HBO Max’s A Black Lady Sketch Show is an Emmy Award-winning, half-hour sketch comedy show. “It’s written, produced by and starring Black women on,” explains editor Malinda Zehner Guerra. “Robin Thede is the creator and star of the series. Its hilarious world of characters have been brought to life across four seasons by some of the funniest women in comedy including Quinta Brunson, Ashley Nicole Black, Gabrielle Dennis, Skye Townsend, Issa Rae and many more.”
Malinda Zehner Guerra
We reached out to Zehner Guerra, who was nominated for an Emmy Award for editing the show, along with supervising editor Stephanie Filo, ACE, and Taylor Joy Mason, ACE, to find out more.
You have multiple editors on the series. How is it broken up?
The post process for A Black Lady Sketch Show is a little bit different than on other narrative shows, since each sketch is its own standalone world. This season we had three editors — myself, Stephanie Filo and Taylor Joy Mason — and we would each take a new sketch as we finished our last.
Every few days we would be jumping into a completely new world and have to figure out the specific style, music and pacing for each one. It was definitely a challenge, but I think my experience in a wide variety of genres and formats across scripted and unscripted TV and features was an asset. I was already used to switching from a survival show, like Naked & Afraid, to a competition show like RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars and then changing it up again with a thriller independent feature like Confessional. So it was easy to pivot from cutting our Bridgerton-style sketch, “Frock of Shit” one day, to our murder podcast, “Fresh To Def,” and then the hilarious Telenovela, “The Bold and The Cubicle.”
Once all the sketches were shot and cut, we would then work on building the episodes, seeing what sketches made the most sense together.
With so many different stories, you must get to play with a lot of different pacing. How do you find the “funny” or enhance it in the edit?
Robin loves a super-tight edit with hardly any air between lines, so sketches move at a blistering pace. You’re always looking for moments to add reactions or lines from characters off camera that the viewer might not notice on their first watch. That really makes a sketch feel full of life and encourages the people to go back and watch again to pick up on those little things they may have missed the first time. Steph, Taylor and I would often share our cuts with each other while we were working on them to see what jokes were landing and offer suggestions to amp things up. It was a very fun, collaborative process of trying to make each other laugh.
What direction are you typically given for the edit?
The overall direction from Robin was to always push the comedy as much as you can and make the funniest sketch possible. The scripts were so hilarious to start with, but our cast are amazingly talented improvisers, so there was always tons of improv and alternate takes to play with, which gave us plenty of room to make different choices than what was scripted.
My first pass would normally be fairly close to the script, but I’d also have some alts prepared to show. We’d get into a session and start playing around with all the different options and trying out everyone’s ideas and put them together, and the end product was always a new level of hilarity. Robin really loves the post process, so all ideas are welcome, no matter how crazy, because they always lead to an even funnier sketch in the end.
Was there a particular segment/skit that was challenging?
Overall, the biggest challenge with editing comedy, especially A Black Lady Sketch Show where the cast are such amazing improvisers, is having too many amazing jokes to fit into one sketch. Between the script and the improv, you could easily have enough content to fill an entire episode with just one sketch. After you put everything you love into a cut, that’s when the fun starts and you get to roll up your sleeves and get a little ruthless — you start slicing and trimming and you really get to find out what the final product will be. I think that’s when an editor can really shine. When you are able to focus on what is best serving the story, the pacing and the comedy and then get rid of everything else, even if it’s your favorite joke.
What episode did you submit for the Emmys? What was it about that episode that stuck out?
We chose Episode 4, “My Love Language is Words of Defamation” because it really highlights the range of sketches we had this season. It has a great mix of genres, including our Monty Python-inspired “Gladys and the Knights of the Round Table.” It opens with “Fresh to Def,” our murder podcast sketch, which was across the board a team favorite. It also features a few of our fan-favorite sketches and characters, including a return to the “Black Lady Courtroom,” which has become such a signature sketch for the series and also guest stars Issa Rae and Yvette Nicole Brown.
What system did you use to cut and why? Is there a tool within that system that you use a lot?
We cut the show on Avid Media Composer. I think one of my most used tools in Avid is the AniMatte for changing the timing of things in a two-shot. A lot of times you’ll have a great reaction from one character, but the other person in the frame is already talking or moving in a way that doesn’t match their coverage. AniMatte allows you to comp in a different part of the footage and make it all flow seamlessly. It’s a great way to really fine tune the picture.
How did you manage your time?
Time management is crucial in post and can be really hard when you’re working on several sketches in different phases at the same time. On A Black Lady Sketch Show our post team, led by post producer Gwyn Martin-Morris, was integral in keeping us on track. She had the best system of spreadsheets for tracking all the sketches, and daily run-downs of what sketch we were working on or if we were working with the director or producers on a cut.
And, of course, our rock star AEs who kept the project organized and would help us find music or with temp VFX. That took the guesswork out of what was happening day to day and really let us focus on editing.
How do you manage producer’s expectations with reality/what can really be done?
So much of making a film or TV show is about experimenting and collaboration, and a cut is constantly evolving. When you get notes, or are working with the director or producers, the best mindset to have is, “let’s try it.” Sometimes I’ll read a note and my initial reaction will be “that won’t work,” or “we don’t have that footage,” but I’m going to do my best to see if I can address it.
Once I start playing around or looking at ways to repurpose footage to address the note, a path often appears to make it happen. It won’t always totally work, and we might decide to not use it, but sometimes it leads to an even better idea in the end. The more you try things out and come back with options or solutions to the problem presented, the more trust your director or showrunner will have that if you do come back and say something can’t be done, then it can’t, and you move on to the next note. Those moments of experimentation can really lead to some magical moments, but you would not have found them if you didn’t give it a try.
