the start of the boardroom section, by the end of the day. “[The boardroom] is the one consistent bit of the series. I know what the lighting is going to be. I know what the look is going to be, so I always put my first bit of effort into the main body of the show. Every episode is so different, they’re in different locations, and the teams are constantly changing, which keeps it very interesting.”
Because of The Apprentice’s nature, each episode includes many more shots than a standard show. Episode four of the current series included 1950 shots, with around 600 of those in the boardroom. To help manage such a large number, Cloke created some code based on the metadata in Baselight.
“I get clip name information and tape name information, and out of the box Baselight does some filtering, but I wrote a little bit of code that allows me to pull out just the camera identifiers – Camera A, B, C etc., that are used for the main body of the show and then in the boardroom, it’s Camera One, Camera Two,” he explains.
At the press of a button on Baselight, the code enables Cloke to filter the shots by the camera identifier, meaning he can quickly see all those captured using Camera A, Camera B, etc. “It just makes handling that many shots so much more efficient in a day,” he adds. “Even though the cameras themselves are a little bit different from each other, they stay consistent within themselves. So once I balance between the cameras, it’s less of a job to roll out the grades across multiple shots. Baselight allows me to be quite efficient in that regard so I can work at speed.”
There are a lot of moving parts with a show like The Apprentice, and Cloke is keen to praise the production team who are out and about on location with the candidates. “The guys shooting it do a fantastic job and try to make my life as easy as possible. They’re going in and out of different places, they’re running around after the contestants, and they have minimal opportunity to prep ahead of time. I imagine it’s a lot harder than they make it look.”
Because each challenge is shot over an entire day, sometimes two days, and at different locations, Cloke uses colour to give the audience the feeling of time passing. “We try to push the early morning feel at the start of the episode. Then the day is generally fairly consistent unless there’s something like they’re out in the midday sun, and then we emphasise the end of the day.
“My aim is always to try and make it flow smoothly and not be too heavy-handed. It’s just about making it fit the narrative of what’s going on in that particular episode.”
ALL SHOW IMAGES COURTESY BBC
