Two years of work. Over 900 hours and 500 TB of footage generated across three different countries. Add to that a team spread all over the world. The post-production of the celebrated NETFLIX series “Senna” was indeed on a larger scale. In charge of it all was Gabriel Queiroz. We got in touch to hear his thoughts on the project.
Really nice to get this opportunity to chat with you, Gabriel. Tell us, how long you have worked in the film industry?
I started working in the industry in 2008, making tape copies at a TV commercial production company. In those days, I was studying social sciences at university, but I knew that was more of an intellectual interest than a professional one.
Of course, my dream wasn’t to make tape copies, but I had to start somewhere. I’ve always been a bit of a nerd, and the technical side of post-production really sparked my curiosity. Whenever I came across a problem or process, I thought was inefficient, I’d spend hours figuring out a better solution—I’m still like that today!
I love the technical and creative process involved in making a film or series. From script to final delivery, it’s always an adventure.
You were the post-production supervisor on “Senna”. What are the main responsibilities of a post-production supervisor on such a project?
Ensuring that the creative vision is realized in post-production through careful planning and leadership — I believe that’s the main responsibility of a post-production supervisor. That said, every project is a completely different challenge.
To give you some numbers about the “Senna” series:
- Over 900 hours and approximately 500 TB of footage generated across three different countries
- 151 shooting days
- More than 2,000 VFX shots
- A fully remote workflow with the post-production team spread across multiple countries—including Brazil, Argentina, Spain, United States, Mexico, Canada, and India
- 2 years of work!
My involvement with “Senna” started months before shooting, during the prep phase. As post-production supervisor, I needed to understand where we wanted to go creatively and, out of all possible paths, determine the team, workflow, and techniques that would achieve that within the available schedule and budget.
“Senna” is the kind of series where post-production must be present and in dialogue with all departments from the very beginning. We were lucky to work with excellent professionals—people with a lot of experience but also open to learning and innovating.
It’s worth mentioning that post-production is made up of diverse teams: digital lab, editing, sound, music, color, VFX, graphics, online, mastering… each with different specialties and unique professionals. Knowing every stage, building the right teams, and leading them to deliver the expected result—that’s the biggest challenge of the post-production supervisor.
What were your thoughts when you got asked to work on the “Senna” team?
The first person to contact me about the project was Ale Casolari, NETFLIX’s post-production executive at the time. I had already worked on NETFLIX projects before and always appreciated how they are deeply involved, focusing on both quality and innovation.
At the time, I was head of post-production at O2 Filmes but was very interested in the series. For me, and much of the team, “Senna”’s story was also part of our own stories. As a child, I remember my family gathering on Sundays to watch the races—it was a big event. Being able to tell that story was an incredible opportunity.
Also, given who “Senna” was, I knew the technical and creative challenges would be as big as the audience’s expectations… hard not to want to be part of something like that!
When the project was still in development, I signed a contract with NETFLIX to create a course aimed at training post-production supervisors in Brazil, and to supervise the post on a feature film at Gullane, which was also the production company for “Senna”. It was an unusual arrangement for NETFLIX, but I think it was the right strategy for this project. By the time “Senna” officially started, having gone through those experiences and building that relationship of trust with Gullane made a huge difference.
As post-production supervisor it is your job to coordinate with different departments, such as sound, editing, and visual effects. How do you ensure that everything runs smoothly?
First and foremost, being aligned with the director and producers is essential. It may sound simple but maintaining creative and strategic alignment is a big challenge. Throughout the process, ideas and goals evolve (hopefully for the better, but there are no guarantees).
There’s no shortcut here—you need to build a good relationship with the directors and producers and foster active dialogue. For me, being proactive in these moments is crucial. And when it’s time to communicate decisions to the team, it’s important to choose the right moment and filter what’s essential, conveying security and calm. That’s something I’m always mindful of.
With “Senna”, the sheer amount of information and details was massive. That’s why it was the first project where I tried to implement a centralized project database, especially for post-production—a single source of information and metadata gathered throughout the process. This made it easier to access essential information later, manage director’s notes, track revisions, briefings, meetings, files, shots, and so on.
The key insight here is that good decisions rely on well-informed teams. The less friction there is in accessing the right information, the better.
On top of that, I’d say the biggest challenge is leading people. How do you keep the team motivated and focused? How do you encourage communication between departments? How do you assess progress and make changes when necessary, and communicate those changes in the best way? How do you engage with stakeholders, deciding what they really need to know and what might just create unnecessary noise? Sometimes you need to propose something that requires more resources—how do you present that case to producers? These are some of the challenges a post-production supervisor faces to keep everything running smoothly.
Which creative decisions made during post-production had a major impact on the final product in your opinion?
When I think about decisions made “during post-production,” I can’t help but point out that many of them actually took shape much earlier.
A great example is the sound design for the race cars. We knew the sound of the cars was crucial for the race sequences but recreating them was a huge challenge. You can’t just find those specific sounds online—at least not with the quality and variety we needed. Modern F1 cars and engines sound completely different.
We needed to find working cars and engines from that era, which seemed almost impossible—not to mention the budget constraints. And the variety was huge: if we only consider Ayrton’s cars across the championships, there’s the Toleman’s Hart 4-cylinder (1984), the Renault V6 in the Lotus (1985), the Honda V6, V10, and V12 in the McLarens (1988–1993), and the Renault V10 in the Williams (1994). Plus, all the karts, F1600, F3, and cars from other drivers!
Of course, TV allows for some creative liberties, but we wanted to stay as faithful as possible to the original sounds. This became one of the most exciting and impactful missions in post. With the help of the team at Pole Position, we managed to locate and record collector cars in three different countries—a long process involving ideas, research, negotiations, and tests that began way before and allowed us to be creative in post-production.
For “Senna”, what tools and technologies were essential in the post-production process?
There were so many… it’s hard to choose just the “essential” ones. Two tools I really enjoyed using—and had little experience with before the series—were Unreal Engine (for previsualization) and Airtable (for post-production management and as a relational database).
Last question, do you have a favorite scene or moment in the series where you feel that the post-production team really nailed it?
I love the Monaco race in 1984!
