NBCUni 9.5.23

Category Archives: Emmy Awards

Emmy-Nominated Editors on HBO’s The Last of Us

Leave a reply

By Iain Blair

The Last of Us, HBO’s series based on the videogame of the same name, is full of violence and zombies created by a parasitic fungus. And, like the game, it’s an intimate character study that tells the story of Joel (Pedro Pascal), a smuggler, who has to protect and escort Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a teenage girl with a rare immunity to the plague, across a US ravaged by the zombie apocalypse.

Timothy Good, ACE

The nine-part series was created by Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann, who also created and wrote the 2013 game, and co-showrunner Craig Mazin, the writer behind HBO’s Chernobyl.  The series racked up 24 Emmy nominations, including ones for editors Timothy Good, ACE, and Emily Mendez.

I spoke with Good and Mendez about the editing challenges, collaborating with the showrunners and the post workflow.

Tell us about working with Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin as well as how you approached the edit.
Timothy Good: Here’s the fun thing about them: They’re incredibly generous with artistic interpretation, so they told us nothing. They didn’t give me a sense of how it should be cut. They just said, “Do what you do, and we’ll see how it works.”

I’d never played the game, but Emily had, so our strategy going in was that I’d be able to interpret it for an audience who didn’t know the game, and she’d be able to understand it for people who did. Of course, Neil and Craig know the game intimately, so they’d be able to adjust it. The only thing we got in preparation for editing was the screenplay, which was a very dense, rich document with a ton of description. It was an excellent road map to what they were looking for, and we just took off from there.

Emily Mendez

How did you guys divide the episodes?
Good: I cut the pilot and Episodes 3 and 4, and then Emily and I cut four more together. Craig’s initial approach was, “Do what you do, and then I’ll see if you connect with what I’m doing.” And evidently, I connected perfectly with that because he said to me, “I want you to do as many of them as you possibly can.” I told him I’d try, but it would probably be impossible because it’s so much work.

In addition to the three episodes I’d already been given, he wanted me to cut Episode 7, which we shot out of sequence for weather reasons, but I just didn’t have enough time. That’s when I suggested bringing on Emily, and I told him I’d take over if it didn’t go well – knowing full well that she’d succeed. And she did, at which point Craig said, “Now you guys get to operate as a team,” which was awesome, as there was no way to get through four more mini-features in such a short time.

Emily, you used to be Tim’s assistant, and here you are as Tim’s co-editor on four episodes. How does that work? Give us a sense of how you guys collaborate.
Emily Mendez: We’d co-edited before on a couple of episodes in Season 3 of The Resident. When I came on this show, I was his assistant, and he threw me a few scenes to edit on Episode 3, called “Long, Long Time.” It was the first episode we worked on, and once Craig saw them and liked them, Tim told him I’d cut them, so Craig was aware I could cut. During that time, I was also working closely with Craig on temp sound design, so I was building that relationship and a kind of shorthand with him. He loves sound, as do I, and we’re both very passionate about it, so we bonded very closely over it.

Live-action video game adaptations are tricky. How did you avoid the pitfalls of making it look too much like a game while keeping it compelling for viewers?
Mendez: From the beginning, Neil and Craig took a really grounded approach. They were honoring the game but still creating a show we could enjoy and connect with. The scripts were so beautiful, and I always felt we were in a place where it’s grounded and real.

In the edit, Tim and I always took that approach, of staying grounded and connected to our characters — always story-based and character-based.

Good: The other thing is that, as Craig has said, a video game is a very active and participatory medium, while a TV series is very passive. So he had to adjust everything the game was into a passive format, so you never felt like you were a participant, but always an observer. That’s how he’d translated the game story into the screenplays with Neil. That allowed us to read them like film as opposed to a participatory medium, and always through the lens of character.

Tell us about the workflow. What editing gear and storage setup did you use?  
Good: We shot the vast majority of the film in Calgary on ARRI Alexa Minis, capturing a 2.8K extraction from 3.2K ProRes. VFX turnovers were EXR. RPL supplied our Avids, and we used their nifty cloud-based system. I believe we started out with a 32TB Unity and added more storage by the end.

Where was all the editing and post done?
Good: Mostly in small post offices in Burbank. I was in Calgary for the first three months, starting with Episode 3, and they sent me back. The picture edit of those seven episodes took one year to do. The rest of it was the sound mixing, VFX and so on.

What was the hardest scene to cut and why? 
Good: That’s a really good question. I’d say the trickiest scene was the big battle sequence in Episode 5, mainly because we had so much material. It was filmed over three weeks at night, and it was the big action set piece of the entire season. The director was Jeremy Webb, and he had four cameras running at all times, so the footage was massive. And my process is that I need to see it all. So I watch everything and catalog it all and start creating little selects of every single piece that I think will work in telling the story. Then I put it all together in a massive sequence.

Then Jeremy saw it and made his adjustments. Then Craig saw it and said, “It’s great except for one thing: The story’s being hidden. We need to find the story of the actual battle. How can we make it about Joel and Ellie’s character connection?”

I then had to spend days going through all the footage to create a skeleton of how these two interact within the context of the battle and figure out a way to show how Joel only shoots while protecting Ellie. He never shoots otherwise. Ellie’s always on the move and unpredictable, causing Joel to have to react all the time and panic at the thought of losing her.

There are a lot of VFX. Did you use temp VFX?
Mendez: Yes, depending on what we were working on. We had a VFX team in the office with us and they’d help us with temps as needed. For the battle scenes, a lot was practical but we had VFX for “the bloater.”

Good: Alex Wang was the VFX supervisor, and we had a ton of vendors — including Weta and DNeg — working on over 3,000 shots. What was great was that production design did most of the work for the actors so they could feel like they were in this world. Then VFX took over above the frame; the bluescreens would only start 12 feet above the frame and eyeline.

What about sound? Did you use sound temps?
Mendez: Yes, and figuring out the sound design was a long process. For instance, on the pilot we had some very complicated scenes, including the plane crash. In the earlier version we had a sort of chaotic soundscape with lots of layers — people screaming, alarms going off and so on. Craig watched it and suggested scaling it back, so on my second pass we had a gunshot in the distance, a transformer blowing, and so on. The sounds were more deliberately placed, which allowed more silence. So then we went with more restraint, which made it more tense, and that became our template.

Congratulations on your Emmy nominations. Where does this rate in terms of creative challenges and satisfaction for you?
Good: It’s the best thing I’ve ever done, the most wonderful collaboration I’ve ever had and the most difficult challenge ever.

Mendez: I agree completely, and it’s given me so much opportunity to grow. I’ve loved everything about it.

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.

Emmys: Supervising Sound Editor Talks Reservation Dogs

Leave a reply

Created by Taika Waititi and Sterlin Harjo, Reservation Dogs is a comedy series about four Native American teens growing up on a reservation in Oklahoma. The multi-nominated, multi-award-winning show got an Emmy nod this year for Outstanding Sound Editing for the episode “This Is Where the Plot Thickens.” Supervising sound editor Patrick Hogan shares the nomination with David Beadle, Sonya Lindsay, Michael Sana, Daniel Salas, Amber Funk and Lena Krigen.

Hogan, who has also been Emmy-nominated for shows such as Cobra Kai and American Horror Story along with several miniseries, movies, and specials, has also been nominated and/or won multiple times on the festival circuit. We talked to Hogan about Reservation Dogs sound and what went into the episode under consideration right now.

How would you describe the soundscape of Reservation Dogs? What makes it unique?
The Rez Dogs soundscape is definitely restrained and, I’d say, tasteful. Life on the reservation is different than being in the city. There are geographic and cultural differences, which we try to reflect in the sounds of the show. When we are on the reservation, it isn’t as busy as when we are in a city. There are fewer people — even in a similar location — when compared to how we would fill in the sound in a city scene. We play it sparser; we leave more space between the characters, if you will, which also leaves a little more space, sonically, for smaller sounds to play. We hear a lot of the Foley in the show. In the nominated episode, you can really hear Big’s police uniform and utility belt jingle and jangle as he runs around in the woods, little details like that. Even the sound design moments are usually one or two carefully crafted sounds rather than a large sound-design build.

What direction were you given by the showrunners?
Sterlin is actually pretty hands-off when it comes to the sound. He usually talks more in terms of the story and emotion and gives us the latitude to discover how to accomplish that in the sound. I guess, generally speaking, his main direction is usually keeping it simple and letting the characters and their experiences drive the scene. The sound subtly comments on and reinforce those experiences. But he’s really great at discussing what the intention is in a scene and then giving us some freedom to experiment in the sound. He always lets us know when we’ve gone too far and have to dial it back.

What episode did you submit for Emmy consideration and why? What was it about that episode that you feel made it worthy?
We submitted Episode 208 — “This Is Where the Plot Thickens” — for Emmy consideration. We really love this episode. It is really, really funny and also really touching and puts us inside (almost literally) Big’s head. It was an episode that had several interesting sound moments and was a great example of the “less is more” approach we take with the show.  That’s what we thought would make it worthy — that combination of showcasing our sound editorial abilities while tackling some big moments in very subtle and effective ways, all without being too showy or distracting from the episode.

What was a challenging scene or sequence from that episode?
There is a moment while Big is tripping when birds chirp in the woods, triggering a flashback. The sounds of the birds transform into a police siren. It was a great opportunity to use sounds to inform the audience about what is happening and a great example of how sound can subconsciously affect the audience. I’m not even sure how many people realized they were hearing that. But it’s moments like those that I love in sound design. We spent some time on that scene on the stage, working to make the pitches of the birds match the sirens and manipulating the bird sounds and the sirens so the transformation sounded natural and had a similar pace to the visuals.

It was nice that we had the time on the stage to work through some trial and error to make it work just right. Again, I don’t know that audiences will notice it and appreciate the work that went into it, but it was a little detail that helped the audience experience Big’s drug-induced trip through his memories… and the clarity he gains by re-experiencing those painful memories.

What was an example of a note you were given by the showrunners?
When Big’s third eye opens, the showrunners were very clear that the temp sound wasn’t working — that is needed to both sound more realistic and be transformative as the drugs open up his memories. Your eye doesn’t really make a sound when it opens. But this is very common thing you encounter in sound for film and TV. You need to create a sound for something that doesn’t make sound in real life, and you have to make that sound seem realistic — if something did make a sound, what would it be? And then on top of that, what would it sound like when memories and thoughts that you’ve repressed come flooding back into you?

What tools were used on the show? Anything come in particularly handy?
We always work in Pro Tools. It’s basically the industry standard for sound editing and sound design. I don’t know all the plugins that the sound editors who work on the show use in their systems, but personally, I use Auto-Align Post, Dehumaniser, iZotope Ozone10, iZotope Trash and FabFilter EQ extensively.

What studio did you work out of?
Reservation Dogs sound post was done at Formosa Group, mixing on Stage 5 at Paramount with Joe Earle and Gabe Serrano. I have worked with Joe and the editors on this show for almost 20 years.

What haven’t I asked about Reservation Dogs that’s important?
I think what’s great about Reservation Dogs, beyond its significance as the first TV series with an all-Indigenous creative team, is that it’s both very funny and very touching. And the sound (and music) works really well within that world to help accentuate the funny moments (like the Foley for the stick when Kenny Boy pretends he is holding a rifle) and the sad or emotional moments (the low tension drone bed playing as Big remembers when he failed Cookie, which leads to him feeling responsible for her death). It’s those small details that I think make Reservation Dogs such an amazing show.

Sound is the end of a long journey in bringing a film or TV show to fruition. It starts with the writing, goes through production and direction and the actors’ performances. All of that gets shaped in picture editing, then sound brings in all the final, subtle touches that tie it all together and give it a sense of location and time. And I really think Reservation Dogs is a great example of what happens when all of those components come together and perfectly complement one another.

The other thing I’d mention is the great work our dialogue editors [David Beadle and Sonya Lindsay] do on this show. We shoot very little ADR, and it is entirely filmed on real locations, no soundstages. On top of that, the actors often improvise and try different things in each take, so often we don’t have many takes of a line. The dialogue editors work really hard to clean up the dialogue and make it all work. They use every dialogue editor trick in the book since they can’t rely on getting it clean in ADR or having multiple takes to search through to find a clean take. I’m really amazed at what they are able to accomplish with all those restrictions and how they always deliver clean dialogue tracks to the stage.

NBCUni 9.5.23

Emmys: Editing FX’s Welcome to Wrexham

Leave a reply

Born in Cairo but living in Los Angeles, Mohamed El Manasterly was a DJ before transitioning to editing. His says his knowledge of music serves as a guiding force in his edits, style, and ability to create seamless transitions within his work.

Mohamed El Manasterly

El Manasterly was one of the editors on the docuseries Welcome to Wrexham, which he describes as “a captivating fish out of water story, following Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds as they take on the ownership of Wrexham soccer club.” Beyond its sports backdrop, the series delves into themes of friendship, perseverance, cross-cultural exploration, ambition and the unbreakable bond of comradeship.

The series — which will air Season 2 in September — received six Emmy nominations this year, including one for El Manasterly and his fellow editors. Let’s found out more….

How many editors are on the series and how is it broken up?
Our editing team consisted of four editors: myself, Charles Little II, ACE, Curtis McConnell and Michael Brown. Welcome to Wrexham thrived on a pure collaborative approach, with each of us contributing to every episode. The post team’s planning strategy was truly ingenious. For instance, I might build an episode, only for another editor to finish it, and vice versa. This workflow was instrumental in giving each episode multiple and distinct viewpoints, resulting in a fast evolution of the show’s development.

How early did you get involved on the show, and how early do you get your segments to edit? What’s the average per episode?
I joined the editing process a few months after it began, immediately immersing myself in scene cutting. Our editing team didn’t have a fixed scene quota. Instead, we tackled available scenes, maintaining a continuous and productive pace. At times, I took the lead on a specific episode, while also contributing to scene construction for other episodes or addressing notes. We navigated between episodes, driven by the structure created by our showrunner, John Henion.

With a show that has so much heart and focus on the community, even beyond the team, how did you approach telling a story that would speak to general viewers, not just sports fans?
Having moved to the US from Egypt nine years ago, during my initial four years here, much of the work I undertook revolved around films shot in the Middle East. Producers sought me out for my ability to bridge the cultural gap between the East and West. My approach involved identifying universally shared human traits — such as family, love, hate, struggle, ambition, success and failure — that transcend specific cultures or locations.

In the case of Welcome to Wrexham, although football provides the backdrop, the series derives its essence from the people, their aspirations and their passions. This aspect is what truly resonates and finds relatability across audiences, regardless of their backgrounds.

What direction are you typically given for the edit?
When it comes to editing unscripted content, good planning can only go so far; the true essence and texture of the show are ultimately shaped during the editing process, which unfolds in different stages. We were lucky to have executive producers who had a clear vision for the show’s aesthetic. Additionally, FX, the network behind the series, provided the freedom to explore and experiment.

The workflow was as follows: Showrunner John Henion collaborated with our story producers to outline the structure on paper. Once a rough draft emerged, editors, like myself, joined in to contribute our perspective. Scenes were prepared and then the cutting process began. Each scene’s purpose, tone, mood and role in advancing the overall narrative was always well-defined.

When the first cuts were ready, we would share them with Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds, whose feedback proved instrumental in elevating the show. Drawing from their scripted background, they gave the series a fresh sensibility, introducing nuances that redefined the boundaries of unscripted content.

Was there a particular segment/episode that was challenging? If so, why?
Each episode had its own challenge, but one of the most occurring was the football matches, given the repetitive nature of them. The main challenge revolved around maintaining freshness in our approach to each match and avoiding repetition. The solution emerged in the form of crafting a distinct theme for every episode.

Themes such as legacy, family and history acted as the interpretative lens through which we examined the material. Each episode focused on two or three characters, with the narrative of each match being conveyed from their perspectives. Whether focusing on players, coaches or even fans, the angle was shaped by the character’s perspective. We deliberately started each game in various ways — occasionally by capturing players’ preparations at their homes, sometimes diving into a match midstream when Wrexham was behind, and so on. This approach made every game feel fresh and new.

What system did you use to cut and why? Is there a tool within that system that you use a lot? How did you manage your time?
I use Avid Media Composer because of its robustness and stability. It’s a preferred choice for many major productions due to its reliability and sharing capabilities. Moreover, the software remains highly stable even when handling extensive amounts of footage and managing long-term projects. It supports collaboration among multiple editors on the same project, enabling seamless sharing of bins and enhancing overall workflow efficiency.

While working on Welcome To Wrexham, I operated remotely, which gave me the flexibility to organize my day as I like. I usually wake up at 5am, spend some time meditating and praying, and then start my first work session from 5:30am to 8:30 am. During this time, I can get a lot done without any distractions. After that, I go to the gym from 8:30am to 9:30am, and by 10am, I’m ready for our team morning call. At that point, I’m feeling fresh and have already accomplished quite a bit of work. After the call, I have another editing session from 11am to 1pm. By that time, I’m usually feeling tired, so I take a short 30-minute nap, followed by a 15-minute walk. This helps me recharge for my last editing session of the day.

What was the episode you chose to submit, and what is it about this episode that you think made it worthy of Emmy’s attention?
We selected the season finale episode titled “Do or Die” because we believe it showcases the best editing work. Throughout the season, we’ve been weaving parallel stories involving Rob and Ryan, the fans and the players. In this final episode, we bring all these story arcs to a conclusion during the crucial and defining match of the season. The primary objective of the entire season has been Wrexham’s promotion from the National League, making this match the culmination of the show’s buildup.

This episode took place in a high-stakes, intense game and we interwove moments to conclude the characters’ stories. However, it wasn’t just about wrapping up their stories; it was also about quickly reminding the audience of their individual journeys and providing a satisfying conclusion. This posed significant challenges, as we had to meticulously strike a balance between time spent in the match and moments taken to conclude character arcs. It took numerous iterations to achieve this delicate balance effectively.


Emmys: Editing A Black Lady Sketch Show

Leave a reply

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.


Emmy-Nominated Beef Director Jake Schreier

Leave a reply

By Iain Blair

The Netflix limited series Beef tells the story of two Los Angeles residents from opposite ends of the economic and social spectrum. Danny (Steven Yeun) is a struggling contractor living in gritty Koreatown and Amy (Ali Wong) is a successful lifestyle guru living in the wealthy suburb of Calabasas. Their lives become inextricably linked after a road-rage incident in a parking lot that quickly escalates into a full-blown feud.

The series earned 13 Emmy nominations across multiple categories, including one for executive producer/director Jake Schreier, whose film credits include Robot & Frank and Paper Towns.

Jake Schreier

L-R: Jake Schreier, Ali Wong and Steven Yeun

I talked with Schreier about directing the show, how he collaborated closely with “Sonny” Lee Sung Jin, the show’s creator, and DP Larkin Seiple on the look, and his involvement in posting the series.

How did you prep for this show since you directed most of the episodes — 6 out of 10?
It was quite a scramble. Sonny and I’ve been friends for six years, so before I was even involved, we were talking about it and how to accomplish it and how to approach production. At some point we figured out we would have to cross-board the whole thing; it’s not like it’s episode by episode. We just treated it like one long movie and shot across all nine episodes and the final one that Sonny directed.

So there were just a lot of conversations with him and production designer Grace Yun, about getting a sense of perspective and how to work that into the show in the limited time frame you have in television, how to give it a sense of authorship, and how to really ground audiences in Danny and Amy’s perspective.

Once you got going on this, did you work closely with Sonny on a daily basis?
Oh, 100 percent. He was there for the whole shoot except when he got COVID, and then he was there on his iPad, so it was a complete collaboration. It’s Sonny’s show and his vision, and I looked at it more as what can I offer and bring to it? Like different approaches of how you’d want to work your way into a scene, such as the church scene.

There’s a way that the writing seems to dictate an approach, but in conversations with Sonny it became clear that we should take a very different approach. And when your collaborator is also a friend, you can have those conversations and have the time to revise your approach.

Talk about the visual approach to the show, and working with Sonny and Larkin to find the right look.
We went for something cinematic, and we wanted there to be an element of handheld, of being observed. I think what’s tricky about it is there’s a real level of specificity that we had to achieve in terms of the places in LA and the main locations – Calabasas and Koreatown. But there’s also this heightened place that the show goes to, so how do we come up with an approach that would accommodate the reality of where it starts and some of the heightened places that it goes to? That is a very delicate balance to play, and we wanted you to really connect with it on that heightened level.

What about working with Larkin?
He’s also been a friend for a long time, and he’s a brilliant DP. He has such an interesting approach to lighting and such a smart approach to story as well. Just telling this story in general was such an incredible collaboration across the board, and you always want something to become greater than the sum of its parts, and we all felt that was the case here.

Tell us about the shoot. Obviously, most of it was location work, right?
Right. Grace Yun built an incredible set for Amy’s house and one for Danny’s apartment, but the rest was all locations, and we moved around a lot. For instance, we had motels in three different episodes but just for little pieces, and we could only shoot there for one day. So that was one long seven-stage day getting it all. We shot for six days an episode, so it was quite a sprint.

Maybe the craziest day was where we had to shoot the prison scenes in the beginning of Episode 9, and then the prison conversations at the end of Episode 6. Then we used the parking lot for scenes of Danny’s parents at the end of Episode 7, and we moved to a different parking structure to shoot scenes from Episode 8 and the end of Episode 6. So all that was just one day.

Jake Schreier

TV schedules are like that, and it’s why all the prep and conversations are so important, because once you’re in the middle of it it’s all moving extremely fast. And I’d always shot-list it and storyboard the script entirely in sequence, even if we were running around and shooting it out of order, to make sure those shots all intercut properly in the edit. All that planning had to be done ahead of time, as on the day it’s just a scramble.

Congratulations on your Emmy nomination for episode 9, The Great Fabricator. How did you handle the big car crash sequence?
Thank you. We got lucky with the location because it had all these private roads where we could stage the chase, and it had a hill and we could send the cars off it. It was exciting having all this action stuff to do, but then we just had six days to do it all. So how do you stage it and pull it off so it doesn’t feel compromised and is also effective? It also leaves moments for the emotional moments between Danny and his younger brother Paul. And I think the emotional moments were just as important as the action stuff.

Jake Schreier and Ali Wong

There is a fair amount of VFX work, especially with all the phone scenes. How involved were you in the post process?
Sonny was nice enough to let me stay through all the post. We had incredible editors, including Nat Fuller [Emmy nominated for his work on Beef], who cut Episode 9 and five others, and I really shoot for the editor. There’s a real specific idea in the way we want the order of the shots, and the way we want the story to be told, so it’s very important to be there for the edit.

Sonny and I had a nice trade-off where I’d turn over a cut and he’d work on it while I moved on to another episode. Then I’d come back to it and we would work on it some more, so it did what it needed to do for the story while also preserving some of the film language and grammar we’d done on the day. As for all the VFX, it’s great to have a showrunner like Sonny who is so meticulous about all that. We had various vendors [including Mas FX, Ghost VFX, Banditry and Reactor] and we tried to make it more about removing things than adding things.

Where did you do all the post?
We had offices in Burbank and then we basically went remote because of COVID and a lot of it was happening on PacPostLive, and we were trading cuts back and forth.

Jake Schreier

Isn’t it unusual for a director to be that involved in all the post?
Yes, as usually on episodic TV I’ll turn in my cut and the showrunner will take over, and this could have gone that way. But we ended up seeing the show in a very similar way, and when you come in without the attitude of trying to protect your cut or shield it, and instead it’s like, how can I help make it better, it’s a far better way of collaborating.

What about the DI? How involved were you?
I was there for some of the sessions which were done at Color Collective with colorists Alex Bickel and Alex Jimenez. But that was really them and Larkin who has such a great sense of lighting, color and texture. I’m so happy with the way it all turned out.

What’s next for you?
Whenever we can get a fair deal, I’ll get back to directing the upcoming Thunderbolts movie for Marvel, which got shut down by the strikes.

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.

 


Emmys: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Sound Editor

Leave a reply

Damian Del Borrello, MPSE, is a New Zealand-based sound designer with more than 15 years of experience crafting soundscapes for TV and film. Most recently, he served as the supervising sound editor of Amazon Studios’ The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, a prequel to the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film franchises.

Del Borrello received his first Emmy nomination for sound editing on the episode, “Udûn.” We reached out to him to find out more.

Damian Del Borrello

What direction were you given for the soundtrack of the series?
The word that kept coming up in conversation was “cinematic.” The producers really wanted us to treat Rings of Power like a series of feature films, rather than a TV show. There was a real desire by the showrunners to bring something new to Tolkien’s Middle Earth, which was very exciting but also quite daunting. The original films were touchstone moments in cinema and redefined what fantasy sounded like on the big screen. Personally, I had been working in Wellington with some of the sound editors who worked on those original films, so the sense of responsibility was immense.

How would you describe the show’s sound?
The original LOTR films are often described as “fantasy documentary style” sound, which I think means “realistic.” Even though there are fantastical creatures and worlds, the level of detail is very high, and the quality of the sounds themselves is organic. We didn’t use synthetic sources for things like magic and creatures, almost everything came from real word recordings. The result was an organic sounding, yet highly detailed track.

The sound team

Can you describe your workflow on the series?
Robby [Robert Stambler, MPSE, co-supervising sound editor] and I were brought on at the start of principal photography and began building our libraries straight away. Picture editorial were cutting as soon as the first rushes came from location. For the first year or so, we would receive sequence cuts from editorial, which we would then flesh out and export stems for the editors to lay into the timeline – this meant they could work with high quality sounds as the cuts continued to evolve.

As we moved into the second year, full episodes started taking shape, and we would then assemble our sequence sessions into master sessions – each episode was split into four reels.

The last six months of the schedule had us mixing in Auckland New Zealand, which involved Lindsey Alvarez and Beau Borders, who both did an amazing job.

Any particular scene stand out as challenging and if so, why?
One of my favorite scenes is the orc battle in episode 6 ‘Udun’. The way in which music, sound effects and dialogue all weave in through the chaotic action is so satisfying. We never miss an emotional beat, sword slash, or pained scream – the clarity in the sonic storytelling is just awesome!

How closely did you work with the re-recording mixers on this one? How did that relationship work?
I was constantly on and off the mix stage, reviewing one episode with the sound team, reviewing another episode remotely with the showrunners and prepping new episodes to start on the stage at a later time. Supervisor/re-recording mixer collaboration is crucial in achieving a great soundtrack and also in having fun while at work — my relationship with Lindsey and Beau was fantastic; we all became close friends and would spend most weekends hanging out as well!

What tools did you call on for this show?
All sound editorial, both effects and dialogue, was done in Pro Tools. With the constantly evolving cut, it was important for us to be able to update our editing and premixing within a single session so all the details could be carried forward to the mix.

A key workflow tool was Matchbox by Cargo Cult. The ability to compare two AAFs/QuickTime video files/audio guide tracks and accurately find matches/differences meant everything. Our first assistant sound editor, Andrew Moore, was the co-developer of Matchbox. His ability to build detailed change notes and reconform files was amazing and kept us all on track when updates across multiple episodes came up.

Why do you think this particular episode was worthy of a nomination?
One word – “scale.” In my opinion, this is one of the most cinematic episodes on a streaming platform to date. The sheer volume of work to create the sounds for all the action, VFX and environmental components in the episode is monumental. Then, to have quiet, subjective moments as well as crystal-clear action sequences with massive amounts of spectacle and impact, makes this episode particularly special.

 

 


Emmys: Wednesday‘s VFX Supervisor and Producer

Leave a reply

The Netflix series Wednesday is a modern take on the class TV show, The Addams Family. It stars Jenna Ortega and Wednesday Addams, who while attending Nevermore Academy, attempts to master her emerging psychic ability, stop a killing spree and solve the mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago. Setting the series’ tone, the first four episodes were directed by filmmaker Tim Burton.

Wednesday

Tom Turnbull

Wednesday was nominated for 12 Emmy Awards, including one for Burton for direction and one for visual effects. VFX supervisor Tom Turnbull and VFX producer Kent Johnson were just two of the team who have been recognized for their work. We spoke to them about the show and its visual effects.

How many shots did each episode have, typically? 
Kent Johnson: They ranged, per episode, from as many as 311 to as little as 97 with an average of 184 shots per episode.

Tom Turnbull: Yes. Roughly 300 shots per episode, which is not super high, but working within a budget and schedule we deliberately focused our resources on shots that count rather than shot count. If a shot did not move the story forward, support the characters or provide emotional impact we did not do it.

What are some of the key VFX in the series?
Turnbull: Thing was the effect that was most important and that most interested me going in. I knew, done right, Thing would be incredibly popular and critical to the character of Wednesday. He needed to be as perfect as we could make him.

Kent Johnson

Nevermore Academy was also a critical, only partially existing as a location, it needed to be created digitally such that is would be accepted as fully real. The creature work, of course, was key and very tricky to pull off on a television budget and schedule.   

Johnson: I agree. The most prominent VFX in the series was likely Thing, the disembodied hand who was usually a 2D effect removing the actor but often a completely 3D CG character. Other effects include set extensions of a castle in the Carpathian mountains of Romania to make it into Nevermore Academy, the CG creatures Hyde Monster, Enid Werewolf, piranhas, Kent the siren/merman and spectacular particle effects in the appearance and destruction of the villain Crackstone.

Did you use virtual production or real-time VFX?
Turnbull: We did not entertain real-time VFX on the show. There was a strong feeling that we needed to ground the look of the show in real-world locations and filmmaking, and that virtual production would not be in keeping with our aesthetic. We did consider virtual production for some driving sequences, but logistically during the height of the pandemic, it was very difficult to orchestrate from Romania. We did use real-time rendering for Nevermore previs with Unreal, allowing us to explore its layout and design and to quickly design shots.

How many different vendors do you use, and what is the turnaround time like? Is it like a traditional television schedule or do you have more time?
Turnbull: There were four main vendors who worked on the complex hero effects and about six or seven secondary vendors who provided support. One of the great things about working with the Netflix model of releasing an entire season on one day is that it allows time to really work the material for early episodes. There is less pressure on hitting a date and some flexibility of dropping in upgraded effects after the mix and color are complete.

Episodes 101 and 102 effectively had eight months to complete, which you would never get on a traditional TV schedule.  This pays dividends in developing looks and procedures that can be applied to later episodes that have a much shorter delivery.   I hope never to see a TV schedule again.  The streaming model provides better creative opportunities.

Johnson: In the end, we relied on 11 different VFX houses. The delivery schedule varied wildly. Some of the more complex sequences took as much as five months from turnover to final delivery while simpler effects were knocked out in days or weeks. Although the turnovers and deliveries were highly fluid, we gave each episode a VFX production schedule of about 100 days in our planning of post.

What about the pipeline? Can you describe it?
Turnbull: On the production side we managed our workflow with Filmmaker databases and spreadsheets. We took the approach that we needed to provide post with as much data and reference as possible, scanning sets, performers and props along with a vast number of digital stills. Managing that much data is a task unto itself. During post we kept a shadow edit on Resolve to manage and assess shot work in context.

Production shot on an ARRI Alexa LF with Signature primes.

Johnson: When we had a locked edit, the editorial department would provide the vendor a QuickTime of the VFX shots in context as a reference. They would then order EXRs of the relevant frames plus 24 frame handles from the post facility using an automated process. The EXRs are posted to the specific vendor’s Aspera accounts for them to download. When the visual effects are approved as final by all of the stakeholders, the final EXRs are then sent from the vendors to the colorist for final grading.

What were the biggest challenges this season? 
Turnbull: To me, the biggest challenge of the season was the sheer volume and variety of the VFX work required. I had worked with Miles and Al before and was familiar with the density and scope of what they put down on the page. It was common to get to page 10 of a script and already be well over what would be considered normal for episodic, both for plot and visual effects. There was no singular effect that I did not have confidence in delivering, it was the number of different effects necessary to tell the story.

There were very few days where VFX was not on-set doing some kind of major effect. It made for a very high-energy, dynamic filming situation, which fortunately, I enjoy. We put a lot of effort into managing the volume of work and in collaboration with Tim and the showrunners, Miles and Al, managed to refine it to its essence. If we had not done that we would have been significantly over budget and the show would have suffered for it.  Less is more as they say.

Johnson: Nevermore Academy was a complex CG asset that required a great deal of time to design, redesign, adapt, model and tweak from shot to shot. The 3D CG Hyde monster was a new creature from the mind of Tim Burton. It required a few different concept artists approaching it from different artistic sensibilities to land on Tim’s vision and then a great deal of time to make such an outlandish creature appear photoreal in both appearance and movement.

 

What were the tools that you used, and why did you choose them for this project? 
Johnson: As the VFX producer, the tools that I personally used were Adobe Acrobat for scripts, Adobe Photoshop to sketch on and annotate tech scout stills, Microsoft Excel and FileMaker Pro for budgeting, DaVinci Resolve to edit Thing’s rehearsals and Adobe’s Frame.io to view previsualizations of virtual drone shots around Nevermore Academy. I’m very pleased that Tim Burton chose to use a physical miniature of the Addams Family house for a flashback where Wednesday buries her deceased pet scorpion in the family’s pet cemetery. Our vendors used Nuke, Maya, ZBrush, Houdini, Adobe After Effects and other software tools.

What was it about this particular episode that made it Emmy consideration worthy? 
Turnbull: Variety. Episode 108 has a bit of everything in it, Thing, Nevermore, Hyde and Enid Werewolf, along with a host of new effects surrounding Crackstone’s incarnation and demise. It also features complex creature work, including transformations, much more than any of the previous episodes.

We were also under considerable time pressure to wrap principal photography, and it was a minor miracle that we managed to get it in the can. A lot of the visual effects work was, as a result, created entirely in post. No one within the Academy voting membership will ever know or appreciate the team effort that went into that, but I do. The biggest achievements are often the ones that are not noticeable.

Johnson: The episode submitted was the Season 1 finale. With almost 300 shots, it showcased all the best VFX of Wednesday, including Thing, Nevermore Academy, the fight between two fully CG creatures of the Hyde Monster and Enid Werewolf. The battle between Wednesday and her nemesis, the pilgrim Crackstone, brought back from the dead and ultimately destroyed with complex dynamic particle effects and finally the poetic defeat of Christina Ricci’s character by a swarm of animated bees controlled by telekinesis.

Podcast 12.4
Weird

Emmys: Jamie Kennedy on Editing Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Leave a reply

Editor Jamie Kennedy, ACE, was nominated for an Emmy for Roku’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story in the category of Outstanding Picture Editing for A Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. The film, a fictionalized version of the parody singer’s life starring Daniel Radcliffe, was directed by Eric Appel and shot by DP Ross Riege.

Weird

Jamie Kennedy

We recently reached out to Kennedy, who credits also include The Summer I Turned Pretty and Love Victor, to talk workflow on this unconventional film, which earned eight nominations in total.

What was your typical workflow on Weird?
The movie was shot in 18 days, so we had a quick turnaround and a tight workflow going in post. My AE/additional editor, Peter Dudgeon, would try to have all the previous days’ footage for me prepped by noon the next day, and then I would dive in and assemble the scenes.

We didn’t have a lot of time to screen many rough assemblies for Eric, our director, while he was shooting, but we prioritized some major moments in the movie (The Rocky Road musical performance, the Doctor Demento Pool Party, and the Diner Fight) to send him while he shot to make sure we were on the right track and weren’t missing anything. After production wrapped, we had 10 days to finish our editor’s cut and then we slammed right into working with Eric on the director’s cut of the movie. All in all, it began shooting in February of 2022 and we were mixed and delivered by mid-July.

So we were trying to keep on pace with camera as best we could because it was such a tight turnaround. The first day was the lightest day in terms of scenes, which gave them more freedom with coverage, which was fun to play with — but after that, we hit the ground running and had to turn over between four and five scenes a day to keep pace.

What direction were you given for pace?
Both Eric and I come from TV comedy, so we’re used to working with a pretty brisk pace in our storytelling to keep things flowing and to keep the comedy punchy. We had a lot of ground to cover in our movie and a lot of set pieces, so we were always trying to pace things up as naturally as we could to fit everything in. This pace also allowed us the luxury at times to slow down for the more dramatic moments and for those moments to feel earned among the comedy.

This isn’t your typical biopic, and it’s funny and, well, “weird.” Can you talk about pace and cutting for humor?
My mentor, Tony Orcena, has a credo I’ve always followed, which is that “oxygen fuels fire and kills comedy.” There are always moments you want a movie to be able to breathe, again, for dramatic impact, but when you’re cutting for comedy, I think it’s so important to keep things moving and punchy. Jokes should land on camera, the cutting rhythm should match the speed of humor, and if you’re cutting for comedic impact that alone is a good tool in your belt to sometimes make a scene even funnier.

WeirdAt the same time though, you need to know when to not rush through the humor, and certainly never run away from it. So knowing the difference between keeping a scene quick and punchy for comedy’s sake and when to take a beat to appreciate a joke is also an important skill.

Why did you submit this for Emmy consideration? What made it special?
We joked a few times during the process of cutting the movie that in the most ridiculous moments of the film, they were our “Emmy Submission,” but we truly never expected the film to gain the traction it did with audiences and awards!

If we had made this movie in a vacuum and no one had ever seen it, I still would have been prouder of this movie than anything else I’ve worked on. There’s so much heart to this movie because it’s powered by people who truly believed in it and gave it 100% sincerity. And not for nothing, feature comedies are such a rarity that I hope are coming back into public favor, and I hope we may have had a small part in inspiring a return to.

WeirdAny challenges in the edit?
There’s an old saying: “If you don’t like the weather in New England, wait five minutes and it will change,” and I like applying that to our movie as well. If you don’t like the genre of the movie —wait five minutes and we’ll enter an entirely different genre! It was comedy, drama, musical, LSD VFX trip, action scene, traditional biopic — the movie was SO much fun to delve into all these different styles, but each style also offered their own challenges in cutting adjustment! But the challenge was half the fun.

What system did you use?
We cut on Avid Media Composers on remote systems provided by Hula Post, which was so convenient and well maintained — we were able to work from home during the dailies process and then the move into a hybrid office with our director was seamless!

[Editor’s Note: postPerspective also spoke to the film’s supervising sound editor Anthony Vanchure and sound designer/sound editor Michael James Gallagher.]

Podcast 12.4
The Daily Show

Emmys: Editing The Daily Show With Trevor Noah

Leave a reply

While Trevor Noah may have left The Daily Show, his time there had an impact, earning 17 nominations during his run. This includes his last season, which was recognized for best writing, talk show and editing.

As you can imagine, editing a live-to-tape daily talk show is challenging and takes a village. While we reached out to two of the show’s editors — Storm Choi and Einar Westerlund — these editors were also nominated: Eric Davies, Tom Favilla, Lauren Beckett Jackson, Nikolai Johnson, Ryan Middleton, Mark Paone, Erin Shannon and Catherine Trasborg. They were recognized for their work on “Jordan Klepper Shows Trump Supporters January 6th Hearing Clips.”

Let’s find out more…

What is your typical workflow on the show?
Storm Choi: Some segments on our show are edited over weeks, while other breaking news pieces are cut in just minutes. So the workflow is fully dependent on the day, and flexibility becomes very important. But regarding our nightly delivery process, after taping we generally have one editor assigned to each act to quickly make any changes and to cut it down to time. The acts then go through a QC check and are assembled onto a final sequence, which we feed to the NOC (Network Operations Center) by playing out through a fiber connection.

Einar Westerlund: The Daily Show is a variety show with many editing requirements and many discrete teams who focus on particular portions of each day’s delivered content. Every editor on our team performs every role at one point or another —be it prepping the day’s open and graphics materials, assembling news clips and montages to support the host’s headlines, fine cutting the live interviews and/or chats, or cutting longer scripted and unscripted segments. I focus on cutting the unscripted segments where Jordan Klepper attends a Trump rally to explore the impact of the January 6th Hearings on the MAGA faithful.

Cutting Jordan’s field segments is a challenging and exciting process because it is one of the featured aspects of the program in which The Daily Show reports the news with a first-hand account. Memorably, Klepper and The Daily Show production team actually attended the January 6 insurrection in Washington, DC, back in 2021, so getting that content onto the air quickly felt urgent as it showcased how special The Daily Show really is. Our segment from June 2022 is in many ways an extension of the work for that original piece and as always, the executives wanted to air the segment as soon as was possible.

In terms of workflow, the priority is editing quickly to make a coherent, poignant and funny segment for air within a day or two of production. Our production team is very experienced in gathering material in the field, and they rarely overshoot. They pre-select interviewees with an ear for articulate and provocative characters who can give a segment energy and surprises during a 5- or 10-minute chat with Jordan. They get all the releases beforehand and shoot with two cameras and an experienced sound crew so that almost every frame is of high quality and fair to use. Because the content is highly topical and attached to the day’s unfolding news, Klepper and the producers don’t have much time to sift through and organize the segment before we edit. The editing assistants and I have to get started completely on our own once we get the material.

When this shoot wrapped, the crew forwarded all the audio files so transcribers could begin making timecoded transcripts almost immediately. These are always helpful for everyone because the segment can be effectively “paper cut” in rough form within a few hours. Once the footage was loaded for cutting, I organized everything and synchronized the multiple cameras and multi-track sound files. Also, I searched in advance for the best B-roll cover to use with the inevitable voiceovers that would guide the audience through the material.

Once prepped, I began screening the interviews myself, often at double speed in places, and marked the parts that I felt might be funny or serve our story. Soon after, Jordan Klepper, Ian Berger and Stacey Angeles provided me highlighted transcripts of sections they felt were most important. I assembled these “selects” and together we decided the parts that seemed best. Often there is an abundance of good content, so we will roughly order the selects into thematic “buckets” to more easily compare and contrast the answers to similar questions from different characters.

Within a couple hours, this long assembly was ready to review, and we discussed the arc of the whole piece. Most importantly, the expositional portions of the interviews had to tell our story and allow the funniest parts of the interviews to land for the viewer who might not be familiar with all the elements of the investigation and controversies.

Once the basic order was formulated, I started tightening the beats right away. We looked to reduce the overlong expositional elements and tried to finish each beat on the laughs or shocks that we felt made the segment really sing. While this was happening, Klepper, the producers and the writers honed the voiceovers, and requested any special graphics and news cover we needed for the final.

For example, in one segment, we had to describe for the audience the conspiracy documentary 2000 Mules, so loading and picking clips of that were vital. Once all the VO, clips and graphics were ingested, I dropped them in and did my finishing — audio mixing and color.

Storm Choi is pictured, center, bottom row

What are some of the challenges your team experiences?
Choi: Many times, the challenges are also the fun parts. We’ve grown more adventurous in what we think is possible, and that’s very apparent in the studio greenscreen segments at the desk where we’ve put our hosts into movies, car chases, a TSA checkpoint and inside the US Capitol — one time we turned Leslie Jones into a chicken.

These segments are often conceptualized in the morning and have to be ready to rehearse in the afternoon. This involves quickly creating and testing various background plates and foreground elements, as well as often implementing sound effects, lighting, graphics and props — it’s a multi-department fast dance, but it’s the ability to turn these around quickly and adjust on the fly that frees up our showrunner, director and writers to be as creative as they dare to be. And I really enjoy the puzzle-solving process.

Westerlund: Our team has been doing this for many years, and our process is very well refined. Of course, we do constantly feel that the segments can improve and be made more quickly. We have tried live streaming the production cameras, uploading footage immediately to import from the cloud, messengering cards during the shoots — but most of these efforts to expand the amount of time for edit have yielded only small gains and produced other problems.

Our greatest challenges at this point are editorial. We often disagree about the appropriateness of certain controversial content, as well as disagreeing about what is most funny. Sometimes, for instance, as in the case of the two influencer women in our nominated segment, we were torn about whether they deserved being associated with the other extremists on parade as they seem to have only stumbled into the fray by accident because it was a big event.

What gear did you use, and why?
Choi: We edit on Avid Media Composer, though some digital content is cut on Adobe Premiere Pro. For plugins, we use both Sapphire and Boris FX Continuum. In the past year, we’ve also developed a remote editing system as well. For that we use Cisco AnyConnect, HP ZCentral Remote and Evercast.

Through the pandemic and in moving to two different studios in the past couple years, we’ve been lucky to upgrade our everyday post technology. Because of the various sources of footage and the range of editing work on our show, we need as many tools as possible at our fingertips. I imagine our tech will continue to evolve as we go into the election coverage in 2024.

Westerlund: For me, the Avid Media Composer networked with the other Avids and a shared Unity system for the media is the indispensable heart of the editing setup. Having several systems share a project folder and large hard-drive partitions allows the team to ingest the material on several systems at once. In a crunch, other editors or assistants can import supplementary materials or even locate hard-to-find sound bites and visuals without disrupting the main edit. Occasionally, part of the footage may have audio or visual problems, and the DP or audio engineer can try to make a custom LUT or sound filter in another edit as well. The multiple Avid setups allows the principal editor to press ahead without digressing for technical reasons.

Additionally, Adobe Media Encoder provides very fast file conversions to distribute rough and final edits for executive and legal approvals. Making these small files and creating secure Shift MediaSilo links has proven to be very efficient. Our show began making these links while we were all working from home during the pandemic, and the process has proven to be a huge time saver. We no longer have to schedule screenings or make numerous tape outputs during the edit.

When this segment was ready for air in our live-to-tape studio setting, I sent the final version to an EVS system directly from the Avid for the control room to roll into the studio.

What does this Emmy nomination mean to you?
Choi: My team is special. I know everyone says that, but it’s true. Our entire staff feels more like a family than any other TV show I’ve worked on, and that sentiment only gets stronger regarding the editing team. There are nine of us, and you honestly couldn’t get a wider range of personalities in this band of quirky rascals. But we’re really tight and love each other, and I’m continuously amazed how talented my colleagues are. To get to share this nomination together makes me so grateful and happy.

Westerlund: Emmys are the industry’s highest honor. Although we have been nominated and won Emmys numerous times over my 27 years with the show, I never fail to feel humbled and appreciated when we get a nomination. The work we do at The Daily Show is always challenging, and I feel the show provides a unique and informative perspective on our culture and especially on our politics. The Daily Show truly reveals the “pulse” of America almost every night. The Emmy nomination is an affirmation that what we do is still appreciated by the industry and the public.

Emmys: Supervising Sound Editor Bryan Parker on Mrs. Davis

Leave a reply

By Randi Altman

The plot of Peacock’s Mrs. Davis? Well, in a nutshell, it’s about a nun, Sister Simone, and her handsome ex-boyfriend traveling the globe to destroy an AI called Mrs. Davis.

Bryan Parker

This year, the series was nominated for an Emmy Award for its Sound Editing team, which includes supervising sound editor Bryan Parker, in addition to Kristen Hirlinger, Nathan Efstation, Roland Thai, Matt Decker, Sam C. Lewis, Sam Munoz,Ellen Heuer and Nancy Parker. We reached out to Formosa Group’s Bryan Parker to find out more about his Emmy-nominated work.

How would you describe the soundscape of Mrs. Davis? What makes it unique?
This show needs to feel loose and funny and quick, but it needs to have a backdrop of very high stakes and dramatic tension behind the characters’ banter. Algorithms love tropes. Sound helps the action moments feel very hyped up and larger than life where necessary, but we left room for those action moments to feel over-the-top and funny as well.

What direction were you given by the showrunner?
Tara Hernandez didn’t want a sci-fi sound aesthetic for this show because she didn’t want it to feel too detached from our current world, I think. For the actual Mrs. Davis app and the phone sounds that it makes, I made several versions ahead of time, before episodes were locked, and we established that palette with a few rounds of notes.

For all the trope-y moments like the sword fight, motorcycle chase, etc, Tara wanted to lean into the hyped cinematic aesthetic to make those sound huge. I think the serious sound design in those scenes enhances their comedy value considerably.

What episode did you submit for Emmy and why? What was it about that episode that you feel made it worthy?
We decided to submit the pilot episode for consideration just because it covers so much ground: three continents, four languages, sword fight, desert island fireworks, convent, cartoony jam explosion and ensuing car chase, motorcycle chase through a toy clown factory, etc. We thought it showcased a diverse lot of different sonic strategies in one package.

What was a challenging scene or sequence from that episode?
The swordfight was the most challenging, not just because of the amount of detail and action, but because getting the right tone took some attempts. It’s funnier if it feels very serious and violent and horrifying and has just a little extra dollop of gore on top, starting with the sister who leaps through the air with the sword in her stomach, to help give the audience permission to laugh.

What was an example of a note you were given by the showrunners?
We received a few notes in the pilot to keep the location of Reno, Nevada alive, showcasing slot machines more in the background and adding a jackpot chime when Simone slides down the door and falls. It speaks to her past there and sets up Episode 102. There was a lot of throughline work like that in Tara’s notes.

What tools were used on the show? Anything come in particularly handy?
Kristen Hirlinger and Nathan Efstation, our dialogue editors, used Auto Align Post and iZotope RX quite a bit during the series to rescue some iffy production dialogue since we wanted to replace as little as possible in ADR.

The actors shot all out of order in all different locations as the episodes move from country to country, and we were so constricted for ADR time that we elected to rescue as much production as we could ahead of time, pulling alts, cheats, anything.

Where did you work out of studio wise?
Editorial was all done through Formosa Group with my team, and the mix was at Warner Bros. with the esteemed mix team of Todd Grace and Ed Carr.

What haven’t I asked about Mrs. Davis that’s important?
Well… you haven’t asked the huge sound design for the main title. The big groan-y machine sound in there is a dishwasher door at Formosa Group that I recorded one night when I was working late!

(Editor’s Note: Check out our interview with one of the show’s directors.)

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

The White Lotus Emmy-Nominated Editor Heather Persons

Leave a reply

By Alyssa Heater

White Lotus

Heather Persons, ACE

The White Lotus, created, written and directed by Mike White, is a dark comedy series that follows the drama surrounding wealthy people on their lavish vacations. With a large cast and shocking, intertwined storylines, it is no surprise that it snagged 23 Emmy nominations — for both acting and craft — for its second season.

We spoke with Emmy-nominated The White Lotus editor Heather Persons, ACE, to discuss her approach to cutting the series while working in Italy, Los Angeles and Hawaii, and how she collaborated with showrunner White. For Season 2, she edited Episodes 2, 4 and 6, while editor John Valerio, ACE, cut 1, 3, 5 and 7.  Persons was nominated for her work on Episode 6, “Abductions,” and Valerio for his work on Episode 7,  “Arrivederci.”

Let’s find out more from Persons…

How would you describe the pace of The White Lotus Season 2, and how does it differ from the first? Does Mike White collaborate with you in setting the pace?
I wouldn’t say that the pace was very different in Season 2. It may have felt a bit livelier because we were covering more ground. For Season 1, we were confined to shooting solely in the Four Seasons Maui because of the pandemic, but for Season 2, we were able to roam all over Italy, and consequently, the world felt bigger. Mike wrote in more action-filled sequences, and there was more intercutting of different locations, so that helped it feel more pacey.

Mike cares most about the characters and is always wanting to make sure the emotional and comedic beats are in full flower; that’s his biggest concern. We are always just trying to land the storytelling, and if that means speeding something up or slowing something down, that’s what we do. Mike is not afraid to make something slower if it means the audience will feel the emotion more.

He’s an incredible artist. His work is surprising and original, and this project was fun with all the different storylines.

How do you approach cutting together a series that features an ensemble cast and multiple storylines that are all woven together? Can you talk about some of the challenges?
Something that really helped with cutting the various storylines together was the music. We had an incredible score from Cristobal Tapia de Veer and his colleague Kim Neundorf. We combined their music with cutaways to second unit footage — the hotel, the beach, the water, etc. — and found that this was a potent way to segue from one section to another.

We discovered this in the first season by accident… how do we get from this to that? We had some cool underwater footage, so we started experimenting. My co-editor, John Valerio, is great with transitions. In Season 2, we relied on paintings from the hotel and atmospheric footage around our locations. That was something that evolved over time. We didn’t plan it going in but found that it worked. It also helped immerse the audience in our stunning locations and made the story feel like it couldn’t happen anywhere else on earth.

Sometimes we realized that things weren’t working where they were, so we moved them, but very rarely did we drop a scene. Mike really knows what he wants, and he plans ahead. If we did move or drop something, it was usually because of tone. Sometimes we had to drop extremely funny things because tonally they didn’t fit in with the vibe in that sequence. That’s always hard to do. It’s also fun to play with how different stories bump up against each other. By shifting things, you create different connections. It’s a process of discovery.

Focusing on the episode “Abductions,” there is so much tension building between Harper and Ethan and their concerns of infidelity. Tanya is becoming more suspicious of Quentin, and Portia is realizing she is in too deep with Jack. How do you use editing to enhance that uncomfortable feeling?
This was the penultimate episode, so we were really tightening the screws for what would be resolved in the finale. Things got chaotic as they were coming to a head. We used a lot of different techniques to enhance the tension: speeding or slowing the pace, adding intense or emotional music, creating montages. For instance, in the scene where the Di Grasso family goes to the farmhouse in hopes of having a family reunion, Mike wanted to slow the pace down almost to real time so it would feel very different from the insanity of the party at Quentin’s villa or when Valentina and Mia are having sex.

Slowing things down helps you feel Bert’s loss when he realizes that there is no going back and that he’ll never be reconnected with his dead wife. When you have moments like that intercut with Tanya partying and getting down with the coke dealer, it’s like an existential truth bomb going off in the middle of a crazy party. The party is like taking sugar with your medicine; it helps it go down.

A lot of the tension and unexpected surprises were built into the writing of that episode, and we did everything we could to maximize that. Often, it is a combination of what you’re showing when, the pace at which you’re cutting, and what you’re doing with the music. Especially in that episode, we have operatic scenes and quiet, heartbreaking counterpoints. I think that’s what makes it compelling. You have the party insanity, where we are cutting more quickly in montages with great Italian party music, and slow-motion footage intercut with emotional dialogue scenes.

For instance, the scene where Jack drunkenly spills secrets to Portia while in the hotel is devastating because you realize that there is something very broken in him and that this girl is in over her head. It’s much darker than you ever imagined. It’s a quiet, slow scene between two people on a bed intercut with Tanya at the party.  It’s the contrast between those kinds of moments and how we treat them editorially that builds the tension and keeps the surprises coming.

Absolutely. You spoke a bit about incorporating music and sound. Will you share a bit about your collaboration with those teams?
We have a wonderful sound team supervised by Kathryn Madsen. The show is pretty naturalistic. There are lots of waves, lots of ambience, and Kathryn and her team sweetened all that. As a writer, Mike cares about the dialogue, and Kathryn is excellent with that.

Our sound mixers, led by Christian Minkler, were great. It was a new experience for us, mixing remotely from Hawaii, but we made it work. Composers Cristobal Tapia de Veer and Kim Neundorf were instrumental in helping us create the mood and vibe of the show. It was a thrill to get their work and incorporate it into the show. I would literally be blasting the cues as they came in and dancing around the cutting room.

They captured the danger, the sexy anxiety and wildness of the show. I temped with a cue from Christos in the pilot, and Mike loved it and quickly hired him. I’m so happy that we got to work together. I was lucky that my co-editor, John, was great with music too. He was an inspiration.

Were there any scenes in Season 2 that were particularly fun or challenging to edit?
There was a sequence in Episode 4 where Mia is plotting to sleep with the piano player in an attempt to further her singing career. She feeds him the wrong pill and he collapses. I had so much fun with that because it was ridiculous and delightful, like a French bedroom farce. It was sort of a puzzle for Mike and me to figure out how to keep all the balls in the air, to make it feel like a fluffy confection while moving other darker elements of the story forward.

I also loved cutting Episode 6, especially the party sequence with Tanya at the villa. Our DP, Xavier Grobet (ASC), shot beautiful footage for that, so it was high drama and gorgeous mayhem all the way.

Did you work on-set in Italy or remotely?
John and I each went to the set in Italy for about a month, then we cut at home in Los Angeles after that. Once shooting wrapped, we all worked from Hawaii for the remainder of the project because that’s where Mike lives and likes to work. The benefit of us going to Italy was that we could be involved in shooting b-roll. John worked with that unit to get us lots of footage inspired by the location and the story we were telling.

The White LotusDid you use any remote viewing software to help with collaboration in these different locations?
Typically when working on-location, we’d take the whole editorial crew with full Avid Media Composer setups, which can be expensive. For The White Lotus, we wanted to experiment with doing something more mobile, so we just took our laptops and worked offline every day. I traveled and worked in five or six different cities and would plug my laptop in at the hotel and get to work. It was beautiful. Then at the end of the day, I would forward my work to my assistant, Bob Allen, in Los Angeles, and he would update the system.

It was a bit cumbersome and would be hard to do for an entire show, but just for a month, it was fine. When we got back to Los Angeles, we got all caught up.

What software do you use for editing?
I have only ever worked on Avid. I don’t use any plugins. I once heard a stylist say, “I can cut hair with a Coke bottle.” I’m kind of like that — just give me any Avid, and I can cut it for you. I’m not really a technology nerd. I’m a story nerd.

What was it like editing a project that incorporates two different languages, English and Italian, and how do you create balance? Are there people on-set who help with translating and cohesion?
I actually started taking Italian classes a few months before the show started because I thought it would be fun. I enjoyed it so much. We had several Italian actors with varying degrees of English fluency, so we did have people on-set helping them. Mike’s assistant, Chiara Nanni, who is originally from Catania, joined us in Hawaii as we finished cutting the project. She would look at clips and tell us if anything didn’t make sense or if we needed to adjust any dialogue.

You can kind of figure out what actors are saying if they’re following the script, but sometimes they ad-lib. Once we would lock an episode, Chiara would listen through and let us know what needed to be fixed. Sometimes we have subtitle cards, which she would double-check. We’d go through all of those and figure out what was working and what wasn’t. Having her there was extremely helpful.

The White Lotus

Heather Persons and Bob Allen

That’s awesome. Tell me about your assistant editor. What is your collaboration process like?
My assistant editor, Bob Allen, is a total pro. He’s worked with many of the greats — Dody Dorn, Francoise Bonnot — and is the best assistant in the world. When we work together, he does all of the sound work and mixing and all of the VFX. He has great taste and loves movies. We’ve worked together on several shows now, so we really have our system down. We’re in London working on a movie now.

Alyssa Heater is a writer and marketer 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.

Emmys: The Umbrella Academy VFX Supervisor Everett Burrell

Leave a reply

Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy, which is streaming all three seasons on Netflix, features a ton of visual effects, mostly overt. In fact, the series and its VFX supervisor Everett Burrell have gotten three Emmy nominations for its visual effects since the show’s inception, including this year.

Everett Burrell

Burrell, who has six noms and one Emmy win under his belt (for makeup on Babylon 5), took some time out to answer a few questions about the show. Let’s find out more…

You’ve been on the show since the beginning. How have the visual effects evolved during that time — from a creative and technical standpoint? 
Yes, I have been with the The Umbrella Academy team since the beginning. We started prep on Season 1 in October of 2017. I am blown away that it has been six years of truly the best creative experience of my career.

The visual effects have really gone through some big changes. We keep trying to top ourselves every season. Bigger and more complicated visual effects, more superpowers, Pogo (created by Weta VFX) has changed every season, tons of new complicated effects simulations and huge new environments.

Are you using virtual production or real-time VFX these days?
We do not use any virtual production tools or any game engine renders. We are a very traditional VFX pipeline.

How many shots does each episode have, typically?
On average we are around 150 to 200 shots per episode.

How many different vendors do you use, and what is the turnaround time like? Is it like a traditional television schedule (short!), or do you have more time?
We use between eight and 10 visual effects companies around the world. It takes us 18 months to prep, shoot and finish all the post for each season. We have a much better schedule then a network TV show.

What about the pipeline?
We use ShotGrid to track all the visual effect shots and assets in the show. We collect over 400GB of data, HDRI, witness cameras and reference stills for each season. It’s a huge task to keep organized and get ready to go out to each VFX vendor.

What were the biggest challenges this season?
The new Pogo in this timeline was very complicated. The Kugleblitz required a ton of revisions before we were all happy with it. The Universe Machine in the final episode took a lot of concept art and design work. All this was very complicated work during the height of COVID and a dealing with a remote workflow.

Can you name the software used to create Pogo?
Maya is the main software but a lot of special custom software tools designed by Weta FX.

What was it about this particular episode that made it Emmy consideration worthy?
I think new Pogo designs, the Harlan and Viktor Power up moments at the drive in. Plus, all the Kugleblitz moments of the world being slowly atomized.

What haven’t I asked that’s important?
I think we are very fortunate to have built a really amazing team over the years. Working so closely with all the VFX companies has created a bond of trust and a wonderful creative partnership.

Emmy: Audio Post for Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming

Leave a reply

By Luke Harper

World famous megastar acts are becoming increasingly rare, but at the pinnacle of this phenomenon is the Irish band U2, which has been making music together for 47 years.

Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming With David Letterman is a 2023 Disney Channel retrospective/travelogue/philosophical exploration directed by Morgan Neville and produced by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. If you’re a U2 fan, this is required viewing. If you’re a music fan, it’s pretty clutch. If you’re a music doc fan, this is peak production.

According to Bono, when Larry Mullen Jr. was injured and Adam Clayton was off making an art film, he and The Edge asked David Letterman to come to Dublin to talk about U2’s songs. It turned out to be so much more than that.

Brian Riordan

I had the opportunity to talk to  re-recording mixer Brian Riordan, who worked with Phil DeTolve on the doc. They finished the audio at Riordan’s Levels Audio in Los Angeles. Both were recently nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Sound Mixing For A Variety Series Or Special for their work, along with music mixer Alastair McMillan.

The doc features run-and-gun-doc-style interviews, traditional seated studio interviews, live performances in music halls and pubs, archival footage. You name it, it had it.

What was your job on the film, and how did you split up the work with Phil (music, dialogue, etc.)?
My job on the film as re-recording mixer was to mix all of the music, archival, ambiences, crowds and sound effects against all of the dialogue that Phil had cleaned up and mixed so well. I then played the film back for Morgan Neville and team and made any adjustments on the mix stage.

What direction were you guys given regarding the mix and the sound?
The primary direction was to keep it all very organic… not to overproduce, overdesign or overprocess things. They really wanted to put the viewers in the film and make them feel like they were walking through Dublin with Bono, The Edge and Dave. They wanted viewers to experience the performances in the Ambassador Theatre as though they were in the room, live. They wanted to place the viewer in the intimate crowd during those pub sessions. That was the overall direction given and the goals we set out to achieve.

So all of the concert stuff was captured live?
The concert performances were 100% live recordings that were then remixed. No other recordings were used to supplement the performances.

What about the interview recordings? How did you guys handle that?
We went through all the interview recordings the same way we did the rest of the dialogue in the film. We used noise-reduction tools, EQ, compression and de-essing where needed, with the goal of preserving as much of the natural warmth and tonality as possible.

What were some of the biggest challenges on this film?
One of biggest challenges was to keep the film very dynamic while ensuring it still translates well over broadcast/streaming. Another substantial challenge was weaving in and out of dialogue, concert performances, interviews and pub sessions and trying to keep it all flowing seamlessly.

Considering all the different sources, the consistency of quality is incredible. How did you accomplish this?
Our team here at Levels works on a wide variety of styles of content, so we have expertise from the run-and-gun to pristine auditorium and hall recordings to immersive audience-mixing and everything in between.

Our sound design team (Josh Reinhardt, Louie Recinos) did a wonderful job building out great-sounding layers, textures and design. The entire team’s ability to blend and match all these different scenes together is something we are proud of. Ultimately, it was all part of Morgan’s vision.

Did you use any previous films as a guide?
We didn’t really reference anything. We felt that this is such a unique film — deeply emotive, cultural/historical, humorous and still very much rock ʼnʼ roll — that we didn’t want it to sound like anything else. Our aim was to allow it to be as dynamic and organic as possible.

Had you worked with director Morgan Neville before? What was his aural aesthetic vision?
Yes, we’ve been fortunate to have worked with Morgan and his team at Tremolo for the past six or seven years. Morgan really let us do what we do, and then he came in at the end to make final tweaks.

There were 18 producers on the doc. How did that work?
There were a whole lot of amazing producers on this film, including Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. On the mix stage, we dealt mostly with Morgan, Seamus Murphy-Mitchell and David Lawrence, and they were all such pros that it made our lives pretty easy.

Jacknife Lee and Alastair McMillan, two U2 stalwarts, mixed the music tracks and contributed heavily. How did that help?
Both provided amazing band performance tracks. They each have an extensive history with U2, and I’m sure there is a great foundation of trust between them. I believe that made the sign-off process that much smoother for us in the end.

How do you approach the music in a film that’s entirely about music? I ask because the de-noisers were out, and those don’t traditionally feature in music mixing.
Weaving in and out of archival music performances, huge crowds, dialogue-driven sections, performances in small pubs, contemplative conversations at the train station… that gave us so much to work with. There was so much dynamic variation. The Ambassador Theatre sections and the verité run-and-gun scenes are definitely treated and mixed differently.

In the verité, we are trying to make it sound natural and raw so you feel like you are there in the room with them. The scene with The Edge playing “Where the Streets Have No Name” was all about hearing it just like Dave was hearing it, right there in the room. And believe it or not, there is de-noising going on in some capacity during scenes like that. Whereas the Ambassador performances have a little more U2 production sparkle, with their use of reverbs and delays and such. This was also a much more polished recording compared to the production recordings in the field, therefore they didn’t really require much de-noising or processing on our end.

(Writer’s note: The scene where The Edge plays the intro to “Where the Streets Have No Name,” which then transitions into the live version, is by itself enough to make this film worth watching.)

Did you need/have access to any concert stems, like Red Rocks?
No, we only had the stereo print masters from the archival concert recordings or stereo album masters. We then created 5.1 upmixes of those tracks using Nugen Halo as well as Penteo 16 Pro.

What was in the control room for this one?
Since we were involved mainly on the post side, we didn’t really see what was under the hood when they were performing at the Ambassador Theatre, although we sure wish we could have been there in Dublin during the shoot.

Were you brought on because you were acknowledged fans and would have the reverence, or is everything reverential?
We are absolutely fans, but I think that had little to do with our participation in the experience. It all comes down to the relationship with Morgan and team and the trust they place in us to bring the sonic vision to life.

That was the best production of a bar singalong I have ever heard.
Thank you! It was very challenging and rewarding to blend and weave the Ambassador performance with the bar singalong and still maintain the intensity and emotion of both performances (not to mention the depth and width and fullness of the song). It really proves the hypothesis the filmmakers had all along, which is that these songs, stripped down, still maintain their greatness.

What tools did you use for your work? Any plugins?
We mixed the film exclusively in Avid Pro Tools on an Avid S6 console. We used a lot of plugins, including Penteo 16 Pro, Nugen Halo, Waves Clarity Vx, iZotope RX and various EQs, compressors, reverbs, etc.

You were nominated for an Emmy for your work. What about this film did you think was deserving?
I believe this film was recognized by our peers in the academy for its overall sonic quality and the journey viewers take through the soundscape. I feel that it is more than a documentary about a band or a country. It is truly a private, exclusive experience for the viewers and fans. I believe it is a unique film that stands on its own in a way that hopefully is noticed and appreciated by the Emmy voting community.

Luke Harper is an audio engineer and instructor of 25 years. He lives Minneapolis, where he owns an Atmos mix facility, called DeCoded Audio.

Michael J. Fox

Emmy-Nominated Michael Harte on Editing Michael J. Fox Movie

1 Reply

By Iain Blair

Michael Harte, ACE, who already owns an Emmy and a BAFTA, has received another Emmy nomination for his work on Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie. Incorporating documentary, archival and scripted elements, the Apple TV+ film chronicles Fox’s personal and professional triumphs and travails and explores what happens when an incurable optimist confronts an incurable disease, such as Parkinsons.

Michael J. Fox

Michael Harte

I spoke with Harte (Three Identical Strangers, Don’t F**k With Cats) about the editing challenges, collaborating with Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient  Truth) and the post workflow.

Tell us about working with Davis, and your creative approach to editing this.
I had never worked with him before, but I knew his work. After director Tim Wardle and I did Three Identical Strangers, we approached Michael J. Fox about making a documentary and found out Davis was already making one — and he needed an editor and knew my work. So we teamed up.

His idea for this was to make a documentary about Michael J. Fox that felt like a Michael J. Fox movie. He wasn’t sure exactly how it’d work, and initially there was talk about shooting recreations. He told me to just watch all of Michael’s films and TV shows and archival material. That was our starting point.

What were the main challenges of editing this film?
Typically, by the time I come onto a project, most of the footage has been shot, but there was nothing here… not even definite ideas about the overall approach. All we had was Michael J. Fox. So the first place we started was with his audio book “Lucky Man,” which Michael had recorded himself.

On day one in the edit, I began to break it down from seven hours to 90 minutes, which gave us the rough structure of a movie or documentary. At that point Davis was very clear that he wanted to use recreations to tell that story, and mix in archival footage of home movies, behind-the-scenes stuff, interviews — a pretty standard documentary approach.

We had no idea we’d end up playing with his movie clips in the way we did. I have a bit of an aversion to using recreations, especially when it comes to doing them with such a famous actor, as you never show their face – just the back of their head. I think audiences get a bit bored with that technique after a while. And Davis knew we had to come up with something unique to tell the story because Michael is such a unique character, so I initially spent a couple of months going through all the movies, shows and archival footage. But there was so much of it that we had to bring on a team to help go through all the material, and they were always working away in the background.

So all that was a huge challenge, especially because we were looking not so much for material to tell an already compelling story, but for micromoments. For example, Michael might be playing with his hands to distract the audience from the fact that he was developing symptoms of Parkinson’s in his left hand. We treated the film and TV footage less like archival elements and more like verité moments we could mine to allow audiences to see things in a different way.

Michael J. FoxTell us about the workflow. What editing gear and storage setup did you use? Give us some of the technical specs on this film.
The editing gear was Avid Media Composer with Jump Desktop for remote access. For the storage setup, we had footage backed up onto drives and LTOs and proxy files stored on Nexis. Footage was mixed-format — a blend of archival, verité documentary footage, interviews and scripted recreations.

Verité documentary shots were done on the Sony FX9 at 23.967fps, DCI 4K (4096×2161) using AVC-Intra VBR 400, 4:2:2 10-bit. Recreations were shot with an ARRI Alexa Mini LF, 23.976fps, Open Gate (4448×3096) using a high-density encoding workflow. Pickup inserts used Blackmagic Pocket 6K in Blackmagic RAW. The offline edit was achieved using Media Composer 2022.12.3 working in Rec. 709 and using DNxHR LB 1080p as our codec.

The final online/conform happened using Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve 17.4.5. All footage was transformed into ARRI Log C color space before sending out for the final color grade.

Where was all the editing and post done?
I cut it in London. During the COVID lockdown, I set up my own edit suite near my home, so for the first four months, I was on my own working away, but Davis and I were in constant contact. Then I moved with my whole family to LA for the last six months of post, and we cut at his offices.

Once Davis and I were in the same room, that’s when the film started cooking. It’s funny because initially during COVID I really liked working alone, and all the technology made it possible. But there’s no substitute for being in the same room and talking. Davis would say, “It’s not about the editing as much as the conversations you have before you start the day,” and it became a very creative process for us. Davis doesn’t like watching me cut since I cut very fast and give him stuff to watch, which is hard for a director. So he’d leave for a few hours and come back later.

Then, in a genius move, for the last six or seven weeks, Davis decided we needed to have a fresh perspective, so we all moved to Martha’s Vineyard and finished the film there at a small edit suite we set up. It was the best thing to happen to the movie because we were able to slow down and step back from it.

What was the hardest scene to cut and why? 
It was the whole sequence that jumps between Family Ties and Back to the Future, when Michael is shooting the TV show all day and then shooting the movie all night. Typically, I like to watch all the material in one go and not cut it, and then I like to cut chronologically. That’s kind of my method. But this sequence was so tricky to get right. I kept going back to it over the course of a year and playing with the shots and rhythm and pacing. It was all about finding the right shots, and with such great source material, it had to be just perfect.

Michael J. FoxThere are a few VFX. Did you use temp VFX?
No, but we had a storyboard artist in Barcelona, and he did the recreations you see in the movie. Davis was in LA, I was in London, and we’d do Zoom calls with the artist. We’d go online and say, “Cut the trailer here. Michael walks out here,” and so on. He’d do it on a screen on Zoom and create maybe 15 storyboards at a time so we’d have movement to watch. He would do the camera work, and it was an incredible process. He’d do any of the VFX Davis wanted as well.

What about sound? Did you use sound temps?
Yes, and I get obsessive about sound and music as I’m cutting. I don’t like to leave that till the end, so all the sound design was temped so that when we sent it to Apple TV+ and Michael J. Fox to watch, it had all the sound. My brother works in sound, and for years he’s been telling me that sound is the most underrated weapon in any project, so I’m always very conscious of it. I can’t send a cut to anyone unless all the sound is right. Bad sound is more jarring than a bad picture, so I was very involved in the sound – more than with the mix and score – as they could send me stuff. I wasn’t as involved with the DI at Company 3 in LA as I was in London, and the last thing Davis needs is someone telling him how to grade his film.

Congratulations on your Emmy nomination. Where does this rate in terms of creative challenges and satisfaction for you?
It was an amazing experience… to be able to be as creative as I got to be on it. I was nervous about doing it because it’s Michael J. Fox! If you get it wrong, you’re going to look silly. Davis was brilliant at keeping my confidence up. He was like, “Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks. If we do this for the right reason, it’ll work.”

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.

Emmy Season: Schmigadoon! Season 2 DP Jon Joffin, ASC

Leave a reply

By Randi Altman

Apple TV+’s Schmigadoon! is a modernized and comedic take on the classic musical tale Brigadoon. Created by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio, it stars Keegan-Michael Key and Cecily Strong as a couple who, while backpacking, happen upon a magical town that essentially lives in the world of a 1940s/1950s musical.

Jon Joffin

DP Jon Joffin

The series earned four Emmy nominations for its first season and three for its second, including Outstanding Cinematography for DP Jon Joffin, ASC, for the episode “Something Real.” This season sees our couple looking for the simpler life of Schimgadoon, but instead they find Schmicago, which is darker, sexier and more edgy than the Eden they found in the first season. This world takes place in the musicals of the 1960s/1970s.

We reached out to Joffin, who was brought on a few months before shooting on Season 2 began, to find out more about his workflow while shooting all six episodes.

How was being brought in early helpful? 
The early prep was essential because there were so many different sets and a lot to do on a short shooting schedule. By the time I came on, most of the sets had already been designed by our amazing production designer Jamie Walker MCCall. Construction was just beginning so we worked together on set placement in the studio, built-in lighting and shooting access. Jamie was a great collaborator, not only did she design gorgeous sets but she also made them very easy to shoot.

What direction were you given about that look? And how did you work with the showrunner?
Showrunner Cinco Paul wanted a look that was based on a three-strip Technicolor film. (Technicolor’s three-strip process involved a beam-splitter prism behind the lens that allowed for the separate capture of red, green and blue filmstrips. This process offered an unrivaled richness and vibrance.) Cinco often referred to Cabaret, Chicago, Sweet Charity and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. He wanted Season 2 to be darker and grittier than Season 1, but he also told me that Lorne Michaels said it was very important for the show not to be so dark as to lose its delightful tone.

What about the different looks between the couple’s regular life and their life in Schmigadoon? And what about Schmicago?
Initially, when Josh and Melissa return from the magical town, they bring color back with them. But as the years progress and life gets more mundane, we slowly desaturate, as if the life is getting sucked out of them until there is barely any color at all.

Jon JoffinWhen they arrive in Schmicago, we are in full-on vibrant Technicolor mode, and it seems even more vibrant because we are cutting from the desaturated look. Even though there are several looks within Schmicago — the hippie camp, the butcher shop, the orphanage and the Kratt Klubb — they are all unified by the three-strip Technicolor look.

What about the grade and working with the colorist? What are some notes that you exchanged?
We were extremely lucky to have Jill Bogdanowicz as our colorist. It was like winning the lottery. Jill was involved right from the start — before we even shot a test. She designed several LUTs for us to try out. We went to Keslow Camera and did a preliminary test with the seven LUTs she sent. There was one that was absolutely perfect.

When I called Jill to share my excitement, before I could say anything, she said “You chose LUT number 5.” She knew exactly which one we would pick! Jill and I worked hard to keep the look rich and modelled while maintaining the light tone that Cinco was after. It was a fine line, but in the end, I think everyone was happy. The look wasn’t so much about saturation as it was about discrete color separation. Jill describes it as each color staying in its own lane.

What was it about the episode you submitted for the Emmys that you felt stood out?
I absolutely love the musical performance of “Talk to Daddy.” It is so much fun, and the actors are next-level brilliant, even the reactions of those who aren’t singing and dancing. I also love “Good Enough to Eat.” Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming and all of the orphans make me smile every time I watch it.  Jamie Walker McCall, our production designer (also nominated for an Emmy this season for the episode “Famous As Hell”) delivered stunning set after stunning set. I love the night street scene with the umbrellas.

What did you end up shooting on and why?
The Sony Venice 2 was the perfect choice for many reasons, especially for its rich color science, which helped us to achieve the three-strip technicolor look. We tested many different vintage lenses but ended up settling on Zeiss Radiance lenses. To my eye, they have a vintage feel when shot wide-open, and I love the quality of the out-of-focus blur. I also love the flare characteristics. You get a beautiful veil, which can lift the contrast if you hit the lens with just the right amount of backlight. The lenses feel vintage but are extremely reliable.
Can you talk lighting?

Three-strip Technicolor was often lit with hard and flat lighting. This was due to film stocks at the time needing a lot of light and also having to shoot through those dark-colored filters. I worked to give Cinco the Technicolor look, but I also wanted to put my stamp on it with a more modern lighting style, using soft yet contrasty light.

Jon JoffinI didn’t want to be too flashy with the light, as I didn’t want to take away from the beautiful production design and stunning costumes. We mostly kept our key light very neutral in order to be true to the colors.

Any happy accidents along the way?
We were testing a probe lens in prep and realized that it also did a kaleidoscope effect. I pitched this idea to Cinco, and we used it in “Everyone’s Gotta Get Naked.” Honestly, though, there weren’t many accidents, as Cinco has such a clear vision of what he wants. I think that this comes from his background in animation (the Despicable Me franchise, The Secret Life of Pets), where everything is so well-planned.

Are there some scenes that stick out as challenging?
The greatest challenge was time. We just didn’t have enough of it. There were twice as many performances as in Season 1. One of my favorite performances is “Bells and Whistles” with the insanely talented Jane Krakowski. She comes down from the ceiling on a trapeze, swings upside down, roller skates blindfolded, does the splits, rattles off a song at hyper speed and is absolutely fearless.

We saw what she was going to do in the morning and were blown away, but we only had a day and a half to film it. We were so inspired. We wanted to make sure we got every single shot and angle. It ended up being the greatest collaboration I’ve ever had with an actor. I saw an interview where Jane said it was the greatest day she’d ever had on a set, and we all felt the same way.

Looking back, would you have done anything differently?
Honestly, I don’t think I would change a thing. It was definitely a career highlight.

Any tips for young cinematographers?
It’s very important to work with like-minded people who will support you and share a common goal. Also, I believe strongly in having a plan, but I believe it’s equally important to listen and consider other ideas. Always keep an open mind.

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks’ History Of The World, Part II: Showrunner/Director

Leave a reply

By Iain Blair

It’s been 42 years since Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part I was released. Now, the 97-year-old has finally made Part II, another irreverent and wacky romp through history that boasts a who’s who of today’s comedy stars with narration by Brooks himself.

Helping pull Part II together for a new era – the eight-part series streams on Hulu – is director and showrunner David Stassen and his writing partner and EP Ike Barinholtz, who plays a sozzled General Ulysses S. Grant in the Civil War sketch. Their credits include Central Intelligence and Blockers.

L-R: Dave Stassen with Nick Kroll, Jake Johnson and Ike Barinholtz

I spoke with Stassen, who also worked on Fox’s The Mindy Project, about making the show, dealing with post and the challenges of showrunning.

You’re the writer, director, producer and also a showrunner on this. That’s a pretty heavy lift.
It was, but I had a team of other EPs to help me out, including Ike, Nick Kroll and Wanda Sykes, and they were all so hard-working and collaborative. So sharing the burden helped a lot, especially when it came down to just casting. It was a huge undertaking with so many sketches and so many roles to fill. There were times when you’re rewriting and directing, or prepping to direct, and you’re also dealing with casting calls for whole sketches that haven’t been filled yet, when you feel like you’re spinning a lot of plates.

How many episodes did you direct, and what were the big challenges?
I directed about three weeks of the nine or so weeks of production. We also had a few days of reshoots. We didn’t know how the show was going to lay out yet, or where the stuff I directed was going to go, so that’s a real testament to the build we did in post and what we could do in post.

Do you like being a showrunner?
I do. I’ve done it before and there are always disadvantages to being the boss. But you also have control and feel the responsibility instead of just washing your hands of it and heading home at the end of the day. The more responsibility you have, the more it haunts your every waking moment.

What were the big challenges of showrunning this?
You’re dealing with a huge cast, a big crew and a lot of moving parts. We had the idea of how we wanted this all to work, but a lot of the real responsibility did come in post. It wasn’t like, OK, we know we have eight episodes, and it has to start here and end there. It was more like, “What’s the best flow?” That’s where most of the building and creative work on this was really focused.

Tell us about post. Was it a more traditional TV post schedule or did you get to start early?
It was a little bit of both. We got about half-way through production, and we put together our first two episodes, and then we went back and forth on the format. At first, we thought we’d break up all the tentpole sketches – Jesus and Mary, the Civil War and so on – but when we got into production we thought, let’s try another idea. Let’s do each tentpole as two episodes and then do a whole set of episodes that are stand-alone sketches. So we tried that and had a viewing party during production for the producers and staff, and it just felt kind of slow.

Mel BrooksAs much as we loved it all, we felt we didn’t want to be in just one part of the world for a whole episode. So we went back to our original idea we had while writing the show, which was to break things up and mix it up, and that’s when it became this big puzzle we had to solve. So we did some post work and the editors put together rough cuts while we shot, but the main post began after we wrapped when we could really focus on it, and we spent about four months in post. That’s quite a lot for a TV show.

Where did you do it?
At Atlas Digital, and we did all the sound and mixing at Unbridled Sound. Point 360 did post services, and colorist Charlie Tucker did the DI there. Doing the grading on this was a lot of fun, especially for bits like the sitcom parody Shirley where we went for that Norman Lear ‘70s look, and I was there for every session.

Do you like the post process?
I love post. It might be my favorite part of the whole process, and it really doesn’t get enough credit. Editing is the final and most important part of storytelling, and you really don’t know what you have until you get into the edit. You can have some great days on the set, and then you get to post and something doesn’t feel right about it, and then you bring it back up to where you go, okay, that’s what it was.

It’s about building up the moment and the flow and watching a physical gag or a visual effects shot come together in post. You can put it on the page and think, that works, but it’s in post where you realize it needs eight more steps because you need to see the guy step over the chair because then you know why he’s going to fall. It’s in post where you build the gag and comedy for the audience.

What about the editing. I noticed that there were a few – Angel Gamboa Bryant, Stephanie Filo,Daniel Flesher, George Mandel and Daniel Missirlian. How did that work?
Each of the main editors took a tentpole, and they’d be in charge of those. We had three edit bays, and we’d bounce around between them. Sometimes we’d be working on an episode and we’d watch one sketch with an editor and then move next door to see the next sketch with another editor.

Then Stephanie Filo, who was great and really built a lot of the Shirley tentpole, had to leave for another job, so Angel took over to finish Shirley. And Daniel Missirlian was an assistant editor who cut some sketches for us. Everyone was super-collaborative, and they all had a great sense of humor.

Mel BrooksWhat were the main editing challenges?
In comedy, it’s all about pace and timing, and when to give something room to breathe and when to move on, so you’re always trying out different options. Maybe the biggest challenge is finding what goes best with what. Is it good to have a biblical sketch next to the Jesus and Mary tentpole? Or do you want to move to a completely different era, such as the Civil War? So it’s all about finding the most exciting order, and that was a big discussion and a very democratic process.

There are quite a lot of VFX. What was involved?
They were all done by EyeSpy VFX, and Deep Voodoo did the deep fakes of Mel in the intro. Our post supervisor Trish Hadley and the editors took care of coordinating most of that. Then we’d come in and review them and give any notes we had. One of the most fun VFX things we did was the opening with Mel, where it’s his head from the 1981 film put on the body of a much younger and larger man. We did that as part of the reshoots during post, after we’d figured out that’s how we wanted to start and end the show. I directed it, and Deep Voodoo were there and gave me very specific instructions on how to shoot it and what the actor, who plays “white Jesus” could and couldn’t do, and how he should deliver his lines. Then they replaced his face with Mel’s.

Mel BrooksApart from his onscreen introduction, Mel doesn’t appear in the series. How involved was he in production and all the post, and how did you collaborate with him?
Mel was our eyes in the sky, but he wasn’t truly day-to-day involved in the production and the post, although he was watching cuts and looking at dailies.

He was like this big cheerleader and was more integral in starting the whole show and then giving his blessing to the structure we ended up using. We wanted to honor the original film, which had the bigger stories with smaller sketches in between, and we presented Mel with these four big tentpole ideas — the Story of Jesus, the Civil War, the Russian Revolution and Shirley Chisholm – and sketches in between, and he said “Yes,” and he was always available to add more jokes and ideas, and he’d keep checking in on our progress.

When can we expect Part III?
(Laughs) I just had lunch with Mel at his home and all he wanted to know was when Hulu was going to order the next season. That’s why he’s Mel.

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.