Lead editor Stephanie Earley has been working on AppleTV+’s Central Park since it began three seasons ago. The animated musical series tells the story of a family of caretakers who work and live in Central Park and must save the park from a greedy land developer. Earley started on the series as an assistant editor in Season 1 and then grew into the role as lead editor for Seasons 2 and 3.
Stephanie Earley
On Central Park, Earley focuses her work on the pacing, the characters’ voice and the tempo. Because of Earley’s years of experience on the show, she often has an immediate instinct for the pacing needs of an episode and is able to jump in and work her magic, sometimes even without the full voice cast recording.
No stranger to cutting animated shows, Earley’s past credits include The Bob’s Burgers Movie, a feature spin-off of the hit animated TV series Bob’s Burgers, and The Awesomes, a comedy about a new generation of superheroes filling in their parents’ shoes.
We reached out to her to find out more about her role and her work on Central Park.
How does being an animation editor differ from a traditional editing role? And how did you make that leap?
Similar to a traditional live-action or unscripted television editor, the editor of an animated show helps to creatively craft the episode’s stories through pacing, shot selection and an overall sense of the big-picture narrative. The added benefit for an editor working on animation is you get to be part of the process of deciding what “footage” we are going to end up with in post production.
Unlike a more traditional, linear pipeline, where the editor is one of the last stops on the train, editorial departments in animation work with the directors and storyboard artists to create the story before it is animated. I was fortunate enough to cut all my animatics as well as my color animation for Central Park, but even when there are different editors for the storyboard phase and the color phase, it’s such an advantage to have the editors’ involvement in these earlier milestones.
When I started my career in unscripted — my first job was for The Real World — I moved my way up through unscripted until I was editing a show called Ghost Hunters. While on the hunt for my next project, I happened to go to a housewarming party for a friend of my boyfriend (now my husband and fellow animation editor). I was introduced to a producer, Seranie Manoogian, who was looking for an assistant editor for an animated show she was staffing up called The Awesomes. She thought I was hilarious and felt I’d be a good fit with the crew, so she brought me on despite having zero animation experience. I fell in love with animation on that show, and I’m so happy she thought of me for Central Park when they needed an assistant editor.
Let’s talk about moving from assistant editor to lead editor. Were there some folks who mentored you along the way? Were you given shots to cut as part of your path?
Yes! I still can’t believe how things have turned out. Seranie and the editor on Central Park Season 1, Kris Fitzgerald, taught me so much, and I wouldn’t be here without them. And Central Park executive producer Janelle Momary-Neely has never wavered in her belief in me. I have studied and learned so many facets of animation production from Seranie and Janelle — allowing me to anticipate my department’s needs as well as the needs of other departments.
Animation is a huge collaborative effort, and my understanding of the full workflow and all the pieces of the puzzle helps me be the best I can be. Kris gave me old episodes of the showrunner’s other shows to learn the pacing. He taught me the mechanics of lip sync and some techniques for speed. I knew I could edit, but in this medium the only limit is what can be drawn on-schedule and on-budget. So flexing editorial muscles is an intoxicating push and pull of creating new shots and fixing the ones that exist by creating layers to the frame. Kris helped me see and learn the possibilities.
How has the show evolved during your involvement?
Our staff has worked so hard to make this show run smoothly over the course of its three seasons. Each new season, we learned from things that were difficult the season before. Central Park is a musical, which is crazy and revolutionary when you think about what goes into musical numbers on top of what is needed for story beats for a normal animated show. Animation is a massively collaborative effort already, but we had to learn to work together in new ways because of the innovative nature of our show.
I was brought on as the assistant editor in the storyboard animatic phase, which is very early compared to many 2D animated shows. The editor and I worked closely together to track changes and rewrites and make sure all departments had updated cuts, versions, information, etc. We had pipeline discussions and assessed needs on the fly.
In between seasons, I worked with production scheduling to formulate new ways to manage the show’s needs in terms of workflow and communication. It has been a constant conversation toward the same goal: to create the best show possible. When production is efficient and streamlined, we allow ourselves to be creative and dig into the nuance of our characters — to let them (and the performers who make them) come alive and shine.
Can you describe your workflow on Central Park?
Our workflow isn’t specifically linear because everything has to go through editorial before the next phase, but things happen in a specific order. First and foremost, we need a script. Once a script is finalized, it goes to audio to be temped and to the show’s director to thumb it out. Thumbs are rough drawings to help visualize how the show could come together. Thumbs go through notes, and there are discussions on how to accomplish the shots. Then the board artists begin their drawings, which end up being the basis for layout and animation. What the board artists create are sequences of animatics that come to the editor to be cut together as the show. This is the milestone for the editor’s first creative pass. This is where pacing first makes its mark.
I pace the show. I change boards, lose some boards, rearrange boards, and work with the director to really delve into crafting the story. Then that cut gets sent to be screened. Animatic rewrite and board revisions are next. Notes get addressed and edits receive new temp audio (or recorded audio because they are always trying to fit in records to ship as many of the actors’ voices as possible) and new boards. I take my revision pass to lock the boards for track read.
Track read and timing are two departments that are essential in animation. Track read tells the animator what mouth to put on what frame, and timing tells the animator what position and pose the people or things in the frame need. All of that information needs to be received and organized to be sent with our storyboards to our overseas studio. Then that episode is on hold until we get color back, which takes about 12 weeks.
Color comes back to me to build the rough color. We send my pass at the rough color to be screened, and we get back a rewrite that will be almost final in terms of script. Some rewrites are larger than others and need extensive picture fixes or pitches on how to accomplish anything new. After this rewrite, we have a huge edit session, when I sit with the showrunners and go note by note, frame by frame, to figure out how we want to tell this story. This is the last opportunity to rewrite because the script of this cut is what goes to audio recording for our cast records.
Once it’s recorded, I have an ADR pass and fix whatever picture I can, especially if the words are the same. We lock everything with ADR and then the episode is ready to go to retake animation. Retakes, pre-dub, mix, and online all fall in the few weeks after retake animation, which finalizes the show for delivery.
How would you describe the pacing?
Overall, we like to keep it quick and snappy, but I spend a lot of my time pacing and re-pacing sequences during both animatics and color to get just what we need out of performances. We had one episode where frames between Owen’s (Leslie Odom Jr.) responses changed the tone of the scene dramatically. Our specific pace also enhances our jokes and the comedic elements of each character’s personality.
Cole is our quick-witted aside king to Helen’s queen. Bitsy and Birdie are our blunt instruments of chaos and humor. Paige and Molly weave intricate stories and then drop the mic with their punchlines at the end. Owen is our overthinker and lover of the quintessential dad joke. Knowing how each character would respond in each of our stories dictates the pace of each sequence within each episode and the episode as a whole.
What are some challenges of working on a show like this?
Central Park blends music and story at just the right balance in each episode. Achieving that balance has been our greatest challenge to overcome throughout the seasons so far, narratively, artistically and technically. Which story beats are enhanced by a musical number? How many musical numbers are we doing? Artistically, which music numbers are based in reality, and which ones are fantastical? From a technical and editorial standpoint, how do I blend these moments together for seamless transitions when song numbers and story beats are animated by different studios? This season really brought everything we have learned in the previous seasons together and I think the viewers will feel that cohesive balance in our episodes.
Any specific episodes or scenes that were particularly challenging?
We had a beast of a sequence to overcome this season with one episode in particular. I won’t give away too much since it’s airing toward the end of the season, but we wanted to do another instrumental sequence. However, we didn’t have the music on the animatic stage. Boards were done to some temp music that was chosen based on how the showrunners and writer wanted this instrumental piece to feel. So that was a start, but so much was relying on making the visuals work once we got it back in color animation. I had to cut it to the music, which can sound really simple, but the goal was to use frames that we knew we were going to have instead of needing new shots. There was a lot of trust on my shoulders to make it work, and I am so excited about how it turned out. I hope the audience enjoys it as much as we all loved creating it.
What tools are you using for the edit?
I use Avid Media Composer to edit the color animation and Adobe Premiere Pro for animatic storyboards.
Any tools within those systems that are particularly helpful?
I am a huge fan of creating my own frames for fixes whenever I can, so my favorite tool is Avid’s Animatte. My timeline often has seven layers of Animattes. Need different eyebrow acting? I got it. Pupil fixes? Fixed in edit. Lip sync? Done. Want to adjust framing and have that character exit frame earlier? Cool, I’ve got an Animatte for that.
Any tips for those who are just starting out?
mentor lots of students from my school, the University of Georgia, and I always tell them to safeguard their mental health first. This industry is tough, and it can be all-consuming if you let it. But it’s also fun because entertainment brings joy and escape to so many people. So don’t lose your own joy. Find your boundaries and your limits, and work at places or on projects with people who respect them.
