Miracle at Medinah

Co-producers Leanne McClernon and Emma Self discuss the making of Miracle at Medinah.

Co-producers Leanne MccLernon and Emma Self give us the full story behind the making of Miracle at Medinah

First shown on Christmas Day 2012, Miracle At Medinah re-tells the story of Europe's incredible come-from-behind Ryder Cup victory last September. The response to the film has been excellent and rightly so. Had roles been reversed, you suspect US TV might have presented us with a film dripping with syrupy voice-overs, shots of weepy family members at every turn, lots of over-the-top cringeworthy life messages and Bruce Hornsby (And The Range) tinkling away on his piano for the whole 93 minutes. The documentary made by the Sky Sports golf team has a classy, timeless feel with a subtlety of touch which allows the captain and players, the stars of it all, to tell their story without being drowned out by heavy production values. To get the full story behind the making of Miracle at Medinah, we talked to the film's co-producers Leanne MccLernon and Emma Self. How much of a challenge was it to get the film ready for a Christmas Day viewing? Leanne: It was a massive challenge as we have live golf on the European Tour and PGA Tour every week so in the end we had around three weeks to shoot the player interviews, links and voice over with presenter David Livingstone and prep and edit the programme. There was a small team. Emma and I co-produced and Pete MacLeod cut the music pieces. We worked with editor Robbie Easterbrook over our deadline right up to the Saturday before Christmas to give the extra touches that make the programme so special . Emma: It was a big undertaking to have the programme ready, mainly because we had a clear idea from the start how we wanted it to work and we wanted to do the interviews and story justice. There wasn't much time off and there were some very long days for us as producers as well as the editors who helped finesse the programme and the other two members of our team who were helping with prep and cutting the lovely opening and closing montages. It was a massive sigh of relief and sense of achievement when it was finally on tape and ready to go. When and where did the filming of the players take place and how long did each interview take? Leanne: After lots of chat with the each player's agents we managed to pencil in 10 minutes with everyone in Dubai over three days while they were playing at November's DP World Tour Championship. Although getting them at the time was not easy due to their schedules. Emma: It was great to have all the players in one place but it was quite a challenge logistically to fit all 12 in to two days of filming. As world number one Rory McIlroy obviously had a lot of demands on his time, we filmed his interview at his hotel. Then the other 11 were done in a little room by the tennis centre at the Earth Course. We had to make sure the look of all the interviews matched up even though we were shooting in more than one location, so with all the lighting, the backdrop, cameras etc we were a bit of a travelling circus. Tying down the rest of the players in between various press calls, practice and pro-ams took a lot of juggling. But they were all still really keen to talk about the Ryder Cup and are a really nice group of guys, so didn't mind waiting for a while if a fellow team-mate over-ran their timeslot a little bit. We'd