Vishal – BBC Studios – Sound design and mix

Published on: April 24, 2023April 24, 2023Author: ArlieComment: 0

‘Vishal’ is a 9-part investigative podcast series from BBC Studios. I did the sound design and mixing on episodes 0, 6, 8 and 9 of this series.

On 29th July 1981, while the eyes of the world are on London and captivated by the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, an eight-year-old boy disappears on his way home from the celebrations. Despite a huge police search he is never seen alive again. Seven months later his partial remains are discovered in a small patch of woodland in rural Sussex, many miles from home. Forty years on, and despite the emergence of new evidence, no-one has been brought to justice for the abduction and death of Vishal Mehrotra and the police appear to have exhausted all their leads. Then one day, as the world is going into lockdown in 2020, a BBC local reporter receives a secretive message from a person who has worked within the police – they tell him they’ve seen something extraordinary that could blow the case wide open.

The show was presented by Colin Campbell and Suchin Mehrotra, and the series producer was Satiyesh Manoharajah. Audio production, sound design and mixing on episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 was by the amazing Steve Urquhart. The producer for episodes 6, 8 and 9 was Jolyon Jenkins, and I then sound designed and mixed those episodes. Original music for the whole series was made by Steve Urquhart.

This was a highly complex series, which took a huge amount of work from the whole production team. The sound design and mixing process was also more complicated than usual, requiring a large amount of attention to detail as we continued to get additional edits, pick ups, changes from legal and editorial policy, etc. in the lead up to release.