Category Archives: Apple TV+

Masters of the Air: Directors and DP Talk Shoot, VFX and Grade

March 14, 2024

By Iain Blair

World War II drama Masters of the Air is a nine-episode Apple TV+ limited series that follows the men of the 100th Bomb Group as they conduct perilous bombing raids over Nazi Germany and grapple with the frigid conditions, the lack of oxygen and the sheer terror of combat at 25,000 feet in the air. Starring Austin Butler and Barry Keoghan, it’s the latest project from Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, the producing team behind Band of Brothers and The Pacific.

Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck

Ranging in locations from the fields and villages of southeast England to the harsh deprivations of a German POW camp, Masters of the Air is enormous in both scale and scope. It took many years and an army of creatives to bring it to life — such as directors including Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck and DPs including Jac Fitzgerald.

Here, Boden and Fleck (Captain Marvel) talk about the challenges of shooting, editing and posting the ambitious show. In a sidebar, Fitzgerald (True Detective) talks about integrating the extensive VFX and the DI.

After doing Captain Marvel, I guess you guys could handle anything, but this was still a massive project. What were the main challenges?
Anna Boden: We did episodes 5 and 6. I’d say for us, Episode 5 was a big challenge in terms of wrapping our heads around it all. Some of the prep challenges were very big because it’s really a long air battle sequence that takes up almost the entire episode, and we had limited prep and not a ton of time to do previz and work everything out ahead of time. Also, simultaneously, we were prepping Episode 6, which was going to take us on location and to a whole bunch of new spaces that the show had never been to before. Finding those new locations and doing both of those things at once required so much planning, so it was challenging.

How did you handle the big air battle sequence and working with the volume stage?
Boden: You don’t want to show up on the day and wing it. As filmmakers, sometimes it’s really fun to get on-set and block the sequence based on what the actors want to do. But you can’t do that when you’re shooting on a volume stage, where you’re projecting a lot of imagery on the wall around you. You have to plan out so much of what’s going to be there. That was new for us. Even though we’d worked on Captain Marvel and used greenscreen, we’d never used those big-volume LED stages before. It was a really cool learning experience. We learned a lot on the fly and ultimately had fun crafting a pretty exciting sequence.

I assume director Cary Joji Fukunaga and his DP, Adam Arkapaw, set the template in the first four episodes for the look of the whole show, and then you had to carry that across your episodes.
Boden: Yeah. They’d obviously started shooting before us, and so we were studying their dailies and getting a sense of their camera movements and the color palettes and the vibe for the show. It was really helpful. And our DP, Jac Fitzgerald, knows Adam pretty well, so I think that they had a close working relationship. Also, we were able to visit the set while Cary was shooting to get a sense of the vibe. Once we incorporated that, then we were on our own to do our thing. It’s not like we suddenly changed the entire look of the show, but we had the freedom to put our personalities into it.

And one of the great things about the point where we took over is that Episode 5 is its own little capsule episode. We tried to shoot some of the stuff on the base in a similar tone to how they were shooting it. But then, once we got to that monster mission, it became its own thing, and we shot it in our own way. Then, with Episode 6, we were in completely different spaces. It’s a real break from the previous episodes because it’s the midpoint of the season, we’re away from the base, and there’s a big shift in terms of where the story is going. That gave us a little bit of freedom to very consciously shift how we were going to approach the visual language with Jac. It was an organic way to make that change without it feeling like a weird break in the season.

Give us some sense of how integrating all the post and visual effects worked.
Ryan Fleck: We were using the volume stage, so we did have images, and for the aerial battles, we had stuff for the actors to respond to, but they were not dialed in completely. A lot of that happened after the shooting. In fact, most of it did. (Jac can probably help elaborate on that because she’s still involved with the post process for the whole show.) It wasn’t like Mandalorian levels of dialed-in visual effects, where they were almost finished, and the actors could see. In this show, it was more like the actors were responding to previz, but I think that was hugely helpful.

On Captain Marvel, so often actors are just responding to tennis balls and an AD running around the set for eyelines. In this case, it was nice for the actors to see an actual airplane on fire outside their window for their performances to feel fresh.

Did you do a lot of previz?
Fleck: Yeah, we did a lot for those battle sequences in the air, and we worked closely with visual effects supervisor Stephen Rosenbaum, who was integral in pulling all that stuff together.

What did Jac bring to the mix? You hadn’t worked together before, right?
Fleck: No, and we like her energy. She has experience on big movies and small movies, which we appreciate, and so do we. We like those sensibilities. But I think she just has a nice, calm energy. She likes to have fun when she’s working, and so do we, but she’s also very focused on executing the plan. She’s an organized and creative brain that we really appreciated.

Boden: I think that we had a lot of the same reference points when we first started talking, like The Cold Blue, an amazing documentary with a lot of footage that was taken up in the planes during World War II. Filmmakers actually were shooting up there with the young men who were on missions in these bomber planes. That was a really important reference point for us in terms of determining where the cameras can be mounted inside one of these planes. We tried as much as possible to keep those very real camera positions on the missions so that it felt as reality-based and as visceral as possible and not like a Marvel movie. We used some of the color palette from that documentary as well.

It was also Jac’s working style to go to the set and think about how to block things in the shot list… not that we need to stick to that. Once we get in there and work it through with the actors, we all become very flexible, and she’s very flexible as well. Our work styles are very similar, and we got on really well. We like our sets to be very calm and happy instead of chaotic, and she has a very calm personality on-set. We immediately hired her to shoot our next feature after this show, so we’re big fans.

Was it a really tough shoot?
Boden: Yeah. We started shooting in July and finished in October. That’s pretty long for two episodes, but COVID slowed it all down.

Fleck: I’ve never shot in London or the UK before, but I loved it. I loved the crews; I loved the locations. We got to spend time in Oxford, and I fell in love with the place. I really loved exploring the locations. But yes, there were challenges. I think the most tedious stuff was the aerial sequences because we had mounted cameras, and it was just slow. We like to get momentum and move as quickly as we can when shooting.

Even though this is TV, you guys were involved in post to some degree, yes?
Ryan Fleck: Yes, we did our director’s cuts, and then Gary kept us involved as the cuts progressed. We were able to get back into the edit room even after we delivered our cuts, and we continued to give our feedback to guide the cuts. Typically, TV directors give over their cuts, and then it’s “Adios.” But because we worked so long on it and we had a good relationship with Gary and the actors, we wanted to see this through to the end. So we stayed involved for much longer than I think is typical for episodic directing.

Typically, on our films, we’re involved in all the other post departments, visual effects and sound, every step of the way. But on this series, we were less involved, although we gave notes. Then Jac did all the grading and the rest of the show. She kind of took over and was very involved. She’ll have a lot of insights into the whole DI process. (See Sidebar)

Anna, I assume you love post, and especially editing, as you edited your first four features.
Boden: I love post because it feels like you’ve made all your compromises, and now all you can do is make it better. Now your only job is to make it the best version of itself. It’s like this puzzle, and you have all the time in the world to do the writing again. I absolutely love editing and the process of putting your writing/editing brain back on. You’re forgetting what happened as a director on-set and rethinking how to shape things.

Give us some idea of how the editing worked. Did you also cut your episodes?
Boden: No, we hired an editor named Spencer Averick, who worked on our director’s cut with us. Every director was able to work on their director’s cut with a specific editor, and then there was Mark Czyzewski, the producer’s editor, who worked on the whole series after that. We worked with him after our director’s cut period. We went back into the room, and he was really awesome. We edited in New York for a couple of weeks on the director’s cut, and then we were editing in LA after that in the Playtone offices in Santa Monica.

What were the big editing challenges for both episodes? Just walk us through it a bit.
Boden: I’d say that one of the biggest challenges, at least in terms of the director’s cut, was finding the rhythm of that Episode 5 mission. When you have a long action sequence like that, the challenge is finding the rhythm so that it has the right pace without feeling like it’s barraging you the whole time. It needs places to breathe and places for emotional and character moments, but it still has to keep moving.

Another challenge is making sure viewers know where they are in every plane and every battle throughout the series. That ends up being a big challenge in the edit. You don’t realize it as much when you’re reading a script, but you realize it a lot when you’re in the edit room.

Then, for Episode 6, it was about connecting the stories because in that episode, we have three main characters — Crosby, Rosenthal and Egan — and they’re in three different places on three very separate journeys, in a way. Egan is in a very dark place, and Rosenthal is in a dark place as well, but he finds himself in this kind of palatial place, trying to have a rest. And then Crosby’s having a much lighter kind of experience with a potential love interest. The intercutting between those stories was challenging, just making sure that the tones were connecting and not colliding with each other, or if they were colliding, colliding in a way that was interesting and intentional.

How hands on were Spielberg and Hanks, or did they let you do your own thing?
Fleck: We mostly interacted with Gary Goetzman, who is Tom Hanks’ partner at Playtone. I think those guys [Spielberg and Hanks] were involved with early days of prep and probably late days of post. But in terms of the day-to-day operations, Gary was really the one that we interacted with the most.

Boden: One of the most wonderful things about working with Gary as a producer — and he really is the producer who oversaw this series — is that he’s worked with so many directors in his career and really loves giving them the freedom and support to do what they do best. He gave us so much trust and support to really make the episodes what we wanted them to be.

Looking back now, how would you sum up the whole experience?
Fleck: All of it was challenging, but I think the biggest challenge for us was shooting during COVID. We kept losing crew members day by day, and it got down to the point where everybody had to test every day and wait for their results. We would have crew members waiting three to four hours before they could join us on-set, so that really cut the amount of shooting time we had every day from 11 hours down to six.

Boden: Some days we’d show up and suddenly find out an hour into the day that we weren’t going to get an actor that we were planning to shoot with, so we’d have to rearrange the day and try to shoot without that actor. That was a big challenge.

Fleck: The great thing for me was how much I learned. Back in history class, you get all the big plot points of World War II, but they don’t tell you about how big these B-17s were, how violent it was up in the air for these guys. You think of the D-Day invasion when you think of the great milestones of World War II, but these aerial battles were unbelievably intense, and they were up there in these tin cans; they were so tight and so cold. I just couldn’t believe that these kids were sent into these situations. It was mind-boggling.

Boden: I also learned a lot through the process of reading the material and the research about the history of these specific people in the stories. But I’d say that one of the things that really sticks with me from the experience was working with this group of actors. That felt very special.

DP Jac Fitzgerald on Shooting Masters of the Air

Jac, integrating all the VFX with visual effects supervisor Stephen Rosenbaum must have been crucial.
Yes. When I started the show, I imagined that the majority of the VFX work would be done on the volume stage. But then I realized that he had a whole World War II airfield to create on location. Obviously, we had the tower structure for the airfield, and we had two planes, one of which was being towed. And it was all so cobbled together from the outside.

Jac Fitzgerald

The planes looked like they were complete, but they weren’t moving by themselves. They didn’t have engines in them or anything. What was interesting to me was the extent of the visual effects that Stephen had to do on the exteriors. We only had two plane bodies, but at any one time when you see the airstrip, there are 12 planes there or more. So there was a huge amount of work for him to do in that exterior world, which was actually as important as the VFX in the volume.

What about the DI? Where did you do all the grading?
It was predominantly in LA at Picture Shop with colorist Steven Bodner, who did the whole show. And because of the enormous amount of VFX, it was obvious early on that things were going to need to be done out of order in the DI.

At first, they thought that my two episodes [5 and 6] would be the first ones to have the DI, as Adam Arkapaw was unavailable to do his episodes [1 through 4] because he was working on another film. At the time they thought they would go in and do my episodes and start prepping and setting the look for episodes 1 through 4 as well. Then it became clear that the DI schedule would have to adjust because of the enormity of the VFX.

Stephen Rosenbaum spent a lot of time making the footage we’d shot and all the VFX worlds collide. I think he had an extraordinary number of people from vendors around the world involved in the project, so there was certainly a lot of cleaning up to do. We all did a lot of work on the look in the DI, trying to make it as seamless as possible. And then again, because episodes 1 through 4 needed so much VFX work, we did my episodes and then we did 7, 8 and 9, and then we went back to 1 through 4. It was certainly a lot of jumping around. I wish that we could have mapped it all from beginning to end, but it wasn’t to be.

Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.

DP Chat: Stefan Duscio on Apple TV’s Shantaram

November 9, 2022

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Apple TV+’s Shantaram, starring Charlie Hunnam, is a 1980s drama that follows a fugitive who escapes prison and reinvents himself as a doctor in the slums of Bombay. It’s based on the Gregory David Roberts novel of the same name.

DP Stefan Duscio

As the lead DP on the series, Stefan Duscio, ACS, shot six episodes out of the 12-episode series (1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9). The series is led by showrunner Steve Lightfoot and directed by Bharat Nalluri, Iain B. MacDonald and Bronwen Hughes.

Shot on ARRI Alexa Mini LF using Panavision Ultra Panatar lenses, Shantaram is the first Apple TV+ series that uses anamorphic lenses and frame in a 2.40 aspect ratio.

When shooting the series, Duscio pursued smooth camera movement and wide-screen anamorphic because, in his own words, “I wanted you to fall in love with Bombay and unashamedly present it in a romantic way.”

Let’s find out more from Duscio…

What were the challenges of shooting in Bombay?
Actually, due to the pandemic and the fact that the Delta variant was spreading, we couldn’t film in India in 2021 during the bulk of principal photography. We instead formulated a plan to film Shantaram across Australia and Thailand and then worked with a second unit in 2022 to achieve all of our Mumbai landscapes and plates. As with many productions during the time, the pandemic provided a huge challenge for us to overcome. COVID restrictions and lockdowns were in full force across Melbourne and Bangkok. Every location where we were permitted to film felt tenuous, and every week of continued filming felt like a gift.

What were the challenges of recreating 1980s Bombay?
At first, we were all disheartened that we couldn’t shoot the main unit work in India, but in retrospect, having ultimate control over large backlot-like areas in Bangkok worked really well for us. For one, on a COVID-safe level, we needed to be isolated and removed from the public. And two, our incredible art departments could spend time and effort making every detail as period-correct as possible.

You shot the first episode that set the tone for the series. Can you talk about that?
I worked extensively with showrunner Steve Lightfoot and setup director Bharat Nalluri to discuss the tone and look for the series. A lot of our conversations were about what sort of story we were telling, what films inspired us and how we wanted the audience to feel when watching this wild tale.

Our production designer, Chris Kennedy, was also an incredible resource, and his influence on the entire series can’t be overstated enough. Chris has spent a lot of time in India, including on the Garth Davis film Lion, and has done an incredible amount of research on the time period and place. We all poured over hundreds of photographs from books and magazines as well as archival footage.

Steve said he didn’t want to be afraid of the word “romance” in the series, and Bharat and I took that to heart, creating a photographic language that moved between naturalism and romanticism. I wanted the audience to fall in love with Bombay — its places and its people — in the same way I have when traveling, wide-eyed in wonder, looking at exotic new places for the first time.

Why did you decide to shoot with anamorphic lenses and frame in a 2.40 aspect ratio?
Bharat and I love the look and character of anamorphic lenses, and this felt like an epic action-adventure tale worthy of the 2.40 canvas. We did test both 2×1 versus 2.40 on many location stills during all of our scouting, and we all soon agreed that wide screen suited the occasion of the story. We ultimately chose Panavision Ultra Panatar large-format anamorphic lenses that provide a unique 1.3x squeeze, which is well-suited to the Alexa Mini LF sensor.

DP Stefan Duscio behind camera

Did you use the same camera for the entire show?
Yes, we shot the entire series on Alexa Mini LF with Ultra Panatar lenses. There was the occasional use of a 50mm Panavision H-Series spherical lens for more impressionistic work, but we generally stuck to the package.

How did you work with the director and colorist to get the look you wanted? Were there on-set LUTs?
We generally used one LUT for the show, and our on-set DITs (Sam Winzar in Melbourne and Thian Temcharoensuk in Thailand) would adjust color from there. I worked extensively with dailies colorist Christopher Rudkin all year on the series, and we devised a secure remote system to view and color the dailies on wrap each evening. He was based in Budapest during production, though the time difference worked quite well for our workflow.

When we were wrapping in Melbourne or Bangkok, Chris was starting his day in Europe and had already received the first half of the day’s work. He would then send his work to editorial in Los Angeles when complete. It was quite a remarkable, around-the-world workflow, and I credit post facility Soundfirm in Melbourne, post producer David Jeffrey and Paramount TV for trusting us to design something so elaborate.

Can you talk lighting? Any happy accidents along the way?
Lighting this world was so much fun. We generally embraced a warmer color temperature for present-day India scenes and employed cooler and more neutral tones for Melbourne flashbacks. I set up a lot of the looks, colors and temperatures with Australian-based gaffer Ruru Reedy and his incredible team. I’ve been working with Reedy for many years, and it’s amazing to see how far lighting technology has come in that time. He ran a completely wireless set, and his lighting board operator could either be with us in the DIT tent or mobile.

It was such a freeing experience for me, and we were able to shape, dim and color our lighting very efficiently with this technique. We used a combination of ARRI Skypanels, LiteMat Spectrums, Asteras and traditional HMI and tungsten units. We also made custom LED globes that could be seen in-shot, looked period-correct and were controllable. It was really the best of using both modern wireless LED technology and leaning on beautiful fresnels for harder lights.

When I got to Thailand, I worked with an incredible local gaffer Wirot [Sittiwech]to carry on the look. We had large canvases to work on, whether it was our Bombay streets backlot or our Sagar Wada slum. Both major sets required a huge amount of resources and collaboration with the art department. They were both blank canvases, which was both exciting and daunting, and we endeavored to install as much practical lighting as possible in the sets before using larger moonboxes or swathes or sodium streetlights to fill the holes.

How did you become interested in cinematography?
I grew up loving comics, animation and movies — and always had an appreciation for visual storytelling. I studied media arts at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, which was a fine arts course with a focus on exhibition-based work. After university, I worked many jobs trying to figure out what I wanted to focus on: a camera assistant to photographers and cinematographers, a graphic designer for DVD covers, a storyboard artist.

Slowly, I fell more and more in love with the film industry, even though I found the work daunting and challenging. Eventually, after throwing myself into every experience possible, I started to become more comfortable and creative on a film set.

What inspires you artistically?
Inspiration is a constantly moving target, and you never seem to find it in the same place twice. I have some wonderful cinematographer friends who I find deeply inspiring, and that shared community of knowledge is really important to me. I love following photographers’ work, as their styles can often be more unique and personal without the machine of a film set influencing them.

How do you simultaneously stay on top of advancing technology?
In terms of technology, I spend a lot of time reading industry press and performing my own practical tests when new technology arrives. I do a lot of work in commercials, and they’re often a great playground to test emerging technologies and techniques before employing them in long-form work.

What new technology has changed the way you work?
I would point to LED lighting as being a huge change in the way I work now. The ability to subtly dim and color lighting fixtures and run many of them back to affordable dimming systems is really game-changing. We can paint the set with such a delicate brush now, particularly with more and more sensitive digital cameras emerging every year.

What are some of your best practices or rules you try to follow on each job?
Try to get in the director’s head as much as possible and develop a strong partnership on-set. Do a page turn together, build references together, agree on the style of the shoot together — before stepping onto set. Shoot and grade your own tests and present them to the director and producers to pitch the look well before shooting commences so there are no surprises on week one.

Explain your ideal collaboration with the director or showrunner when starting a new project.
Ideally, we would discuss story and tone first before discussing visual strategies. I love to know the intention of a story and how it should make us feel before making visual decisions.

What’s your go-to gear – things you can’t live without?
I shoot mostly on ARRI Alexa Mini LF these days, though I regularly mix up what lenses I use from job to job. I shoot all my preproduction stills on Canon 5D Mk4 and sometimes on 35mm and 120 film. I spend a lot of time in Adobe Lightroom organizing scout photos and grading looks.

Editing Apple TV+’s Five Days at Memorial

October 20, 2022

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By Ben Mehlman

Apple TV+’s Five Days at Memorial, based on Sheri Fink’s book of the same name, follows the true story of the 2,000 people who were stuck at New Orleans Memorial Hospital without power for five days during Hurricane Katrina. This tour de force was shepherded by Oscar winner John Ridley and Emmy winner Carlton Cuse, and it stars Vera Farmiga, Cherry Jones and Cornelius Smith Jr. The show explores the complicated and futile decisions that people faced during this harrowing nightmare.

JoAnne Yarrow

I recently spoke with Luyen Vu, ACE, Colin Rich, MPEG, and JoAnne Yarrow, ACE, the series’ three editors, all ow whom cut on Avid Media Composer. We talked about the importance of balancing the needs of the narrative with the real-life events that took place, the moral gray area that the show embraces, using archival as well as freshly shot footage, and more.

How was it balancing the drama and the needs of the narrative with the real-life events that took place?
Colin Rich: To me, you could say it added an almost extra burden. There’s an added weight knowing that so many characters, especially someone like [patient] Emmett Everett, are portrayals of real people. Many of the doctors and nurses are still around. Katrina was only 17 years ago.

JoAnne Yarrow: The balance was something that found its way. John wanted to make sure using archival footage wasn’t in lieu of being able to shoot something or of a good visual effect. We used it in a lot of different ways. It’s not just the traditional way of using archival to set up an environment. It’s also a flash into a character’s worst nightmare about what could be happening out there in the city. It’s used as an emotional element to help heighten the mental state of our characters. As we put in the archival footage, people liked and wanted it to stay. So the balance found its way organically as we went.

Luyen “Lu” Vu

Luyen “Lu” Vu: To jump onto what JoAnne said, the footage is obviously of real people, so that puts a real face to this tragedy and what so many had to deal with in the aftermath of the storm.

As we were figuring out the balance of archival footage [versus freshly shot], there were points where we almost went too hard, and it started desensitizing us. I think one of the most interesting things Carlton told me was that when he met with actors Cherry Jones and Vera Farmiga, they both said — without having talked to each other before — that they were going to be fierce advocates for their characters. It’s really important to tell this story with a balanced and unskewed perspective. We know those characters were trying, and you can see it in the writing and acting. They tried to do what they could, and we didn’t pass judgment on what was happening. We tried to be like an accountant of the events as opposed to giving a specific perspective of the events.

Colin Rich

Colin worked with John on the LA riots doc Let it Fall, but you all worked together on his American Crime. Did that help create a shorthand and creative synergy on this show?
Yarrow: It’s very open. I compare us to siblings. We don’t always agree, and we can get into it, but we approach it all with love, openness and transparency. I can show my cut to them and take their notes and criticism knowing it’ll make my work stronger. That’s a special and unique position to be in… to have that kind of trust among your colleagues.

Because we have all worked with John before, we had a good idea of what he was going to go for, and we all had a shorthand. That made it really enjoyable too. One of my favorite things from this whole process was having this deep creative connection with Colin and Lu, being able to trust and rely on them.

Vu: With the type of work we did on both American Crime and Memorial, we were trying to push against the boundaries of the language of cinema. When you’re doing that, it’s easy to get lost in the woods without somebody to consult. But since we’ve all been working together for so long, we had that shorthand and could talk things through. You need people you trust to have honest and deep discussions with.

Yarrow: And to vent with and be like, “This is so heavy.”

Vu: Yeah, I feel like a lot of our Zooms were the equivalent of going on walks because we couldn’t deal with the footage.

On to a practical question: What was your post setup like? What did you edit on, and how much was remote versus in person?
Yarrow: We were working remote and worked on an Amulet. It was seamless. I think working from home was another aspect that made this pretty intense. The entire show was remote, and with all the elements going on, you would think it would have been really challenging. But because of our good relationship and our regular Zooms, it wasn’t bad. And the Amulet was great for us three.

Vu: Yeah, Amulet’s parent company is Teradici. I’d forget that I didn’t have the Avid in the room with me. We were doing some very specific cuts and felt like other systems weren’t giving us the precision we needed. And working remotely with everybody was a challenge, of course, but I think we were all able to manage it fairly well.

Rich: At the start of the project, we did consider moving to in-person at some point, but because things were so smooth working remotely, it just never became a necessity. The remote was extended beyond just the edits, especially for Lu and me, who were on the project for a while. ADR, scoring sessions, VFX reviews… we were attending many of them, and they were all remote.

Vu: The thing about this project is they shot in Toronto and then New Orleans, and obviously our showrunners, Carlton and John, were at those locations. So ADR was sometimes in Toronto, sometimes in LA or New York, and we had VFX companies in Europe doing work for us. So it likely would have ended up like this anyway.

How was the work broken down on episodes that credited more than one editor?
Vu: We made decisions very early on about who would be in charge of what, but as projects like this go, we were moving things here and there, especially with the documentary footage. I’d say we tried to pull from each other’s footage sometimes too. Since the collaboration is easy enough, it was an easy slide back and forth, and we tried to consult each other for almost everything.

Yarrow: Colin was wrapping up a show and came on a little bit later, so there was a handoff at some point. I think it was Episode 2 that I got shared credit on, but he took it from an early stage and took it over the finish line. He handled a lot of the creative things that happened in it. Then I had to leave early, so they both came in and took over to help see those episodes through as well. It really was a team effort for a lot of these.

Rich: It was such a long show and production that a lot of us came and went at different points in time.

Vu: It was also shot in a confusing way. For example, there would be days when they shot 102 and then 104 and then a small section for 105.

Was it block-shot? Like the first five days and then the aftermath?
Vu: Kind of. It’s complicated since the last three episodes have a bunch of flashbacks that were separate scenes all together, but they were obviously shot at the hospital. So those were shot during Episodes 1 through 5, but then sometimes, because of scheduling, there would be stuff shot for the later episodes early on as well.

I’d like to call it block shooting, but it was like a free-for-all. It was such a complicated production that our post producer, Ra’uf Glasgow, would have a handle on the schedule one day, but the next day he’d say he had no idea what it was anymore (laughs). We just had to play it by ear.

How long was post?
Vu: I was on the show the longest, and I started May 2021 and finished just shy of May 2022. But Colin and I wanted to continue to be involved, so we were going to meetings well into June.

Yarrow: I came on after Lu but had to leave at the end of November. So I was there from about June 2021 through end of November 2021.

Vu: Part of why Colin and I stayed on toward the end is because it’s such a VFX-heavy show, which is weird to say since it’s not like a sci-fi show. But there was a lot that had to be recreated, and it was fairly complicated because they were so tied to story points. It wasn’t just blowing up this building or whatever. Colin came on in July 2022.

Can you talk about the show’s structure and how it evolved? One of the things I noticed was how most episodes start with these really effective interviews.
Vu: John had always conceived of it that way. He likes to do this thing, which he’s done in other projects, where he keeps the interviewer away. Colin and I realized well into the project that it’s like in Rashomon, where you hear people asking questions, but you never see them. It keeps a clean perspective because you’re not involved with the interviewers; you’re only hearing what they’re saying. So structurally that was always there, though I think we ended up adding an interview at the end of one episode.

Yarrow: Yes, in 103, we added an end interview.

Rich: In terms of the global structure of the show, a lot came from John and Carlton, who themselves kind of bifurcated the show — there was a John half and a Carleton half. Also, Sheri Fink’s book is structured so that she goes through the five days first, and then the second half is about the investigation. One thing that was interesting for me was how, even though they’re connected, the two halves have different themes and intentions.

Ben, I think you used the word empathy earlier when talking about the first five days, and I think that’s really accurate. I think Lu and JoAnne would agree that a lot of what we do in the first five episodes is create empathy for these characters, whether they’re patients, doctors, administrators or whoever. They’re all thrown into this situation. As far as the second half goes — and Ben, you also alluded to this — it’s largely about the futility of seeking concrete answers. So there were different approaches to tackle the same subject matter.

Vu: To your point, Colin, we also felt like it was such a human story. We wanted to give a full picture of who each character was and then let the audience make their own judgments. I think the thing that surprised me the most was the range of things people felt about each person. For example, when we were doing ADR, different people interpreted each scene differently, and that was pretty remarkable.

Rich: I’ve talked to quite a few people who watched the show, and they usually have different takeaways about the same character, which I think is a good thing. It was certainly an intention of the show to do that.

How was it working on and finding the balance for a show that dissects the ethics and moral ambiguity of what is “right” when you’re facing the unimaginable?
Yarrow: I think the intent for all of us, including John and Carlton, was to be OK living in that gray space where there are no clear answers and trying to bring in honesty. All the actors brought an honesty to their performances with no judgments. I think we were all coming from a good place and tried to make that our guiding light.

Rich: Having worked more closely with the latter three episodes, those are the ones that are trying to get answers even if that clarity doesn’t exist. At times I felt pulled into my own opinions and biases, which is something we had to be careful about. For example, we had to recognize if music was too arch because that would be tipping our hand in a certain way. We also took out some flashbacks that were leaning too far in one direction. We made a conscious effort to keep things in that gray, which I think was easier to find in the first five episodes because that’s when we were living in empathy with the characters.

Before I let you go, can you talk about a favorite moment from a different editor’s episode and why you like it?
Yu: There’s a scene of JoAnne’s between Pou (Vera Farmiga) and Mulderick (Cherry Jones) where it seems like they might be speaking in code, but you’re not sure. They appear to come to an agreement. It can be interpreted in many different ways. To me, it gets to the heart of the question of the show. There are all these subtle moves with each of them, and both actresses did such a phenomenal job. I remember looking at that scene and the subtle facial expressions each of them made and asking, “Did they mean what they just said, or was that something else?”

Yarrow: There’s a part at the end of Episode 2, which I initially worked on. It was very cool to have some exposure to it and then see someone like Colin take it and elevate it. There’s the final shot of Pou looking out the window, and we flash to all this chaos of what’s happening in the outside world as she’s trying to reach her husband. When I watched that with a little bit of space, I loved it. Colin does this thing when he uses archival to make it frenetic. It swipes by and adds to the chaos of what’s going on. I thought it was really brilliantly used there. It elevated the ending in a way that I wasn’t prepared for.

Rich: Thank you. I loved so much of what Lu did in 101 and 104. In 101, there is a sequence at the peak of the storm when an older patient looks out the window. It’s a great series of violent cuts, and Lu changed the aspect ratio while he did it. There’s also these great audio cuts. That was really cool to see and feel at the premiere in a real movie theater with great sound. It’s a really intense sequence that gets under my skin in a great way.

Finally, what are you watching that you’re loving right now?
Vu: One of the things John mentioned early on for us to watch is a movie called An Elephant Sitting Still. It’s great, long and depressing as all hell (laughs). But what made me think of it was going back and watching a lot of Wong Kar-wai after finishing this project. I’m going through all of his movies right now. It reminds me of what I love about the work we get to do with John.

Rich: That’s funny. Lu and I met up about two weeks ago and talked about Wong Kar-wai, and I was going to say that I’d watched Fallen Angels, which is one of his movies from the ’90s, and what I loved about it and his work is how the style and form of the movie are in concert with the theme or intention of the piece. It’s a movie where everything is in concert, from the editing to the lighting to the production design, which is also a depiction of the state that the characters live in. Everything’s fractured and fast, and there are these crazy, warped images, and it’s an expression of the world that they live in.

Yarrow: I haven’t been catching up with my Wong Kar-wai, even though I love him. I haven’t really been watching anything because I’m finishing up a job. But I will say that the show Bad Sisters is going to be first on my list of things to watch once I wrap up.

Ben Mehlman is a writer/director. His script Whittier was featured on the 2021 Annual Black List after being selected for the 2020 Black List Feature Lab, where he was mentored by Beau Willimon and Jack Thorne. He has interviewed Emmy-Nominee Amy Duddelston, Emmy-nominee Nona Khodai and many others.

Ted Lasso’s Sound Team: Collaboration, Beard and a Rainbow

August 16, 2022

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For its two seasons, Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso has been the feel-good show we all needed, as well as an Emmy favorite. This year should be no different, with the show garnering 20 nominations, including ones for sound mixing and sound editing.

We reached out to re-recording mixers Ryan Kennedy and Sean Byrne, who were nominated for their work on Episode 205, “Rainbow,” and co-supervising sound editors Brent Findley and Bernard Weiser about Episode 209, “Beard After Hours,” which was also recognized. The group, which worked out of Warner Bros. Dub Stage 7, have all been on the show since its inception and are all about to start working on Season 3.

Brent Findley

With the success of Ted Lasso, have you stayed the course or made some changes along the way in your approach to the show?
Brent Findley: As the storytelling style of the show evolves, our approach evolves along with it. Season 1 introduced the characters and locations and the heart of the show with levity. While Season 2 continued with the comedy, it also had a veil of seriousness. The journeys of the characters became more internal and more intimate. The soundscape followed that.

There were more moments of suspending literal environments and sound effects to make way for the emotions of the story. While our physical environments might look the same, we chose elements and mix techniques that allow the audience to focus on the heart of the story during our actors’ strong performances. I would say Season 2 is less literal than Season 1 in regard to the soundscape. We pull out an impressionistic brush more often.

Bernard Weiser

Bernard Weiser: Adding to Brent’s answer, Season 2 became more intimate with the characters. Season 1 was broader with the ensemble cast, and the dialogue challenge was to track the storyline clearly among the craziness of the group.

Season 2 needed to capture the intimacy within, and the dialogue track needed to reflect that through the mic choices and the detail while protecting each performance within the production. This really is not a different approach, but as Brent said, an evolution of the storyline, which we follow and match with plenty of “barbeque sauce.”

Ryan Kennedy: Each season I feel like I grow a lot as a mixer. I am often approached with new experiences on this show, and my line of attack is different every time. I have my bag of tricks that I lean on, but I find with this show in particular that I like to reevaluate what I used to know and try viewpoints that are different from the way I normally engage with the scenes.

Ryan Kennedy

Sean Byrne: A lot is the same for continuity — same reverbs, same background sounds, etc. In your mind, I’ll bet you can hear what Disneyland sounds like on Main Street — the train bell, excited kids, popcorn, turnstiles, distant coasters. It has a character, and so do the scenes in Ted Lasso. What tends to change is when we want to make a point that supports the story. There, we get to pull out all the tricks we know to put the listener into a sonic fantasyland.

What made you pick the episode you submitted? What about it did you feel was worthy of a closer look?
Byrne: The “Rainbow” episode was a very tricky mix. We are traveling from a quiet studio to the stadium, following Roy Kent through the maze of the city. All while being scored by The Rolling Stones song “Rainbow.”

Getting everything to cut through that song — dialogue, crowds, cab rides, bone pops, sound design and so on — was no easy feat. It’s a full-range song at a high volume. It didn’t leave a lot of room for detail, yet we had to make room without the listener hearing wild fader moves or EQ. We really strived to have the listener take the emotional and sonic journey with Roy. Feel everything he’s feeling.

Sean Byrne

Kennedy: I love the heart of this episode, “Rainbow.” The depth and complexity of the message as it involves sound is integral to the message of the show.

Findley: Episode 209, “Beard After Hours” is an enigma. It’s literally a bonus episode that is a side trip from the primary arc of the series. Every few minutes, Beard finds himself in a different place with a different challenge. From a sound editing angle, it meant that every few minutes required completely new environments and effects. The only constants were his iPhone and his apartment keys. He doesn’t even get to keep the same pair of pants!

Every turn revealed a different sound design moment never visited before: drunken crowd leaving Wembley (loop group singing) leading to a stripped-down main title song on the tube, sports reporters talking to him through the television, a psychedelic lava-lamp room, a noir-Mickey Spillane-style interaction with a pants-repairing redhead leading to a run for his life, a paranoid hotel night clerk, a much-deserved slo-mo beatdown in an alley to a mournful rendition of Blue Moon, our loyal soccer hooligans fulfilling their fantasy on the Richmond pitch, a rainstorm and divine interaction, a rave in a church, and wrapping it all up with the theme from The Benny Hill Show (Yakety Sax). What a trip!

Weiser: When we found out that Beard was getting his own episode, I believe we knew that this would be a challenge and a wild ride. And certainly Jason and the Ted Lasso writers delivered just that! This episode challenged us to put Beard’s craziness together with his intellectual side to give us insight on him. It also exposed Beard’s feelings with the Richmond fans when he provided his “hooligans” with a night in their personal heaven. After all, one of the things that makes the Ted Lasso series successful is the wonderful heart each character has.

Can you give us an example from that episode of something that was particularly challenging or that you are most proud of?
Kennedy: There is a lot to this episode that I am proud of. The scene with Nate and his parents celebrating their anniversary at A Taste of Athens is one. But I think the moment I am most proud of is the buildup of Roy Kent quitting his job as a sport commentator and making his way to the stadium. Our music editor, Richard Brown, did an amazing job with his work on the Rolling Stones song. He combined the mix of coming in and out of that song to build the tension that leads up to Roy joining the coaching staff of AFC Richmond. That is one of my favorite moments in television (regardless of my participation in it).

Byrne:For me, I had to think quickly during playback. The producers wanted to hear something happen with the crowd to make it disappear while Roy is in the tunnel, something dramatic. I got the idea to group the Atmos crowds together and do a low pass sweep on them as Roy breathes. His breath sucked the crowd out of the stadium. The producers loved it. It really helped sell the story without dialogue.

Findley: Beard’s apartment keys are a recurring character through the episode. It was very important that the chosen elements added up to the right feel…not too heavy, not too thin, not too dense. It might seem minor, but it’s a testament to the sonic detail devoted to every element of the show.

Weiser: For dialogue, the scene outside the club, in the street, with Beard and the lady in red was tough at first. There was a fair amount of traffic noise, and the clarity of the dialogue was difficult. We certainly shot ADR for the scene but realized that we needed to pull out all the stops to try and save the original performance encapsulated in those production tracks. In true Ted Lasso form, it was a collaborative effort between dialogue editing, ADR, FX, Foley and mixing. The end result is that only two ADR lines were used and we are very proud of a seamless track for this scene.

What was your process on these scenes?
Kennedy: My approach to this scene was to acknowledge the emotion that I was witnessing on screen. I wanted the audience to feel the anxiety that Roy was feeling. We had to carry that energy from the studio to him arriving on the pitch. The music, Foley and dialogue had to create the atmosphere and intensity to get us from point A to point B. Our production sound team had the wherewithal to use Roy’s actual lavalier mic that he takes off himself when he quits the commentator job. That in and of itself was a great tool for me to use in the process of mixing the scene.

My other processes for the scene were following along with the action on the screen, adjusting the production sound against the music track to come to a balance that highlighted the emotion we felt with Roy joining the coaching staff of Richmond — the pinnacle of which was to see Nate’s realization of what was happening, the musical breakdown followed by the show ending. It’s a bit of a cliff-hanger, really. It was a lot of fun to put together.

Findley: I worked with Foley artist Sanaa Kelley to dial in the right combination of metal pieces. We had several exchanges of ideas and samples as the episode developed. Based on our conversations, Sanaa went out to antique stores and curated just the right keyring, skeleton key and other supporting keys to give this prop true character.

The first time we see it, it is seemingly innocuous. Beard just lets himself into his apartment and puts the keys in a bowl by the door. No big deal, right? The sneaky part is that Sanaa performed it with repeated passes to get it right. She does that every time we hear the keys through the episode. The first hint that there’s something special about the keys is when they drop out of Beard’s coat pocket in the pub. There is a subtle ring-out of the keys as they fall then a perfect little jingle when Jeremy presents them to Beard.

Beard then drops them in Red’s apartment… though we purposefully did not play the dropping, just the picking up later when Red points them out to him. This is an example of the suspension of literal sounds to serve the story… to stay with Beard in his head. Had we heard those keys land in that quiet environment, we could’ve been thinking about why Beard didn’t hear them instead of absorbing the story. The keys really have a hero moment during Beard’s beatdown. Marcus Mumford’s rendition of “Blue Moon” is so mournful that if the keys had just fallen out naturally, the heart of the moment would have been broken. Therefore, we sustained and pitched Sanaa’s keys to be sympathetic with the song as they “sang” their way to the ground. This kind of attention really locks in all the elements into a cohesive soundscape, even though Beard’s journey is disjointed.

Weiser: There was nothing complicated with the process. We cut the production dialogue straight through and cut the ADR through the scene. Then we did the tedious work on the dialogue, making sure not to “overcook” the production tracks while cleaning them up.

In the end, this is what all dialogue editors would do. The difference is in the choices and taste of the dialogue editor and the editor’s faith in allowing the dialogue mixer to work his/her magic as well. This is where the collaboration takes place. One cannot finish the job without the other, and when we work together, 2 plus 2 can equal 10. I like to think that it’s this collaboration that makes the show special and what makes Ted Lasso.

What tools do you use in your work?
Kennedy: I use the Avid S6 console, and I like the FabFilter EQs and compressors. I call on iZotope noise reduction when needed, and I like to use Altiverb Reverb for its realistic reverb impulse responses.

Byrne: I use the Avid S6 console. I’m strictly a console and keyboard user. You never know when you might be working on another stage, so I don’t go crazy with macro devices and such. I really like Stratus 3D reverbs. For an Atmos environment, Stratus spreads to the speakers very nicely. Also, Revibe and Reverb One have some go-to presets that sound great in certain situations.

Findley: We use so many different things to solve problems and to create new things. I’m afraid to start listing because I know I’ll forget something. Our primary editing workstation is Pro Tools. We’ll conform to new versions of picture with Matchbox. For dialogue, Bernard Weiser and Ashley Harvey might use Auto-Align Post, Soundminer, RX, Revoice Pro, Envy, Pitch’n Time Pro, Debird and Undertone, to name just a few.

For sound effects and design, in addition to Soundminer, Envy, and Pitch’n Time Pro, Kip Smedley and Mark Cleary employ a lot of fun tools like Morph, Traveler, Stutter Edit, Enforcer, Whoosh, Crowd Chamber, even an Arturia hardware synth. Again, I’ve definitely left things out. We’ll also do specific field recordings to get unique material to work with so not all the source sounds come from an existing library.

What haven’t we asked that you feel is important about your role on Ted Lasso?
Kennedy: I’d like to echo Sean’s response. Our job of mixing is always about picking what is important at the moment for the mix. Sometimes it is the dialogue, and at other times it is the music or the FX. The emotion and feeling of a show can change depending on what we’ve chosen. We love working with the producers and dialing in exactly what is needed in every situation.

Byrne: Pulling focus. We get so much amazingly recorded material, so it would be easy just to try and play it all. But the best mixes I’ve heard pull the listeners’ focus to what is important at the moment in the story. I want to pull the listeners’ attention to a feeling without them noticing, whether that is the feeling of being surrounded by 80,000 fans or of having a panic attack or of feeling completely alone in a crowded room. If you notice my work, then I haven’t done a good job.

My colleagues are so gifted at their craft. I’m constantly learning from them. My jaw drops watching Ryan Kennedy mix music and dialogue — timing the wall slaps and echoes to the beat of the song and spending the extra time to make the ADR sit perfectly in the mix. Brent and all of our editors make such excellent choices with their editorial that it gives Ryan and I time to really get deep into the mix rather than just working to get the job done. Brent and the team’s work on “Beard After Hours” was magnificent. So many details were added, all of the ear candy. I’m very grateful to be part of such a talented group of people.

Findley: My role is making sure everything you hear, save for the music, makes it to the church on time (the church being the mix stage) and that the sonic hopes and dreams of our creative leaders come through in the process. Translating the storytellers’ descriptions of how they imagine the soundscape to be into instructions that the sound team can work with is a core function. Often those descriptions are feeling-based, so converting those into practical application is important.

The thing that stands out the most to me is the overall feeling of collaboration at all stages of the process and from all levels of hierarchy. A good idea can come from anywhere. Anyone on the team can pitch an idea in their wheelhouse, and it is given thoughtful consideration. While we’re careful not to get mired in too many choices, and we don’t pitch ideas just for the sake of saying we contributed, the phrase “What if we…” is exciting to hear because what follows will be a fresh idea to think about.

Weiser: My colleagues have said it well. I can only say what a privilege it is to work with this wonderful sound team and mention the solid support we have enjoyed from our producers, from Warner Bros. Post Production and from Apple.

WeCrashed Showrunners and Post Supervisor Talk Workflow

April 21, 2022

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By Iain Blair

Apple TV+’s new series WeCrashed is a wild ride and a cautionary tale of ambition, power, greed, success and failure. Created by Lee Eisenberg and Drew Crevello, it tells the story of Adam Neumann (Jared Leto) and his wife Rebekah (Anne Hathaway), whose trendy startup space-sharing company WeWork became a huge success before an even more spectacular crash, going from a $47 billion valuation to under $10 billion after a failed IPO.

Lee Eisenberg

I recently spoke with Eisenberg (The Office, Bad Teacher), Crevello (The Grudge 2) and post supervisor Melissa Owen (City on Fire, The Baker and the Beauty ) about making the show and the post workflow.

Talk about what it took to prep and plan, and how much did the COVID crisis affect it?
Lee Eisenberg: Any time you’re dealing with real-life people, you need to have it all vetted by legal. We had outside counsel, and we wanted to get the story right. We did a huge amount of research and spoke to dozens of people who’d worked at WeWork and knew the Neumanns at different stages, and that was all very time-consuming.

COVID made everything far more difficult, like just connecting with your crew and trying to have conversations. You take so much for granted when you can see people’s faces and their smiles — or frowns. And we set out to make a very ambitious eight-hour movie on a TV schedule, so every day was crammed. We never took our foot off the gas pedal, and we strained every department, ourselves and the budget to pull it off.

Drew Crevello

Tell us about post. Was it a traditional TV post schedule?
Melissa Owen: The editors were cutting dailies as they came in and getting cuts ready to be viewed by the directors and DPs, so we tried as best we could to stick to a TV schedule. The back end of post was pretty heavy with finishing all the VFX and sound and so on, so it was a bit of a hybrid.

We shot on the ARRI Alexa Mini LF at 4.5K — 4448×3096. Even though our final delivery resolution was UHD at a 2:1 aspect ratio, we did our VFX pulls at source resolution to maintain a true 4K workflow and for archival.

Melissa Owen

Where did you do the post?
Owen: I’d say that 90% was done remotely from people’s homes because of COVID. That was a big challenge for all the editors and producers. It all had to be done online, all the reviews and so on. We did do a little bit in person when we got to the final stages, like the mix and the color correction. The DPs were able to come in and work on the grade.

Drew Crevello: Even that was quite strange. Post is obviously a very intimate creative process, and you’re working with the editors and the sound team for months. Then we’d meet for the first time at the final sound mix. So there was a lot of dislocation because of the pandemic.

Eisenberg: I remember being at one of the sound mixes and someone was trying to say hi to me. I had no clue who it was until I realized he was the editor I’d worked with remotely for four months.

You had three editors on this: Tamara Meem, Justin Krohn and Debra Beth Weinfeld. How did that work?
Eisenberg: The workflow was very traditional. We had directors who did blocks, but the same editor didn’t necessarily cut all three episodes in a block. And we shot out of order, so E3 was the first one up. We shifted it back and forth, so they were all busy at all times, and we were jumping into different Evercast rooms to check in and give notes.

Owen: For the offline editing, we were fully WFH and did not have a post production office. The editors and AEs used Avid Media Composer 2018 with Jump Desktop. The Avids were located at our Avid vendor’s secure location, Hula Post, and connected to our 20TB Nexus. The editors had computer systems in their homes and would log in remotely via VPN to their own Avid. We shot in New York, so dailies were transferred every night from Light Iron NY and sent digitally to Hula Post in LA.

What were the main editing challenges?
Eisenberg: Tone was a big one. Our directors, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, worked very closely with the editors on the first few episodes, and that really helped establish the tone. The temp score and final score by Chris Bangs helped so much with the tone as well.

Crevello: Justin, who cut E1 and E2, laid down a great temp score that was so pitch-perfect that it really helped tonally with the show. It also laid down a blueprint for the score, so that was key.

What about the importance of music and sound to the show?
Owen: We had a great sound team, and Brent Findley was our supervising sound editor and sound designer. He did a fantastic job. We mixed on the lot at Universal Sound with re-recording mixers John W. Cook II and Ben Wilkins, who had worked with Lee before. We did a Dolby Atmos mix. They were all so dedicated in creating a great soundscape for the show.

There are quite a lot of VFX. Who did them and what was entailed?
Owen: We had a few vendors and traded off on different episodes. Onyx was key in doing a lot of the VFX, and we also used The Molecule, who have just been acquired by Crafty Apes. We also used Phosphene for a big scene in E3 and another one in E6.

One of the trickiest ones to do was the beach scene in E6 and getting all the lighting and the beach married to the house, as they were separate locations in reality. Then there was the Dead Sea scene at the end of E8. We shot all the actors on a beach in Long Island, then we had an Israeli crew shoot Dead Sea plates, and that got composited together. And that was tricky, getting all the lighting and so on to match.

Crevello: Before this show, I’d spent 16 years working on the film side and on movies with 1,800 or 2,000 VFX, like the X-Men films. I have to say that getting the color of the sky just right on this, and comping in some of the beach stuff, was far harder than most of the stuff on those big movies. It’s all to do with what you’re used to seeing. You have no frame of reference for a spaceship, right? But making a sky look utterly natural is very challenging.

What about the DI?
Owen: We did it at Light Iron LA with colorist Ian Vertovec on FilmLight Baselight in UHD and Dolby Vision. The online editor was Monique Eissing. The online/conform in Baselight was also done at true 4K. The timeline was set to 4448×2224. We maintained the full horizontal resolution of the original camera files but then viewed and rendered at UHD for mastering.

Our DPs set looks in person at Light Iron LA in Dolby Vision, but then a color review file was made available using Moxion. That system allowed our creatives to view and make notes in Dolby Vision on qualified devices, such as iPad Pros and newer Mac Books.

Crevello: Our directors, John and Glenn, along with one of our DPs, had worked with Ian a lot in the past, so that was great. And both the DPs — Xavier Grobot and Corey Walter — talked to Ian early about the look and scope of the show, so we were in very good hands.

Eisenberg: I’ve been quite involved in the DI in previous projects, but this was different because of COVID. It was also different because our directors had walked us through exactly what they wanted with the look, and our DPs were also so involved. Because of this, Drew and I entrusted it to all of them.

Did it turn out the way you first envisioned it?
Crevello: Yes, but even better, thanks to such a great cast and crew.

Eisenberg: They all took what we’d written and just elevated everything.

Distancing Socially: Film Shot on iPhones, Posted Remotely

October 5, 2021

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Writer/director Chris Blake’s Distancing Socially, starring Alan Tudyk, Sarah Levy, Andy Buckley, Jim O’Heir and a host of others, is a film about relationships and miscommunication in the age of COVID. It’s available to stream on Apple TV+ and on VOD through iTunes, Prime Video, Dish and Google Play.

Chris Blake

The film was shot on iPhones during quarantine from each actor’s home. Blake sent a phone, tripod, mics and lights to the cast, along with how-to videos to get them familiar with the kit — the best option available when trying to stay safe during a global pandemic.

Let’s find out more from Blake about the unique challenges that came with shooting and posting during a global pandemic and with tools that aren’t considered typical for a feature film.

You shot on an iPhone. What version and what format did you shoot on?
Options were limited at the time, and COVID protocols hadn’t been established yet, so we knew we wouldn’t be making this film on a normal set, which led us to the iPhone 11 Pro early on in the process. We were familiar with using iPhones as a “B” camera or for B-roll and felt that most of the cast would be familiar with a smartphone too, so it made sense to us.

We shot AVC (H.264) and used a tabletop tripod that came with our mic package. It worked really well.

You were relying on the cast to get the “camera” and kit up can running. Can you walk us through how this was done?
Every actor was different, and there was a bit of trial and error with each. We tried to mitigate confusion by making how-to-videos and step-by-step PDFs. We also had a prep call the day before each shoot to walk the actors through the process and make sure they were comfortable.

We used an app called Filmic Pro and dialed in the settings we wanted and saved it to a profile before shipping the phones to the cast. All they had to do was click the saved profile and make sure they set the focus. We had them set the phone (screen facing opposite them) in front of their laptop’s built-in camera. We were on Zoom. So this is how we were able to set up our shots and dial in the look.

Since each scene was filmed in each actor’s own home due to the lockdown, how was your DP Josh Moody able to get the look he wanted?
We used the prep day to our advantage on this one. We did a virtual location scout of the cast member’s home, finding the most efficient spot to set up our shot. We were obviously looking for something with depth, good color and plenty of natural lighting. We then used Zoom to make any adjustments.

What are some of the benefits of shooting with an iPhone, as opposed to a traditional camera?
In our case, the most obvious would be the lack of turnarounds. There was minimal blocking, no lights to reset and the camera stayed locked in, so that was nice. The iPhone’s size is a major advantage, which can open up opportunities like improvised shooting. Sometimes with improvised shooting, you can capture spontaneous performances, and I think the images hold up well.

Storytelling isn’t about resolution or compression anyway. Not to mention, if you’re shooting in a public place with an iPhone, nobody cares. If you’re lugging around an Alexa, people are going to pay attention.

What were some of the challenges of shooting with an iPhone? And can you talk about lighting setups? All natural light?
There were a few hiccups, but ultimately it was pretty smooth. The phone would freeze up/overheat occasionally in the middle of a take if we didn’t give it adequate time to cool off. We had about 15 minutes of roll time before we had to shut it down and let it cool. Of course, there were also storage concerns, so we opted for the phones with the most storage.

In Filmic Pro, they offer a Filmic Extreme resolution, but we shot a step below to conserve space — I don’t think you can tell in terms of quality. Lighting setups were minimal. We used as much natural light as possible. If we felt like we needed a boost, we sent a Yongnuo 360 II LED video light, which was easy for the cast to turn on and bounce off of something. Natural light works best for the iPhone, in my opinion, but you want to avoid low light because it gets grainy fast.

What about capturing the audio? How was that done, and was it challenging with the actors recording their own audio?
We used the Shure MV88+ to capture audio, along with the Motiv audio app. Again, we dialed in settings in the app before we shipped the gear to the actors. We were able to monitor audio levels within Filmic Pro, so it was relatively painless. We asked the actors to turn their AC off if it was loud and be aware of any loud or distracting sounds. We couldn’t always hear everything over Zoom, so it was a team effort.

AppleTV+’s Mythic Quest had done a quarantine episode during the time you were making Distancing Socially and used a similar technique. Did the DP, Mike Berlucchi, offer any advice?
Mike was super-helpful. He walked us through their process, told us what to expect, what to watch out for, and gave us several examples of what not to do.

The first thing he warned us about was storage space. Then he told us about the overheating issues with iPhone. Thanks to Mike, we eventually arrived at the idea to have the actors sign into their Wi-Fi to upload all the footage to the cloud. That way, we could delete footage from the phones, but since we were shipping so many, it gave us access to the footage almost immediately. One of the phones got lost in shipping for over a month, but thankfully we had the footage from iCloud.

What was the biggest obstacle you had to overcome once filming started?
I don’t know if there was one specific obstacle, but there were quite a few fires that we had to put out. While a handful of other people chipped in with the film, my DP, Josh Moody, and I were the only two full-time filmmakers on the project. We were spread pretty thin. At times it was stressful, so figuring out how to simultaneously wear every hat possible would be near the top.

Other than that, keeping everyone safe was our main priority. This was when COVID was still relatively new, and we weren’t sure how to combat it. This was pre-vaccine.

What tools did you use for post?
Adobe Premiere Pro, Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve, Adobe’s After Effects and Photoshop. Beyond that, our friends over at Buffalo 8 in Santa Monica handled delivery and post sound.

When you wrote the script, you said you didn’t realize how many VFX you were going to need. Can you talk about that?
I thought I was writing a film that would be relatively simple to execute from a filmmaking standpoint, but I didn’t realize the detail we’d have to build into the world we were creating. The film takes place over a Zoom-like interface, so we had to build that interface from scratch — how it would function, what it would look like, how users would interact, built-in social media, etc.

Then there were desktop backgrounds, operating systems, clocks that needed to change within the scene, folders and a ton of other details that had to be specific to each character, all the way down to their contacts, their social media comments and suggested friends. Everything means something in the film, and there are subthreads throughout that tell their own related stories if you watch closely. We were lucky to work with Don Bitters III over at 3rd Films. He handled all the VFX and did a fantastic job.

Other than the tools, what helped this process?
Getting our VFX supervisor involved early was one of the best decisions we could’ve made. The characters had to be interacting with the make-believe software, and they had to know where to look and where their eyes should go as they were interacting. Of course, the actors were looking at the iPhone’s lenses. So bringing Don in early allowed us to really understand what we needed from the actors. We could get rough VFX templates made early and use them to test where we should have the actors look depending on what they were doing within the scene. Had we not had that, it would’ve been a mess! The whole thing was really cool.

Ted Lasso Editors: Melissa McCoy and AJ Catoline

August 24, 2021

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By Randi Altman

If you are one of the few who hasn’t seen Apple TV+’s feel-good series Ted Lasso, here is a very quick rundown without giving too much away: An American college football coach from the Midwest is recruited to manage a European football club in England (long story), bringing with him no real knowledge of the sport. Ted (Jason Sudeikis) is a non-tea-drinking fish out of water who, through sheer likeability and charm, succeeds at being a fantastic human while making those around him better people in the process.

Melissa McCoy

Sudeikis created the series, along with veteran television writer/producer/director Bill Lawrence (Scrubs), actor Brendan Hunt (Coach Beard) and consulting producer/writer Joe Kelly.

The show’s first season — Season 2 is airing now — was nominated for 20 Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series and two for Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for A Comedy Series. The show walked away with seven statues.

We reached out to editors Melissa McCoy and AJ Catoline (who won an Emmy for his editing work on this latest season) to talk about their nominated episodes, their workflows and walking the line between drama and comedy.

How early did you get involved on Ted Lasso?
Melissa McCoy: I was working on Bill Lawrence’s show Whiskey Cavalier when I started to hear he was developing Ted with Jason. I kept checking in with our supervising producer Kip Kroeger to let them know I really wanted to work on the show. This was just based on it being a Bill and Jason project and not knowing anything else about it.

AJ Catoline

In the end, I started when they started filming, and I cut the pilot episode. While I didn’t come on super early per say, I guess having an already established working relationship with Bill and Kip helped me feel at ease at the start because I knew we all worked well together and would help shape the episode into what it needed to be.

AJ Catoline: I met Kip Kroeger a couple years before and we stayed in touch. When I heard that Jason Sudeikis was reviving the Ted Lasso idea for TV, I told him I was very interested. I got to cut Jason in an episode of Great Minds With Dan Harmon where he spoofed Thomas Edison. Jason was someone who always made me laugh, so I wanted in. I am thrilled that this has been my first adventure on a Bill Lawrence production, and what a ride it’s been.

How did you split up the episodes and how did that work?
McCoy: AJ and I split the episodes evens and odds. This was just the natural way it worked out since I did 101 he took 102 and we just went back and forth like that until the end. We kept up communication with one another about tone and music, especially in the early days when everyone was in London filming, and we were back in LA getting through all the dailies. Once Bill and Jason came back, we started working on producer’s cuts and we would discuss the things that maybe were being cut from our episodes that would impact the others, so we were all on the same page.

Catoline: As Mel says, we were doing odds and evens. It worked out well season one and we continued that this season. Mel had the pleasure of cutting the pilot and I got to do the finale. And this is important, because the opening shot of Rebecca in the pilot is the same framing as the closing shot of her in the finale. I love those intentional bookends that were designed by Jason Sudekis.

We both worked on Episode 204 for Season 2. I started it and, because of our schedule, Mel got to do some finishing work and we had the pleasure of sharing our first screen credit together.

What direction were you given in terms of the pacing and rhythm of the edit? Did that change at all as the season played out?
McCoy: Jason always says this show is about the inhales and the exhales. So when we have a snappy dialogue scene we play it a little more fast paced, but when a scene demands more patience we give it that space to play. But it’s really a case-by-case basis depending on the scene and performances. This is a show that keeps you on your toes because you really have to examine the meat of each scene and what it needs to be at its maximum potential.

Catoline: For a lot of Season 1, everyone was left to figure out what kind of a show we had. I think you will hear all the creatives say that the show is very much in Jason’s head — and we help to extract the vision to the screen. All that I knew going in was the short sketches and I thought we would have a more traditionally comedic show. Then when we were given scripts of the first few episodes, I realized we were dealing with something much deeper than a comedy. In comedy, usually the goal is to get to the next joke as quickly as possible. Sometimes you leave room for the comedic pregnant pauses, but mostly TV comedies are paced quickly. That is not the case with Ted Lasso.

Jason and Bill Lawrence are comedic genius, both are writers, and they are not always going for a joke; they are looking for character moments. So, we take our time with the moments. As Jason likes to say, the show leaves room for all the inhales and the exhales. We get the joke, but then we take a moment for the reactions of the characters after the punchline, and that is more revealing and interesting. It gives time for the audience to laugh, then reflect, then breathe. Most producers would cut these pauses out, though it shows Jason really knows how good comedy places by insisting the show has a patient pace.

As discussed, it’s a funny show but not sitcom funny — it sort of walks the line between comedy and drama. what were the challenges of that?
McCoy: I think walking the line between comedy and drama was really helped when we stayed true to the characters. Jason would sometimes pull a funny joke and say, “I don’t think Ted would say something like that.” Or conversely, we pulled back on a dramatic moment in 105 when Ted’s wife tells him she wasn’t in love with him anymore because he wanted the scene to be about Ted just listening to her and receiving the information. So we were always tuned in to who these people are and what their motivations are, and that was always used as a guiding light and allowed us to follow their lead into whatever type of scene it was, dramatic or comedic.

Catoline: Yes, it is definitely a comedy but with heart and pathos. Jason loves to repeat his favorite quote from Mark Twain — the one about how every person’s life is a comedy, drama and tragedy rolled into one. That seems so true for Ted, and Rebecca, and Roy and Nate and Jamie. All our characters are very funny, but they are also processing their pain and learning how to be vulnerable. I think the challenge as an editor is to be patient and let the moments play. As editors we want to be very curious with the footage, and perhaps also judgmental.

Any scenes that were particularly challenging? Why, and how did you work through it?
McCoy: I would say that scene in Episode 105 when Ted’s wife tells him she doesn’t feel about him the way she used to. This episode was the heaviest we had had thus far in the season, and we were still figuring out what this show wanted to be. The performances of Jason and Andrea Anders, who plays his wife Michelle, were so emotional and raw, so it was figuring out how much to lean into the drama. The scene also had their son Henry popping in and out interrupting them, providing a little comedy breather.

Originally, the scene had more of a back and forth between Ted and Michelle, but Jason wanted the first scene to be the one where Michelle speaks her truth and then in the scene later when Ted lets her go, he’s the one who talks. So the challenge became trying to find the best reactions of Ted to encourage Michelle to share her difficult truth and then how much comedy we wanted to add with the Henry interruptions. It was one of those scenes that’s a real difficult dance of finding just the right takes to build the emotion and finding just the right places to take the gas off for comedic relief, so it all feels natural and, hopefully, by the end of it you are just as shaken emotionally as Ted.

Catoline: A challenging scene, and perhaps the wildest scene I’ve ever cut, was the Allen Iverson speech in Episode 106. This was a scene that Jason wrote days before the shoot that spoofed the infamous rant by the NBA star. “I’m talking about practice, not the game!” I cut a version of it for the director’s cut, and we set it aside. Nobody knew how it fit into the story, as it wasn’t in the script. Along with the director, producer, writer, we agreed it would be better to work on it with Jason, and sure enough he wanted to watch every take.

Over many Zoom calls we built a performance that shows Ted slowly getting hotter and more intense, finally squaring off with Jamie, whom he’s butt heads with all season. It was about pacing the repeat of the key line, as Iverson did, “it’s about practice, man! not the game. Practice!” We had a transcript of Iverson’s speech to stay true to the original, and I think fans appreciate that level of detail.

At the crescendo, Ted is towering over Jamie and yelling. And we cut to a 50-50/two shot in a Dutch angle that makes Ted look taller and more intense. And then we cut to Jamie’s closeup, and he looks like Ted has finally broken this cocky guy down. And we cut to Ted as he realizes he has made Jamie feel ashamed. We learn later in the episode that Jamie has been shamed by his own distant dad who only values his son if he wins, and Ted sees the expression on Jamie’s face change and he cools back down.

The show is shot in the UK, but you guys were based in LA. How were you sharing cuts? The aforementioned Zoom?
McCoy: We were at the Warner Bros. studios in LA until the pandemic hit toward the end of the first season, and then we finished up the last few episodes working from home. We used Zoom pretty early on for our sound spots. Our composers Marcus Mumford and Tom Howe were in England, so we would all come together digitally to spot sound, so not much had to change when we started working from home. We used Zoom mostly to finish up the edits and sound spots at home.

Which episodes did you submit for Emmy and why?
McCoy: I submitted 207, “Make Rebecca Great Again.” I just loved working on this episode, and it’s one I’m going to cherish for a very long time. There were so many wonderful character developments in this episode. It’s the away game where Ted is dealing with signing his divorce papers. He gives Nate the opportunity to give the pre-game speech before their big match. He fires up the players with a hilarious roast that you think is going to get him punched but instead is exactly what they all needed to hear — even Roy — who at the end of his roast is soooo fired up he rips a bolted-down bench out of the ground. That speech and the excitement at the end is such an emotional high that it propels us right into the locker room post match. I feel like you never need to see the game or feel like you miss anything, because the whole cast tells you everything you need to know about how they are going to play by the end of that roast.

Then we go into the karaoke scene with the fabulous Hannah (Rebecca) singing “Let It Go,” and again we get to see all the players gelling as she sings, and that transitions into Ted’s panic attack. Just building all these moments from the highs and the lows was a beautiful experience. Every scene felt so epic, and the performances of each cast member were a sight to behold in the dailies. Then I found the best song to tie everything together at the end, Celeste’s “Strange.” It was a case of after I had built the end montage and laid down the song to audition, I hardly had to do any music editing — it just hit every emotional beat all the way to the end. It was one where I thanked the music gods for sending me that song. It’s always such a joy when something you put in your editor’s cut stays all the way to the end — music is such a subjective thing but when you find that piece that just works and no one can argue with it, it feels meant to be

Catoline: I submitted Episode 110, the finale, “The Hope That Kills You.” This title seemed to capture the vibe of the pandemic when the show aired and was probably why the show resonated with so many. It feels like an epic, Emmy-worthy episode. It has the big set piece of the grand finale game match, where the team uses all their trick plays, such as The Lasso Special. This is really a visual of American football invading the beautiful game of European football.

Yet it also has heartfelt moments where the great Roy Kent (he’s here, he’s there, he’s every fucking where) gets injured and walks off the field for his final game, and we cut to him in the locker room realizing that all he’s ever known is over. Keeley comes in to console him, and they hold hands in this beautiful wide shot. It’s the mashup of sports, love and pathos all together and it gets me emotional every time I see it. Also, there is the tragic moment where we see Jamie dealing with his abusive father. And Ted consoles the team and tells them all to go on and “be goldfish.” This episode feels very much like a comedy, drama and tragedy wrapped all into one. I love the music that we use, such as Marcus Mumford’s rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and Edith Piaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.” The latter is a very Lassoian anthem with the lyrics in French — “Today, it starts with you.”

What systems did you use? Any plugins you call on often?
McCoy: Avid Media Composer. I call on a lot of the audio plug-ins. We have lots of FaceTimes and phone calls so EQs are helpful. Also, for instance, the panic attack was a place where we really went wild with sound and picture design. For the picture I did lots of jump cuts and added a slight motion blur to the shots to sell not only his panic but also the passage of time. I wanted you to feel as lost as he was, so maybe we were with him for 20 minutes or so because all of a sudden Rebecca is out there pulling him out of it.

With the sound we added a high-pitched tone that weaved in and out, like a ringing in his ears and added reverb to all the backgrounds. One of the best things about this show is how we can really stretch our creative muscles in figuring out the best ways to get into our characters POV — what tricks and tools we can call on to help in subtle ways.

Catoline: Yes, we love our Jump Desktop, which brings us remotely into our Avid. Half of Season 1 and all of Season 2 were cut entirely remotely, with us all working on our own from home. I think having us united as a post team allowed us to be able to complete such a massive season, 12 episodes, in less time than we cut 10 episodes for Season 1. We really have an amazing team. Shout out to my assistant editor Alex Szabo, our VFX editor Frank Openchowski, our associate producer Katelyn Hollenbeck, post coordinator Robbie Stevenson, and our leader supervising producer Kip Kroeger.

Can you talk about doing more than just editing?
McCoy: We are really given the freedom to think about how we can elevate the scenes and episodes. What tricks can we use to really get into what our characters are feeling/going through? Is it adding a slight reverb to all our sound effects and make Ted’s breathing the thing that stands out, so it really feels like we are in his head for the panic attack, for example? As long as there’s a motivation behind your work, I think Jason appreciates it. Whether or not it’s what Jason has in mind when he comes in to finish the episodes, he appreciates the discussion and the back and forth. He’s a great collaborator in that sense. And he also brings in a lot of ideas to elevate the scenes as well. When we had the ringing in the panic attack, he had the idea to add that same ringing, just not as prominent, in the press conference in episode 101. So, he was always very attuned to the journey the audience was going to go on for the season and wanted to plant little Easter eggs that would pan out later. Same can be said for Season 2.

You both have assistant editors? How do you work with them?
McCoy: My assistant is Francesca Castro, who’s been with me for four years now. We have a great back and forth. Not only is she extremely skilled at all the assistant editor work of organization and keeping the episodes on track, but she’s got a great creative edge. One of our traditions is once I’m through with all the dailies and we build the episode, we watch it back together on that first build, so it’s in its rawest form. Then we’ll talk it through and take notes on all things that need massaging. I really hope it helps with the mentoring aspect of the assistant/editor relationship.

So not only do we talk about the temp sound that needs to happen, but she gets a peek into my process of making sure the beats and scenes are landing the way I want them to land. For instance, I’ll say, “I need to look at the transition here, I think I can make the out of the scene stronger to help propel us into the next scene and so on. And she’s great about giving me her thoughts, so it’s a wonderful back and forth.

Catoline: My assistant editor Alex Szabo went above and beyond on Season 2. Because the schedule was so intense, I called on him to step up as an additional editor, and he is credited with me on Episode 210. Ted Lasso is a show about mentorship, and I support helping to pay it forward with the editors you work with.

Let’s talk about Season 2. You were both back. Any changes direction-wise for those?
McCoy: Not really. I think if anything we felt a little more confident in the story we were telling. A lot of Season 1 was worrying and working on that comedy and drama line. So to have the fans really loving both aspects freed up a lot of the questioning I think we had Season 1. The scripts were all so wonderful. It was truly exciting whenever a new script was released, so to me it was all about doing justice to the scripts and performances that were coming into my Avid every day. It was a real treat to see the cast and crew gelling in my dailies.

Catoline: We recently locked picture on the finale, Episode 212. The final whistle has blown for editorial on Season 2. It has been an amazing ride this year, because during Season 1 we were wondering — will people like this show? And for Season 2, it has been more intense with all the attention and acclaim the show gets. So now, when editing, I am more aware and sensitive to how the audience and the fans may react to a scene. And it’s great when the episode airs to read the conversation on Twitter and appreciating how everyone is reacting to the moments. I love the Lasso Love out there!

Any best practices you’d like to share for other editors or those working with editors?
McCoy: I think the best thing I learned from my mentors in the past and what I try to instill in my assistant is to always try the note or the change. It’s so easy nowadays to just duplicate the sequence and try another way. Sometimes you surprise yourself and find a better way, and sometimes you get the satisfaction of knowing you got it right the first time. A win-win in my book.

Catoline: My advice to editors starting out in the business is to believe in yourself and your talents. Also, be patient. Things take time, so play the long game. Always keep cutting the best material that you can find. Editors are in demand, so show someone the vision you have to tell a story. And get out there and meet your community of editors. I met my assistant at a social function at the Editors Guild and we made a connection and became friends. A year or so later I asked him to join me on Ted Lasso. I love to stay involved with MPEG and ACE and enjoy meeting new people and that is how we grow together.

Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for more than 20 years.

The Mosquito Coast Director Rupert Wyatt Talks Post and Workflow

August 3, 2021

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By Iain Blair

It’s been 40 years since Paul Theroux’s best-selling novel “The Mosquito Coast” hit a nerve with its story of the Foxes, an American family on the run from authorities, led by radical idealist and brilliant inventor Allie Fox. That in turn led to Peter Weir’s 1986 movie starring Harrison Ford. Now Apple TV+’s drama series — created by Neil Cross and Tom Bissell and starring the author’s nephew, Justin Theroux, as Allie — has reimagined that premise and updated the family as a disillusioned, anti-capitalist, anti-government unit whose American dream has turned into a nightmare.

Rupert Wyatt

To bring their new vision of Theroux’s novel to life, the producers and showrunner Cross turned to writer/director/producer Rupert Wyatt, whose credits include the Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Captive State and The Gambler.

I talked to Wyatt, who also EPs the show, about directing the series and his workflow for VFX and sound.

As director of the pilot and second episode, you set the visual style and tone. What sort of series did you and showrunner Neil Cross set out to make?
We wanted it to look and feel as real and authentic as possible, so we knew it would have to be very ambitious in terms of shooting in real locations, not on stages. That was one of the big lures for me — making it very location-heavy. But it was an enormous undertaking, and after filming scenes in California, we moved to Mexico, just like the family. We shot in Puebla, Mexico City, Guadalajara and around Puerto Vallarta.

Luckily, we had this great logistics producer, Ed McDonnell, who did the Sicario films, and he was the glue that held it all together. Neil was very generous with my ideas, such as pointedly having the family travel south to escape over the Mexican border, like reverse immigration. Sometimes in shows the relationship between the pilot director and showrunner is a fraught one, and sometimes very harmonious, and I’ve experienced both. This was definitely the latter.

What were the challenges of pulling it together, and how much did the Covid crisis affect the production?
In terms of what it took to prep and plan, Neil lives in New Zealand and I’m based in New York, so it began in separate hubs before we convened in LA to do the rest of the prep and then the shooting. We only had about eight weeks of prep in LA, starting in September 2019, and then we began shooting in December and did a lot of the Mexican desert scenes in Mexicali. Ultimately, it took a whole year to finish it all, as we were due to wrap in May last year. But Covid hit in March and we had to shut down.

The first big challenge was creating Stockton and Northern California in the LA area. We found this perfect farmhouse location in Ventura and were able to build from that. We approached it all thematically, tonally and in terms of the palette from a cinematic perspective and in a very clear-eyed way. Here’s this family living off-grid, but always with anxiety about all the capitalism just over the horizon.

We talked about film references like The Grapes of Wrath and Paris, Texas for inspiration in the lighting scheme, and about bringing a neon sort of Americana into the beginning of the show. Then once the family sets off on their journey, the palette changes to a far more vibrant, colorful look as they head into Mexico, and we build to the climax of arriving in the lush jungle greens of the coast of Southern Mexico.

Can you talk about the visual effects?
We started on that right from the start because we had quite a lot of VFX, even though we tried to minimize them — the whole opening sequence inside the ice box uses a lot of VFX. I didn’t do much previz. I like previz in pieces, but I hate handing off sequences to be previz’d since they invariably come back with different pacing and blocking, so I like to storyboard. But the schedule was so tight that there wasn’t a huge amount of storyboarding. It was quite run-and-gun, especially scenes like the markets in Mexico City.

The show looks great. Tell us about working with DP Alex Disenhof, who has shot your films, iCaptive State, The Exorcist and Fishing Without Nets.
He’s a great DP, and I love his work. He’s got a great eye for composition, and he can pivot very quickly. We shot on the ARRI Alexa Mini with spherical lenses, and we used the Ronin rig a lot, which perfectly fit the visual plan we had of following the family rather than getting ahead of them.

Tell us about the post. Where did you do it?
I love every aspect of post, and I’ve set up a post facility in Hudson, New York, where I live. We cut there with editor Eric Spang, and we also have a hub down in the city. All the sound was done at c5 in New York with supervising sound editor Ron Bochar and mixer Paul Hsu, whom I’ve worked with a lot.

Can you talk about the editing with Eric Spang?
He wasn’t on set at all, but we sent him dailies, and he did the assembly. Then he worked with me in Hudson on the first two episodes. The other editors who cut the rest of the show also came up here to Hudson and we’d work on the cuts. Then Neil became a lot more involved in the editing and post as his focus shifted away from the writing.

What were the main editing challenges?
There weren’t too many on the first episodes because the scripts were so tight and strong, and we hardly had to cut anything we’d shot. So it was all about rhythm and pacing and keeping the energy level high. A bigger challenge was dealing with all the music and sound and evoking the world outside the farm at the start.

Using sound is always a big deal for me in telling a story, so we did a lot of work there. And because of the nature of episodic TV, traditionally you’re not working simultaneously on sound and picture like you do in movies. You do the cut, you do the temp, and then you bring the sound in once all the episodes have been cut and locked. For me, that wasn’t helpful because I love to integrate sound design and cutting. It’s changing, thankfully, with the advent of streaming and more ambitious storytelling. I find that once you start to integrate the sound, you want to open the cut up and try different things and find different cut points. We were able to do that to some degree, as we had such a great team at c5.

Rupert Wyatt

There are a lot of VFX. Who did them and what was entailed?
Atomic Arts in the UK were the main vendor, and I’ve worked with them since 1999. We also had a bunch of vendors mostly out of New York including Zoic, Fuse FX and Powerhouse. I’m pretty involved in all the VFX, especially in all the planning and conceptual stages, and I love doing all that stuff and making them seamless by blending them with in-camera coverage. For instance, for the whole opening sequence with the ice box machine — we shot the entry and exit shots practically, and used real ice cubes, but then the rest was all VFX.

What about the DI?
We did that at Company 3 in New York and my colorist was Tom Poole. I personally oversaw my episodes, and then once each episode was locked we would do the DI. There was a fair amount of work done in the DI. We stayed faithful to the LUTs that our DP Alex had established, and then we were always looking to crunch the blacks. We wanted the show to have this very alluring palette so that it emphasized a sense of adventure and anticipation, with bold colors that were welcoming and inviting — but also potentially dangerous and threatening. So we went for this very rich look rather than the desaturated look.

What was the appeal of this for you?
I loved the novel and the movie, and Neil had written such great, visually interesting scripts for the first few episodes that, while I’m usually fairly hesitant about revisiting or reworking original projects, I really had a clear understanding of how we could make this and give it a fresh take.

Originally, I was going to direct more of the nine episodes, but then the pandemic changed a lot of things, and the nine episodes became seven, and the schedule and workload became so much that it was just impossible to do the post and all the prep and shooting in blocks at the same time. So I decided to do the pilot, which sets up the whole series, and then Episode 2, which is this great mix of social commentary and a political thriller, and the idea was to treat each episode as its own movie.

Editor Geoffrey Richman Talks Workflow on Apple TV+ Film Palmer

January 27, 2021

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By Randi Altman

Who we are in high school is rarely who we become, but some veer so far off of their presumed path that it’s hard to recover. This brings us to the Apple TV+ film, Palmer, which stars Justin Timberlake as a high school football star turned convict who returns to his Louisiana hometown after 12 years in prison.

Editor Geoffrey Richman

At one time, Eddie Palmer had a bright future ahead of him, but now he’s struggling to navigate life after incarceration. Upon his return home, Eddie moves in with the grandmother who raised him while trying to figure out his next move. It’s during this time that he develops a bond with a 7-year-old boy named Sam, whose mother is on a prolonged bender.

We reached out to editor Geoffrey Richman, ACE, to talk about working with director (and frequent collaborator) Fisher Stevens, his assistant editors and his process.

How early did you get involved on this film?
Fairly early. Palmer was originally scheduled to shoot about a year before it actually started. I was expecting a baby at the time, and the due date was scheduled for the first day of shooting. Fisher and I had a whole plan to make that work — me working part time and close to my apartment and with the possibility of having another editor help out until I was on full time.

For various reasons to do with financing and casting, the film didn’t start until a year later, which really worked out for the best, both for the film and for me, facing the reality of trying to start an edit with a newborn. Over the following year, I was able to read more drafts of the script and hear about casting choices as they happened, which made anticipation for the shoot all the more exciting.

Director Fisher Stevens (in hat, on set) often calls on Geoffrey Richman to cut his projects, giving them a shorthand.

What direction did Fisher Stevens give for the edit? How often was he looking at cuts?
Very early on, Fisher gave me a list of films to watch as inspiration and to get an overall feeling for what he was going for with style and sense of place. Then during shooting we would talk generally about the story and the scenes. We watched a few cut scenes together, but for the most part, I was on my own building the first assembly. Once we watched the full assembly, that’s when we both dove in. From then on Fisher was in the edit a lot, and we were looking at cuts together all the time.

Fisher and I worked on a few documentaries together before Palmer, so we already had a level of trust and a shorthand going into the edit. We could spend all day attacking one scene, or he could give much broader notes, and I could go off on my own to try different things.

We both like screening to audiences often, so we got the cut to a screenable point fairly quickly — about a few weeks into the edit — and from then on screened regularly to different groups of friends. The feedback from those screenings really helped steer the cut for both of us, and in many cases also helped solve problems along the way.

Stevens is also an actor. Did that play a role in how he directed on set or directed the edit?
On set, Fisher gave the actors a lot of freedom with their performances. Ryder Allen (Sam), in particular, has a lot of great lines in the film that he came up with on the spot, and a lot of that came from Fisher giving the actors room to improvise.

The same applied in the edit. Fisher was very particular and sensitive to the smallest details in the performances, making sure the truest moments were on screen. But at the same time, he was always open to taking apart scenes or structures and trying out new ideas. I’m sure that comes just as much from his background in documentaries, where the edit and story are constantly shifting.

Was there a particular scene or scenes that were most challenging?
Not so much a scene, but a section of the film. We spent a lot of time working on the first 20 or so minutes of the film. The energy between Palmer and Sam is amazing, and watching their relationship develop over time carries the film. But there’s a certain amount of groundwork that has to be laid before that part of the story can kick in.

In the early stages of the edit, we were just cutting down for time to get to the heart of the film sooner, pacing some things faster and cutting other things out entirely. But while technically that got to the Palmer/Sam storyline sooner, it was losing a lot in the process — like establishing a connection to Palmer, the early tension between Palmer and Sam, and the relationships with the grandmother. So there was a lot of trial and error to find a balance between keeping the story moving forward and finding the right moments to connect with and get invested in the characters. Sometimes it was as simple as repurposing a single shot from a deleted scene that would help recenter the surrounding scenes.

We also played a lot with structure, finding the right time and place to get into a backstory. For example, there’s a scene early on between Palmer and his parole officer that introduces the backstory of him being in prison. In the first cut, it felt it was coming too late — the audience needed to be grounded in that information earlier. But when we moved it too early, it felt like an interruption. Like we weren’t letting the audience settle in and have time to intuit things on their own before being told what’s going on.

Was the edit done during the pandemic? If so, how did that affect the workflow?
We were already a few months into editing when we shut down the office and brought everything home. We had just signed up with Evercast about a week before that, and it made the transition surprisingly smooth. Fisher and I worked remotely for the rest of the edit.

Of course, there were times it was hard to make precise edit choices when the internet is cutting out, the audio isn’t in sync and kids are screaming in the background. There was a lot of, “I can’t believe we’re picture-locking a movie like this!” I did miss the experience of screening the film with an audience, and it definitely made for a different cutting room atmosphere. My 4-year-old would watch scenes a lot and give notes or make suggestions about where

the story should go.

What system did you use to cut and why? Where did you edit before lockdown?
Avid Media Composer. Back in the good old FCP7 days, I was alternating between Avid and FCP regularly. Now it’s just Avid for me. We edited in a room at Article 19 Films in New York until the pandemic started.

Is there a tool within Media Composer that you use but others might not know about?
Remove Hidden Volume Automation. I don’t know if most people use this or not, but it’s a hidden gem to me, tucked away in the Automation Audio Mixer. When you have a bunch of audio keyframes on your clips and then cut the clips up, you can’t access the keyframes that are past the edit points. This feature lets you set in and out points around an edit and, well, remove the hidden volume automation, so you don’t have unwanted volume shifts leading into or out of a cut.

How did you manage your time?
I use an assortment of organizational apps to help with that — Trello, Evernote, Wunderlist (now Microsoft To Do). During production it’s all about keeping up with the dailies, so each day is its own deadline to cut a scene. And during post, the nice thing about having lots of audience screenings is that they create deadlines along the way. It keeps the momentum going in the edit and helps gauge how much needs to get done and when. Also, having lots of interim deadlines is great for creativity since a lot of unexpected ideas come out of being up against the clock and having to make decisions on edits quickly.

Did you have an assistant editor on this? Do you see the role of assistant editors as strictly technical or as collaborators?
I had two assistant editors on Palmer, Ian Holden and Keith Sauter. I always view assistants as collaborators, whether that’s getting feedback from them about cuts or asking them to cut their own versions of scenes. My assistant is often the first person to watch a scene before it goes to the director. It’s always nice to have someone to bounce an edit off of and to see how it feels with another person in the room.

What’s great with a trusted AE is that if they have notes on a cut, they know the footage so intimately that they can also help hunt down whatever’s needed to make it better.

Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for more than 20 years.