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Jim Stellar - Thank You My Friend, RIP

2010-08-07T12:52:00.000-07:00

Since I am catching up on official editblog business, I have to dedicate a post to my Assistant of the past few years, Jim Stellar, who was tragically killed in a car accident on April 2, 2010 - right before I moved to NY to start working on "Royal Pains."

Jim assisted me on three pilots, "Hell on Earth," "Royal Pains," and "Day One," and he was a true asset in the editing suites, always displaying his trademark jovial, good hearted manner along with his meticulous work ethic.

I will miss you, and I am proud to call you my colleague and my friend.

"Royal Pains" and New York City

2010-08-07T12:41:00.001-07:00

So it turned out that the producers of "Royal Pains," Michael Rauch and Andrew Lenchewski, decided to move Post to Brooklyn, New York, and they asked me if I would move east to do the show, and so I did.

"Royal Pains" is in its' second season of 18 episodes for the USA Channel. It's a fun show about an Concierge Doctor in the Hamptons. I would never have considered the move if I didn't really enjoy working with Michael and Andrew. They really trust their editors to deliver a great product.

New York is New York. Frustrating at times, but so is LA, it's just a different set of frustrations. But then, it's New Fucking York, so it all evens out. Basically, I really like working here and hope other work comes along and encourages me to stay awhile.

Editing the show is pretty straightforward. I've worked with couple of directors for the first time, Matt Penn and Jay Chandrasekhar, and a few old friends, Dennis Smith from "The Practice," and Michael Watkins from "Las Vegas."

Perhaps if I remember this blog is here, I will post a little more day-to-day, but first I have one more important update to make.

That's Right, I Have A Blog - First, a Day One Update

2010-08-07T12:20:00.001-07:00

Whooo-kay. Been awhile.

"Day One" obviously didn't turn out as expected. After ordering 12 episodes last May, while we were still shooting, the network first scaled that back to a 4-hour mini-series, and then in October, made the whole thing vanish from the face of the Earth.

This was disappointing, to say the least, as I had forgone looking for a fall series in order to work on DO. I have no way of really knowing why the network got cold feet, and though I could speculate plenty, my job is to be discrete in any case.

All I can say is that the experience is one in which I will not soon forget. The whole crew was fantastic, and I learned so much about special effects on big projects. Alex really did his homework, and I feel we broke some ground on creating special effects for television. To Dieter Ismagil, and Jason Sax in Post, and Bill Polowloski and Ed Irastorza in VFX, thanks so much for making the DO editing suites a creative environment!

Since I missed the fall 2009 season, I my next gig fell to April and Season 2 of "Royal Pains." More in next post.

'Day One' Editorial Update

2009-06-06T12:45:00.000-07:00

Alex and I are about half-way through the Director's Cut period, and we are both having a blast. Alex (Graves, the Director) is just so much fun to work with: his enthusiasm for film is infectious. He is a true film geek. He sees everything and remembers every shot, every beat from every great film. Alex actually has the ability to make me feel guilty for not spending every free moment catching up or re-watching great movies.

As for 'DO,' this has been one of the most awesome editing experiences I've had. There are about 8 major VFX scenes, and since the FX artists need time to make their magic, and I'm told some of the complicated 3D simulations have rendering times of up to twelve hours per frame, Alex and I have had to spend the first two weeks of his cut focusing on, and locking picture on, these big scenes. Alex has spent months preparing for and choreographing these scenes, and after carefully going through every frame dozens of times, we have finally put together some of the most exciting footage I've every had the privilege to cut.

The way it works is this: Alex and I spend a day or so on each sequence fine tuning each frame until we are both happy. Then we show the sequence to Jesse Alexander, the Executive Producer and Writer of the show to get his blessing on 'locked' picture. After we discuss the sequence and address his comments, we show the sequence to the Visual FZ Supervisor and Producer using a program called CineSync, which Alex uses to draw illustrations on key frames of the action, pointing out where a Visual FX element enters frame, for instance, while the Producers take notes Alexs' comments about the 'look' and textural mood that he envisions for each scene.

Then off they go, sending the raw video footage and these CineSync notes to individual VFX artists all over the US. I'm told at least one artists works from his home in Kansas City. As of Friday, we have sent out about 260 shots to VFX. For a big-budget movie this is not an especially impressive figure, for a Television show this is an astounding number of VFX. Hopefully all goes as planned and we should start seeing these shots in various stages of completion start to trickle in over the next 2 weeks. The 'Final' VFX aren't due until August, but we should have representations for everything in the show when we screen it for the Studio in about 3 weeks.

Meanwhile, Alex and I have fully internalized the visualization of every shot, we can almost see in our minds eye the completed sequences, rather than just green screen and half-sets. I watched the first five acts the other evening, and I was literally falling off the couch in excitement and genuine glee. This show is so much fun!

Also, on Wednesday night Jim, my assistant came into the cutting room very excited. Two things: Jim is never excited. He is very good at his job because he is extremely precise and demands that language used in his office used to describe what needs to get done be precise also. Jim is also an old-school film geek. Not in an Alex high-technique-push-the-envelope way, but more in a thoughtful, full appreciation for the whole scope of cinematic progression way. Jim is a conservative when it comes to film. Flashy cuts don't impress him that much, which is a little weird in this day in age, especially for an editor.

Anyway, what got Jim's attention while he was deconstructing sequences in prep for send out to VFX, was that Alex and I have been designing hand-held camera moves in the editing room. In one major sequence that covers action over four scenes in two acts, he was prevented from shooting high wide shots in hand held fashion due to the cost of building scaffolding over the set for the operator to stand on. So he got the shots from a crane on a locked-off camera, with the intention of adding hand-held 'shake' in post (me). This he believed at the time to be not-optimal, but I think he is wrong.

For one, since the shots are 'locked,' that is, they don't move at all, it means that we can treat each actor that is isolated as their own element. Meaning, sometimes the actors actions weren't precisely choreographed to what we decided we ultimately wanted, so we found the bits that we liked of each isolated actor and combined them in layers to create exactly the shot with exactly the actor choreography we need.

This is a technique that I first learned-of from George Lucas on one of the 'Star Wars' commentary disks. Ever since, whenever I get a locked off shot of any kind, I always have in the back of my mind that I have the power to change practically any element by simply sliding an element of the frame over itself to create the perfect shot!

Once we got the scene into shape there were many shots, almost half, where the camera either wasn't moving at all or not enough for our tastes. Enter Tracker. Starting with hand-held shots that we already had from production and now progressing to the point where we are creating shots on a pocket video camera in the editing room by putting tape on the wall and just standing there and shaking the camera, we use a tracking plugin in the Avid to record the camera movement to a file. Then we can drop this file on top of any shot we like, and viola, instant hand-held shot with customized shake.

This is what got Jim's attention. What was at first an uneven looking action sequence, with some moving and some static shots, is now a uber-exciting cinematic force, and Jim is impressed. Folks, if Jim is impressed by what we are doing, I think Sci-Fi fans and Post-Apoc fans will be too. NBC desperately needs a hit to get it back to it's glory days, and I personally think Day One will deliver. But I'm a very biased observer/participant.

'Day One' Gets On TV!

2009-05-09T13:09:00.000-07:00

The Pilot/Movie 'Day One' that I'm editing got picked up by NBC for 12 more episodes and will air as a mid-season drama next year following the Winter Olympics. This is especially big since we're still shooting and all anyone outside of the editing room has seen has been a couple of 2-minute trailers (though we did manage to get a couple of hot VFX shots in there).

Although surprising and very unusual (especially since 'Kings,' which got the same pick-up-on-a-trailer treatment last year, bombed so quickly despite critical acclaim) for those who have read Jesse Alexander's script and seen what's been shot so far by uber-talented Director Alex Graves, it seemed like a forgone conclusion.Unlike 'Kings' Po-Mo Biblio-Shakesperian Grandeur though, this time NBC is going with Blockbuster Spectacle, and I think it rocks.

The Pilot is fucking HUGE! Judging from all the leagal memo's I had to sign and the carefully controlled messaging on plot, I can't really say much beyond what is on the Network website (I noticed the actors in their posted interviews were very circumspect about the exact nature of the 'global event,' so I definitely won't be spilling the beans here), but I will say that there has never been anything like this on TV before.

***

I just re-read that last paragraph and then deleted three carefully written paragraphs talking about how great the show is. Not that I had divulged any plot points or anything they had not already made public on the Network site, but given how paranoid Studios are these days I didn't want to post anything plot or character related at all. The last thing I need is to get into a discussion with a Studio Suits about blog posts, even if it meant actual traffic. I suppose there's a whole 'nuther post about Corporate anti-piracy crackdowns stifling internet free speech, but then again, I'm Showfolk first, and agree with them on both the point of keeping the audience in anticipation and stopping piracy in general.

I will say that as a TV editor, it is really cool to work with such talented people doing something of such amazing scope. I've never worked on anything this ambitious and complicated, and I hope the experiecnce will enable me to continue up the path to Big Time Feature Editor. In other words, it's fun cutting together explosions 'n shit! More than that, it's really interesting suddenly being at the locus of whole other layers of people working on complicated special effects. Of course I've worked on FX shots many times, both on TV and in WAGW, but the scale of this is on another level entirely. It requires a great deal of imagination, for one thing, since much of what is happening is not on the video as I'm cutting it. A great deal of care must be taken with every frame of an action sequence. Not that it wouldn't ordinarily, but the difference is that in a normal, TV-scale action sequence consisting of a tense-stand-off, say, or a foot or car chase even, everything is usually shot in a day or less at one location and whatever is shot is pretty much what is going on the screen.

For the first time I am cutting epic scale action sequences shot over several days at different locations using the whole range of effects techniques from green screen to 3D matte paintings, so every frame has to be scrutinized not only for how well it tells the story, but how much it will cost to finish with FX. Usually in TV, WYSIWYG, but I'm finding that what I see is not what we will be getting, and I have to adjust my cutting for things that aren't there yet. It's a bit strange actually, waving my hands around in front of the screen, trying to imagine REDACTED REDACTED coming out of a REDACTED and REDACTED.

Alex is a superb director, and he very carefully controls the visual dynamics of every scene. I appreciate working with him because I know that he knows what he wants to put on screen. Some might think this takes away from the editor's creativity, but this is not so. He very carefully knows exactly what he shoots and why, and the film is therefore also very clear on what it wants to do. This doesn't make my job less work, but it does make it more fun and enjoyable.

In related news, 'Royal Pains,' a new series on USA Channel, premiers with an 1 1/2- hour Pilot on Thursday, June 4. I cut the Pilot last year with Director/Producer Jace Alexander, and the series got picked up. I had signed on to the series, but then got the call about 'Day One,' which, as explained, was just too cool to pass up. Sorry to the Producers of 'RP' for bailing, but the show is funny, the cast really great and they're going to bash on rich people so it should be a hit for USA. Be sure to catch it.

"Picket Fences" season 1, episode 11: 'Pageantry'

2009-02-28T20:26:00.000-08:00

I don't take any credit for this one - hell, the powers that be didn't even see fit to list Assistant Editors in the end credits at the time - but I worked on this holiday episode of "Picket Fences" assisting my mentor, Ed Rothkowitz back in 1992. As it happens, I cut about 30% of this one including a large chunk of Act 2 (it is possible to tell which scenes I worked on, much to my surprise) but my point in posting it here is as an example of one damn fine hour of television. It first aired in December when the show was barely known - and this particular episode suffered from especially bad ratings due to the holidays. Still, I DARE anyone to watch this without bawling their eyes out by the end. Timeless TV, enjoy:

'The Practice' season 2, ep 8: "The Means"

2009-02-28T18:40:00.000-08:00

Ok, here's a pretty solid episode from season 2 that was actually made during season 2 - and it's my "directing" debut! Well, the episode itself was directed by Oz Scott, but he never shot the video monitor inserts for the courtroom scene that opens the show. He gave me the surveillance video footage and I designed the shots around the court testimony in the Avid. When it came time to shoot the inserts of the TV monitor for the scene, production scheduled what production always schedules to shoot TV monitor inserts - about 1/2-hour with a minimal camera crew - expecting one single take through of the material to suffice. In I waltz with over a dozen very specific shots planned, complete with tight pans and zooms to match the scene exactly. About an hour into shooting, production is all over the walkie shouting where is 2nd unit, wondering what the frick is taking so damn long to get my shots. Anyway, they let me keep going until I got what I needed, and the result is exactly as Oz and I planned.

'The Practice' season 2, ep 2: "Betrayal"

2009-02-28T16:54:00.000-08:00

Here's another great show that was shot as part of the first 12, but aired during the long second season. It features the debut of the character 'Joey Heric,' for which John Larroquette won an Emmy Award. He was the first of three guest actors on the show to win Emmys for episodes I cut (the other two were Beah Richards and James Whitmore, both during season 3). 'Betrayal' was directed by the fabulous and prolific Tommy Schlamme.

To make one slight post-production note, when I put the opening scene together I very specifically timed the crescendo from the Mozart Lacrimosa to coincide with the reveal of the body on the couch, something which clearly does not happen on screen in the Final (it's a couple of seconds early). We had even cleared a specific public domain version for its' tempo. There was also a music edit somewhere in the middle of the scene because the real piece didn't exactly end where we wanted it too, either. Anyway, long story shortish, due to some picture change initiated during the last moment before mixing - I think we had to actually replace the opening shot due to Network objection to bloody gore - the timing thus changed and rather than adjust the edit in the middle to make both ends match, the music editor chose to just pull the existing music back and lop off the beginning to make up for time - thus forever altering the timing of that crecendo/body reveal as well as creating a really ugly music edit right at the top. I don't remember who did this but if I did I'd make sure my ghost haunts his family for generations, or for as long as this video exists.

'The Practice' season 2, ep 6: "Sex, Lies and Monkeys"

2009-02-28T16:24:00.000-08:00

A classic from the 'first' season directed by Jonathan Pontell. This episode aired during the 2nd seasons' 28 shows, but was actually produced during the first batch of twelve, only six of which aired during that first season.

Longtime fans will recognize Michael Monks as George Fogleman, in an early storyline featuring the homicidal character. Also featured: the "date rape" drug. This is the 90's, people.

"The Practice' season 1, ep 6: 'Part 6'

2009-02-28T15:48:00.001-08:00

No, I'm not going to post every single one of the almost 50 "Practice" episodes I cut, but this one is special because it was the first time I worked with one of my all-time favorite directors and great friend, Dennie Gordon. She and I hit it off straight away working on this episode, and forever I will love working with her and cutting her film. She brings a tremendous amount of visual preparation to a directing assignment, yet manages to keep a light and lively touch that always feels real to the moment.

This episode also features the great Norman Lloyd as D.A. Sliverman.

'The Practice' season1, episode 3: "Trial and Error"

2009-02-28T13:29:00.000-08:00

My first episode of this landmark show (and my 5th television credit ever, after the 'Picket Fences' finale and four un-seen episodes of 'L.A. Heat') is a terrific example of the edgy style that characterized the first three seasons. "The Practice" brought the fast pace and quick-cutting style of such groundbreaking shows as "NYPD Blue" and "Homicide" to the courtroom drama.

This episode from the first season aired in March, 1997.

"Journeyman" episode 12, 'The Hanged Man'

2009-02-28T13:06:00.000-08:00

In this powerful episode, directed by Steven DePaul, Dan's family is threatened in the present by a mistake made in the past. The teaser/cold-open has a great action sequence with an RV going over a cliff (with Dan in it), and don't miss the great scenes with Gretchen Egolf and Kevin McKidd in Act 2.

This was the last of my four episodes before this really intriguing series was prematurely axed. Go watch the series finale, 'Perfidia.'

'The Hanged Man' aired on December 17, 2007.

"Journeyman" episode 9, 'Emily'

2009-02-28T12:57:00.000-08:00

Directed by Fred Keller, this was an honestly middling episode that nonetheless sets up a fantastic villain in Aeden Bennett (Raphael Sbarge) who then goes on to terrorize the Vasser family in the succeeding, must-watch episode, "Blowback" (which I did not cut).

"Journeyman" episode 7, 'Double Down'

2009-02-28T12:35:00.000-08:00

This episode, directed by Show-runner Alex Graves, was my favorite of the series that I worked on. It features some great suspense and action scenes including one where Dan (Kevin McKidd) goes mano-a-mano with himself in the past.

"Journeyman" episode 4, 'The Year of the Rabbit'

2009-02-28T12:29:00.000-08:00

The first of 4 episodes I cut before this great show was canceled. It was directed by Laura Innes, and first aired October 15th, 2007.