Tag Archives: Paramount+

Marco Valerio Caminiti

DP and Colorist Talk Look of The Serial Killer’s Wife

By Randi Altman

Paramount+’s The Serial Killer’s Wife, four-episode series, follows Beth, whose husband is arrested on suspicion of murder. Beth (Annabel Scholey) is certain it’s all a huge mistake — Tom (Jack Farthing) is the village doctor and a beloved member of the community. But as Beth and her husband’s best friend start looking into the accusations, they start questioning everything.

Marco Valerio Caminiti

L-R: Director Laura Way, DP Evan Barry (on phone) and colorist Marco Valerio Caminiti

The series, which is soon to be released in the US after premiering in the UK and Ireland, was directed by Laura Way, shot by director of photography Evan Barry and color graded by Marco Valerio Caminiti.

How early did you get involved in the series?
Marco Valerio Caminiti: I got involved soon before the shooting started through several online meetings. The DI team at Frame by Frame and I set up the dailies workflow together with director of photography Evan Barry and DIT Gianluca Sansevrino.

Did you create on-set LUTs? How did that translate to the final color?
Caminiti: At first, I developed a custom technical conversion LUT (ARRI Log-C to Rec. 709) for the first days of shooting. Later, when I started receiving the actual rushes, I made a custom LUT that helped bring us toward the desired look of the show. This LUT was derived from an LMT [Look Modification Transform], which I then used as a grading starting point in ACES.

Marco Valerio Caminiti

Evan Barry: Working with Marco and Gianluca to create these LUTs gave me great peace of mind that the intended look of the show would be implemented right from the outset. 

What did the director and DP say they wanted it to look and feel like? Did they provide a look-book?
Caminiti: Director Laura Way, Evan and I wanted to achieve a “crime/drama” look that would drive the audience through the mood of the show. At the same time, we did not want the grade to feel too stylized. Our goal was to have a nice level of contrast and color separation to avoid a bland, monochromatic result.

Generally, all the scenes in exteriors tend to go toward cold tones, but we kept a nice golden and soft tint for specific interior situations. I had received a lookbook to develop the LUT before shooting started, but Evan then brought some more references on the first day of our in-person grading sessions.

Marco Valerio Caminiti

Barry: It was important that the show’s look have a very grounded and naturalistic feel while still retaining a cinematic quality to complement our story. Through conversations with Marco and some shared references, both in preproduction and throughout the shoot, Marco did an incredible job responding to the rushes that were being sent through. And although our time in the grade was limited, I had great confidence in Marco. We’d had enough conversations that he knew instinctively what direction to go with each scene.

What was it shot on, and why was this camera package chosen?
Barry: We decided to shoot on the ARRI Alexa Mini LF paired with a set of Zeiss supreme lenses. We felt that this combination would give us the cinematic naturalistic look we wanted.

What were some of the biggest challenges of the shoot?
Caminiti: The biggest challenge was probably logistic in nature, considering that the editorial department (Element) were set up in Dublin, the ADR was done at Molinare in London, the VFX team from Alps Studios were in Turin, the DI and sound department from Frame by Frame were in Rome, and both Laura Way and Evan were based in Ireland.

Marco Valerio Caminiti

Even with everyone spread out, it all went quite smoothly. The collaboration between all these countries generated a unique combination of Italian influences (coming from the art, costumes and production design) mixed with British environments and landscapes.

Barry: I think these kinds of international co-productions are fantastic, as they broaden the scope of talent we can work with and bring different cultural influences together, which I think helps to raise the quality of the end result.

Was Evan Barry in the suite with you? The director? How did that help?
Caminiti: I had the pleasure to sit in the grading suite for a week with Evan to find the right direction for the show. A few days later, Laura also came to Rome to attend the grading sessions and review all four episodes. Even though we all got used to working remotely after the pandemic, I much prefer to have clients attend the grade, both for social and practical reasons.

Unfortunately, it was too complicated to have a session with Evan and Laura at the same time, but we managed to keep a good level of communication using review links to share the progress.

What system and color workflow did you use? Did you do any cleanups as well, or just color?
Caminiti: I graded the series using ACES in Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve, and I also had to deal with a couple of very minor cleanups. Since the TV series is a Paramount+ UK original production, we started to grade it in HDR (Rec.2020 PQ – P3 D65 limited), and later obtained the Rec.709 version using Dolby Vision analysis and trim passes.

What was your favorite part of the collaboration and look?
Caminiti: I feel lucky to have worked on this project. I studied in the UK at the NFTS (MA Digital Effects: Color) and worked at Warner Bros. De Lane Lea, so my favorite part of this collaboration is that I managed to bring my experience back to Rome with me, working on an international production from my own city and using skills from my two different backgrounds to achieve the look.

I know I can’t mention everyone, but I would like to thank post production manager Alessandro Pozzi, post producer Matteo Lepore, conformer Giorgia Petrazzini, finishing artist Paolo Viel, sound designer Sandro Rossi and producer Francesco Paglioli, who followed the whole Italy/UK/Ireland process.


Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for more than 25 years. 

Yellowstone

Yellowstone Editor Chad Galster Talks Pace and Collaboration

By Alyssa Heater

The Paramount series Yellowstone, created by Taylor Sheridan, has become a cultural phenomenon over the span of its five seasons. The drama surrounding the Dutton family and the fate of their ranch has drawn millions of devoted viewers who are eagerly awaiting the release of Season 5’s final episodes.

We recently sat down with Yellowstone editor and longtime Sheridan collaborator Chad Galster, ACE, to discuss all things editorial on the fifth and final season of the series.

Yellowstone

Chad Galster

You’ve worked with Taylor Sheridan since the beginning of Yellowstone. You also worked on its prequels, 1883 and 1923, and on Mayor of Kingstown. How does having a sort of shorthand help to achieve the desired pace?
Yes, we’ve been working together for a long time, so that means a couple of things. One is that, over the years, it’s become clear that we see movies and TV the same way. There’s a benefit to a longstanding relationship like this one, where I can tell if he’s going to like something or not. And when he doesn’t like something, I can usually figure out what the fix is pretty quickly. The more that you collaborate with a person, you actually talk less as time goes on because you understand what that person wants to see.

As far as pacing out the story for Yellowstone, 1883 and 1923, each show generally has its own rhythm. It’s a rhythm that makes sense to me from the footage that comes in and from the way it was directed, shot and performed.

YellowstoneHow do you work with Taylor on the edit?
We work rather closely, even though he’s based in Texas, and I live in Los Angeles. When we’re working together on a show, I’ll travel to him about every two weeks so we can work in person, even if it’s just for a few days. You get that irreplaceable, in-person dynamic. It’s just that thing, the way he breathes, the way he does something or a look that he gives me. I’ll say to myself, “Oh, he didn’t like that shot.”

That in-person aspect of our relationship is really important. For as much as we’ve all gotten used to communicating and collaborating over Zoom, there’s a part of my job that I think benefits from the time we spend together. I think it’s a key to our success.

Any other key collaborators involved in the creative decision-making process?
Many. My friend Michael Friedman, who introduced me and Taylor years ago, is one of our creative producers and a central part of the team. They’ve known each other for 20 or 25 years at this point, way before all of the craziness of Yellowstone started. When we’re working together, it’s often Taylor, Michael and I figuring out the best way to present the show.

Speaking of shorthand, the longevity of the show and these relationships — from our composers to our sound team — means that there is a shorthand in communication. Typically, we create these shows on an accelerated schedule, so it helps to have partners you don’t have to exchange a lot of words with because they just get it. That’s a big part of our success as well.

How did you handle the pacing for Yellowstone and its prequels? And how does Season 5 differ from the previous seasons?
When I’m working, I don’t think about it. What I do think about are the visual dynamics within the show — moments to stop and start, moments to make things very violent and then moments that bring it down so it gets very quiet and still. In my mind, that’s how you keep an audience engaged.

I was an amateur musician for about half my life, so dynamics, volume and pace are important aspects of people connecting to classical music. I think of editing much in the same way. For example, if you’re just going to have a barrage of gunfire, that’s going to get old with your audience pretty quickly. You have to be constantly thinking of ways to change up the rhythm and the flow of what you’re doing.

Yellowstone

Off the top of my head, in Episode 1 of Season 5, when John Dutton is sworn in, there was a fun moment when I sucked all the sound out of the scene. There’s a young girl singing the national anthem when all the sound goes away, and he’s just locked into his mind. Then he starts to hear the church bell chime.

Using sound, in addition to picture, to change the rhythm of what we’re doing is more than any specific overall rhythm given to the season. Those little moments are a key to keeping our audience engaged. And I’m just always looking for places to do that.

Speaking of the violence, there is a scene from Episode 3 of Season 5 that stands out. The Dutton Ranch cowboys and Beth are at a bar, and a girl is flirting with Rip. Beth is having none of it, so there’s a beer bottle over the head, and the entire bar breaks out into a fight. Then it’s a quick cut. The cops are there, and they’re all standing outside. Tell us a bit about that scene.
That’s a fun story because it’s based on a real thing that happened to Taylor. A lot of things are drawn from experiences he’s had. I think the violence in Yellowstone can be quick and brutal, but it’s not drawn out. We’re conscious of not making it melodramatic. The way that things turn in real life are sudden, and they’re quick and they’re violent, but then they’re over with.

A bar fight doesn’t last for five minutes; it lasts for 30 seconds or until someone gets punched in the face, and then they’re done. There’s a bit of an entertainment spectacle to what we’re doing. It is a TV show, so the fight has some entertainment value — no one is going to die in that fight, so the stakes are somewhat low.

And it’s funny the way it evolves. You have the guitarist up on the stage who just keeps playing through it. This is what happens in this bar. He probably saw another fight earlier that night. Then boom, it’s done and we’re on to the next thing. We don’t belabor it.

Who is your assistant editor, and what is your collaboration process like?
There are several on the show, but mine is Michael Goldberg, who has been with me for a couple of years now. He’s based in Atlanta — that’s the way the world works now. It used to be that we would all be in the same office together, trading ideas back and forth. I do miss that collaboration. Before Michael, it was Brooke Rupe.  She worked with me from Season 2 of Yellowstone as well as on Those Who Wish Me Dead and up to 1883, when she started to get editing credits. I tend to work with my assistants closely and for an extended period.

The shows that we make are on a very tight schedule, so you need to trust the people that you’re working with. My relationship with my first assistant editor is vital. Because I travel a lot to work with Taylor, my assistant will prep travel materials and encrypt drives for me. We work in some pretty remote parts of Texas, so there is a lot that I depend on them for. Michael has been a great partner and so was Brooke. Eventually a lot of them want to move on to editing, and I consider it my responsibility to help facilitate that. That’s part of the job, but it’s tough when they go.

Let’s shift gears and talk tech. What system do you use to edit?
I use Avid Media Composer v2018.12.15 because I love that particular interface. In 20 years, I have only done one thing that wasn’t on Avid, a History Channel show from 2005 that was on Final Cut 7.

As far as editing tools go, I believe very strongly that you should use whatever tool you feel comfortable with. The reason Avid works for me is because I am so used to the interface. I don’t even think about it anymore. A long time ago, it became muscle memory for me — I think about what I want to have happen and then my fingers do it. Beyond that, if you are working in episodic television or collaborating with other people, Avid has the collaboration aspect of file sharing worked out in a way that I haven’t seen replicated anywhere else.

Do you use plugins?
I’m spoiled. When you work on a TV show with a big budget, there are a lot of folks who take on the other jobs. My responsibility is picture editing, sound editing and sound effects editing, then it goes off to other folks. Because my responsibility is limited to the craft of cutting the picture and the sound, that’s all I have to do. When we use plugins, I use a very basic set of them. The shows that I work on don’t depend on editing effects very often. There is a lot of compositing, bluescreen and visual effects, but I just need to have a temp comp done, and it doesn’t take much. I have my Avid, and that’s all I need.

How did you work with the sound team at Formosa — supervising sound editor Jay Nierenberg and mixers Diego Gat and Sam Ejnes. How do you achieve a soundscape that matches the intensity of the picture?
Every editor is different in how they handle their sound in the offline. I tend to be very meticulous. For example, the inauguration scene where all the sound gets sucked out — that was something that I did in the offline.

I provide a specific blueprint for what I think the sound should be on our episodes. We have a fantastic sound team who will then take that and elevate it. What’s important to me is that we hire these artists for what they bring to the table. I always tell folks what I think, but if they have a better idea, let’s hear it. I’m not tied to anything, I just want the show to be the best that it can be.

Our teams are longstanding collaborators, so we can go back and forth, and they know what the basics of the world are. We all know how to do horse sounds and cowboy sounds, but what could we do that’s different than what we’ve done before? Soundscape and sound design are, in a lot of ways, the easiest way to do that.

When we spot the episodes, we’ll have a Zoom session. We’ll watch the episode and, after every scene, pause and ask, “What do you guys think?” “Do you want to try this?” They’ll ask me, “How tied are you to this particular kind of music?” And we’ll just go back and forth. My general answer is that I’m not tied to it; improve on it, make it better or do something different. If we don’t come up with something different, then what was in the offline is a reasonable blueprint for something that would be cool. A lot of collaboration, a lot of trust and a lot of really great artists are involved at all of those stages.

Anything else that you would like to share about your experience editing Yellowstone?
This show, this job and my relationship with Taylor are the highlights of my professional career. I enjoy the community of people that is interested in it, and the enthusiasm for the work is really rewarding. It’s not something that we take for granted. It was also completely unexpected.

We were making Yellowstone for a couple years just going about our business, and then suddenly it exploded in popularity. It’s cool that people connect to the material that way. But we haven’t really changed anything about what we’re doing. We’re still mostly the same folks making the same show. So hopefully that’s what continues.


Alyssa Heater is a writer working in the entertainment industry. When not writing, you can find her front row at heavy metal shows or remodeling her cabin in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Benivegna

Behind the Title: Pilot CD/Senior Editor Marybeth Benivegna  

Marybeth Benivegna is senior creative director/senior editor at New York City’s Pilot Content, a content development agency and media consultancy that produces video campaigns and branding solutions for entertainment and consumer brands. “We write, produce, edit and design for network and streaming services, corporate brands, trailers, promos and sizzles,” explains Benivegna, who cuts using both Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere.

Benivegna has been in the business for over 25 years. She started out at a Top 40 radio station and then moved to a TV station in Miami, where she got to witness and take on more roles. While there she would sneak into the station’s edit room after hours and teach herself how to cut by creating content from shows the producers were working on. And so began her journey.

In her current role as senior creative director, she oversees the creative process — scripting, editing and designing. “As senior editor, I have my hands on the footage to create the story for our clients — working closely with our ECD, Courtney Cosentino. I also hire and supervise our freelance editors, and I am always searching for new editing talent.”

Let’s find out more from Benivegna…

What would surprise people the most about what falls under your titles?
I never think of editors as just editors. They need to be great producers, too, and be able to see across the full creative process that includes graphics, sound design, etc.

As SCD, I am the lead with the client, as opposed to when I am just editing. Having that one-to-one interaction with clients undoubtedly brings a different perspective to a project. You want your creative team (editors, graphics artists, sound designers) to stay in the most imaginative mindset possible on a project, so I make sure what we’re working through on the non-storytelling side of a campaign doesn’t inundate their processes.

In both roles, I vet all freelance editors and search for talent with different perspectives.

Are you often asked to do more than edit? If so, what?
Similar to above, editors need to be great producers. An editor’s job is to make the client’s vision a reality – or if there isn’t a vision, create one for them. Through this process we often need to cut a rough music track or create graphics in After Effects. Oftentimes, we’ll need to work with those elements before handing off to the pros in sound and design.

Do you put on a different hat when cutting for a specific genre?
I approach each project fresh: What’s the client looking for? What’s the story? What’s the rhythm? Each spot has a different emotional thread, and that thread determines how fast or slow we’re going to tell the story within a specific genre.

Can you name some recent jobs?
As senior creative director: AMC+ movie spots, including Women Centerframe; Sundance Film Festival promos; and Paramount+’ Summer of Reality promos.

As co-CD and editor:  Paramount+ trailers for New This Month.

As senior editor: Fox’s Animation Domination, FXX Fearless promo for Ad Astra, TruTV’s Tacoma FD, TBS’s Rat in the Kitchen, VH1’s My True Crime Story and Universal Kids’ Trolls.

Why did you choose this profession?
I stumbled into it. My first summer home from college, I got a job at a radio station. In time, the chief engineer kept giving me new roles and eventually offered me a job at an NBC-affiliated TV station he moved to in Miami. While I was there, I’d sneak into the edit room after hours (there was only one) and teach myself how to edit by creating content from shows the producers were working on. They started seeing what I could do and kept giving me real projects. I realized I loved the puzzle of it all and making people feel something. Eventually, I became a staff editor.

From there I went to WNBC in New York City and then to work at post houses throughout the city. I was open to whatever new opportunities came up, and what started out as an “along for the ride” approach has led to a fulfilling career.

What’s your favorite part of the job?
The variety. I enjoy pivoting to CD when I don’t have to edit. I like the challenge of not limiting the editor I work with by imposing a story I have going on in my mind. As CD, you have a little more say in the final story because you’re distilling info and perspectives from both sides – client and editor.

Same for editing – I love the variety. I love stepping into the rhythm of it.

What’s your least favorite?
“Fatal Error” messages.

What is your most productive time of the day?
I’d say the afternoon. In the morning, I’m usually looking through what we have to work with and getting a sense of story or playing with what I did the day before. For some reason it seems I kick into high gear at around 2pm.

If you didn’t have this job, what would you be doing instead?
An FBI agent. I love puzzles.

Do you listen to music while you work?
I like to cut to music while I’m editing, but I keep it separate from my own Spotify playlist.

What do you do to de-stress from it all?
I de-stress by preparing for the stress. I like to start my morning off with a run and a cup of coffee. If I get those in, I’m ready to go.

Name three pieces of technology you can’t live without.

  • Apple Watch
  • My phone
  • My new external hard drive! It’s an OWC ThunderBay (for those who get how much this means).

Would you have done anything different along your path? Any tips for others who are just starting out?
While I feel very fortunate where I am, I had that itch to just pick up and move out to California earlier in my career. I was advised by a colleague not to do it, and in hindsight, I do wish I would have just seen for myself rather than taking their word for it.

With how production is now, you can have incredible creative careers just about anywhere you are, but my tip for those starting out is to be open to new and different opportunities. You never reach a point where you know it all. There are so many new people to meet and things to learn to help you continue to grow.

 

The Stand Showrunner Ben Cavell, Plus Post and VFX Producers

By Daniel Restuccio

The Stand is a post-apocalyptic survival story about a pandemic that instigates a confrontation between the forces of evil, personified in the character of Randall Flagg (Alexander Skarsgård), and good, embodied in the presence of Mother Abagail (Whoopi Goldberg).

Ben Cavell

The limited series, based on the Stephen King novel, was in development for over 10 years. Julie McNamara, former EVP/head of programming for then CBS All-Access and now Paramount+ (the transition happened back in early March), hired veteran showrunner Ben Cavell (Justified, Homeland, Sneaky Pete, SEAL Team) to executive produce the show when the project evolved into a nine-episode limited series.

We caught up with writer and showrunner Cavell, post producer Stephen Welke and VFX producer Phillip Hoffman to talk about the show. Let’s start with Cavell.

When did you start working with The Stand EP Josh Boone?
Cavell: When the decision was made to tell the story as a limited series rather than a feature, I got a call  asking if I’d be interested in taking it on. Josh had been trying to get a feature version off the ground for years, but he’d be the first to tell you he’s a filmmaker, not a showrunner.

When he peeled off to focus on the two episodes he directed and produced (the premiere and the last one), I was able to bring in my old friend and Justified collaborator Taylor Elmore to help me shepherd the show through production. We had a lot of talented directors on this show — Josh, Tucker Gates, Bridget Savage Cole, Danielle Krudy, Chris Fisher and Vincenzo Natali — but because there were so many Taylor and I had to work hard to keep the show tonally and stylistically consistent.

Stephen King and his son Owen were very involved with this. What kind of notes did they give early in production? Were they also involved in the post?
Cavell: Owen wasn’t just giving notes; he was in the writers’ room from the beginning helping to craft the series, and he ended up writing or co-writing several of our episodes.

Stephen was in the position of giving notes/approvals throughout, including during post — although, happily, I don’t ever remember him objecting to anything we wanted to do.

You had four editors on the show: Matthew Rundell, Robb Sullivan, Rob Bonz and Marc Clark. What were some of those challenges?
Cavell: The Stand is already an enormous challenge editorially just because of the number of main characters and separate storylines — and that’s before we add the further challenge of telling a story in multiple timelines. We needed editors who not only knew the book, but who were also capable of keeping so many balls in the air at once.

In addition, because most of the editing process would take place after the directors finished their individual cuts, when Taylor Elmore and I would spend months crafting the series into a coherent whole, it was important that our editorial team be able to work together without getting territorial. With that in mind, we loved the idea of hiring a group of editors who had worked together in the past in various permutations and would therefore come to this project with an existing shorthand and mode of collaboration.

They all worked on Avid Media Composers in Los Angeles. During the shutdown they transitioned to working from home and used Evercast for remote editorial (and VFX reviews). [More on this later!]

How surreal was it to be posting the show during an actual pandemic?
Cavell:  I don’t think of The Stand as being about a pandemic, but you’re certainly right to use the word surreal. The moment that stands out most in my memory was during the night we spent filming our overflowing New York hospital, when someone pulled up laptop video of the eerily similar scenes coming out of Italy.

Early in post there was a discussion about whether to try to incorporate COVID into our narrative — i.e., by adding off-camera lines in which people would say about Captain Trips, “This is even worse than COVID” but I nixed that pretty quickly. For one thing, so much of the horror of The Stand comes from the idea of a plague descending on an unsuspecting world. Also, a number of our early scenes, in which people cough or sniffle and no one thinks anything of it, felt like they’d play very differently in a world that had already experienced an airborne pandemic.

Josh Boone said the style of the show would be ‘70s Steven Spielberg and ‘90s Oliver Stone. How did those style concepts translate practically to the production of the episodes?
Cavell: I think Josh was referring to the two he directed, both of which begin with a kind of gold-filtered, first-act-of-Jaws innocence and descend into a much cooler, harshly bright, JFK-style paranoia. The conversations I had with our other directors about visual touchstones varied widely — from gas, food and lodging to The Rocky Horror Picture Show — although it’s true that the film Jake Braver and I referenced most when we were designing the “Hand of God” climax that ends Episode 8 was Raiders of the Lost Ark.

VFX supervisor Jake Braver said you created a rulebook for society in New Vegas, which directly influenced the design process. What were some of those rules?
Cavell: The main rule from a design perspective was the notion that Flagg would have his work crews systematically covering up any logos that weren’t his, which, in a city famous for its neon logos, is quite an extensive job.

A lot of the other rules may not have influenced the design as directly but were important in helping us figure out what it should feel like to be there. Above all, we knew Vegas needed to be a place that was believably functional.

Post and VFX

Can you trace the workflow of the production from camera to final conform and color grading? For example, you shot on Sony Venice. What informed that choice?
Welke: The camera was chosen because it allowed us to shoot 4K in the 2.39 aspect ratio. It can also shoot 6K large-format, which was necessary for some of the VFX sequences, and the 2500 ISO was helpful in shooting night scenes with no power (a story point) and only moonlight or candlelight for the source.

Stephen Welke

You shot 4K and delivered a 4K master. Was it also HDR?
Welke: We worked at 4096×1716 in EXR. Encore Video (which is now Company 3) built our timeline in 4096×1716 in EXR. We colored on the DaVinci Resolve in HDR Dolby Vision, with Encore adding mattes x222 top and x222 bottom to bring us to 4096×2160 for the final deliverable.

How many cameras did you shoot scenes with?
Welke: We had three primary cameras, with additional cameras as needed, and up to five for one sequence. We also shot with the Phantom and ARRI cameras on drones and special camera arrays for driving plates.

I’m guessing you were editing during production. Did post start in Vancouver, where it was shot, and move to LA?
Welke: Post started in Los Angeles when production started in Canada. There were plans to have editorial near set, but they were never put into motion, so editorial remained in LA for the entire shoot and finish.

The editors used Media Composer? 
Welke: Yes, editorial worked Avid Media Composers hooked up to Nexis at the start and changed to remote editing after the pandemic shut everything down. We moved Avids into personal residences. Since we were finished with principal photography, we transferred the media from Nexis onto separate RAID drives for each editor and assistant and used Resillio to keep up to eight systems connected with matching media. We did this instead of remoting in to our Nexis, as the offices came off rental due to non-use and budgetary savings.

What was the editorial turnaround per episode?
Welke: The editorial turnaround per episode varied due to a number of factors. Editorial was given an average of 10 days after principal photography to assemble the editor’s cut. Directors were also given around the same amount of time; however, some episodes were block-shot — 101-109, 102, 103-104, 105-106 and 107-108.

The overlap with editors working on multiple episodes meant that some later episodes were delayed in the producer’s review to allow for work on earlier episodes. This was done for a couple of reasons — to facilitate visual effect scene locks so work could begin on the bigger VFX builds and to accommodate international marketing of Episodes 101 and 102 and other schedule requirements. At the start of production, no release date for the series had been established, so production responsibilities on set allowed post to stretch out to accommodate producer shoot responsibilities.

The pandemic impacted the show because our Las Vegas shoot was put on hold, moving from May to eventually September. Principal photography had finished through Episode 108, but the delay in shooting the Las Vegas material allowed more time for producer and studio/network reviews, which normally would not have occurred in our schedule. On average, producer review took four to five weeks, and then studio/network review had around that same amount of time as we waited for shooting to become safe enough to finish scenes and elements in Las Vegas. We couldn’t finish the series without Las Vegas, so it gave us additional time to work on every episode.

The visual effects crew on the series appears to be quite large — feature-film large. How many effects shots on average were in the episodes, and how did you wrangle all that work?
Hoffman: We had 2,146 shots across the nine episodes, with an average of 238 per episode. Wrangling all that work required a lot of coordination from the entire VFX team, and every person on the crew had a lot to wrangle. Short answer is that we all spoke every day, and each person had very specific tasks to keep on top of to make sure we had everything under control. That includes the VFX editor and assistant editor, production manager, coordinator, producer and supervisor.

Welke: Then the visual effects teams coordinated with associate producer Robert Egami to deliver the finished visual effects using Synapse for drop-ins, which were supervised by both post production and visual effects.

Can you talk about the final conforming of episodes, color correction and sound mixing and editing?
Welke: After locking episodes, EDLs were turned over to Encore/Company 3, where the timeline was assembled. Our online happened after the pandemic occurred, so splits and check sessions were handled using Streambox and Clearview for online, VFX and color reviews. Our colorist, Jill Bogdanowicz, took a pass with episodic notes from our primary DP, Thomas Yatsko, and then I, Jake Braver (VFX super) and Thomas would review with Jill before bringing in producers for a final review. We did get into the facility at times between COVID surges when it was deemed safe. This was helpful since we were able to review on calibrated monitors at the mastering resolution. When it was not safe to go in, remote viewing was required. Since there were so many VFX in each episode, we had a lot of check sessions as VFX were approved and dropped in after initial color review sessions with the VFX team, who was tracking shot status for every episode.

Final sound was at Westwind Media. Due to the pandemic, most sound work was done remotely, with co-sound supervisor Sean Massey handling dialogue and ADR and co-sound supervisor Warren Hendriks handling sound design. The long lead time between lock and the final mix gave sound additional time to create signature effects. ADR happened at facilities worldwide, with remote kits being shipped directly to talent and recorded at a local facility and/or through Source-Connect to Parabolic, who supplied the kits.

A benefit due to the pandemic was that we were able to record actors’ entire series ADR in one session, sometimes doing five or six episodes in a single session. Group ADR was set up remotely using Source-Connect, and separate actors — up to 10 — also used Source-Connect to record remotely to a single recordist using Avid Pro Tools, with Holly Dorff supervising.

The final mix was handled by re-recording mixers Warren Hendriks and Karol Urban using Clearview to allow remote viewing for producers and studio/network.


Daniel Restuccio is a writer/director with Realwork Entertainment and part of the Visual Arts faculty at California Lutheran University. He is a former Disney Imagineer. You can reach him at dansweb451@gmail.com.