Kristen Troyansky, Rebekah Hernandez, Marnee Meyer, Shari Johanson and Veronica Vozzolo are part of a female-centric post team that worked through the pandemic to finish the fifth season on Billions. The show follows the power struggle between federal law enforcement and ruthless hedge fund titans.
L-R: Rebekah Hernandez, Shari Johanson, Marnee Meyers, Kristen Troyansky, Veronica Vozzolo
Like many television productions, the Showtime series Billions was impacted by COVID-19. Primarily produced and posted in the New York City area, the show was halfway through production last spring when the pandemic forced the city into lockdown. Filming halted in March, while post for Season 5’s first seven episodes continued remotely through June. Work on the final five episodes resumed this March.
As Billions geared back up, it did so with its largely female post team intact. That included Post New York Alliance (PNYA) members co-producer Troyansky, post supervisor Hernandez, picture editor Meyer, music editor Johanson and assistant editor Vozzolo.
Things weren’t quite the same when the women (and their male colleagues) returned to work. For one thing, instead of congregating in a few, closely proximate edit suites, the show’s sound and picture editors and their assistants were obliged to do their work from their individual homes while using remote software (Jump Desktop) to communicate with each other and to connect to shared storage.
Moreover, the final five episodes were shot in blocks as a health and safety measure to limit the number of times the production crew had to move locations. As a result, episodes had to be edited nonlinearly. Troyansky explains that the post team implemented a workflow in which picture editing was divided among four teams of editors working on Avid Media Composer, each working on different episodes while sharing dailies media. “To make that go smoothly, the assistants had to stay in contact throughout each day (mostly through Slack) and resolve any kinks in the workflow,” she recalls. “Rebekah and I worked with our coordinator to ensure the editing teams had the elements that they needed and to relay information between the editors and production.”
Managing all this on a tight television schedule was daunting. “Features are often edited in nonlinear order,” notes Hernandez, “but we were working much faster than most features, and we were doing it all remotely. We had to develop best practices as we went along. The fact that most of the team had worked together for a long time, enjoyed mutual trust and communicated well was crucial.”
Johanson, too, had to adjust her routine while remotely editing the show’s nearly ubiquitous music cues, which included both original tracks from composer Brendan Angelides and sourced pop songs. Now in her second season with the show, Johanson says that she was fortunate to have a large library of music from past seasons to draw from in providing temp tracks to the picture editors.
“By this point, my brain has become a musical database for Billions,” she explains. “When Marnee or one of the other editors needed music for a scene, I’d find an appropriate existing track based on the theme, the action and the characters. Often, something would immediately pop into my head, ‘Oh yeah, we can use that track from Season 1, Episode 4.’” Those tracks not only provided the editors with something suitable to cut to, they became starting points for Angelides in creating new music for the final cuts.
Meyer says that what she missed most in editing the show remotely was having other members of the team physically present to share ideas. Creative interaction between production, editorial, post production and other departments is essential to shaping the story and maintaining the show’s unique vibe. “Billions is a very nuanced show,” she insists. “There is tension all the time, but some of the darkest moments are very funny. The whole team works together to make those moments pop.”
One of the newer members of the team, Vozzolo observes that the frequent shifts in tone and direction that characterize the show’s narrative make it an immensely fun project. “Billions does a really good job of not tipping off what’s going to happen next,” she says. “When I came onto the show for Season 5, I watched Season 4 and was surprised by all the twists and turns. I was never able to guess. Creating those surprises is one of the coolest things about working on this show.”
Still, she adds, finishing five episodes during a lockdown was uniquely challenging. “The job we do is always hard, but the pandemic made everything tougher,” she says. “We were all overburdened, professionally and personally. Kirsten, Marnee and Shari are moms and had to balance work responsibilities with remote school and childcare. In a year like no other, it was good to be working with people who got it.”
Troyansky agrees. She says she is proud of the way the team stepped up and grateful for the support they received from the show’s producers. “Our showrunners kept their eyes on the broader picture,” she observes. “It was great to work with people who were decisive, who knew where we needed to go and didn’t let anything get in the way. That made everything we had to do much easier.”
