 |
It's easy to think that a television episode is finished when the cast and crew are done filming. But long after the director yells "That's a wrap!" and everyone else goes home, Six Feet Under starts to really take shape. It's in post production that the episode is transformed from 15 hours of raw footage, shot out of order and without any music, into what goes on the air.
I never really gave post much thought until I got to see for myself how they do it. I stayed out of the way during the first phase of editing. This is when the editor and assistants work alone in a room for 5 days. They sort through the raw footage, assembling the show according to the script. Next, the director weighs in;creating a version that matches his or her vision for the episode.
Once the Executive Producers and writer get their hands on it, the episode is subjected to the most thorough scrutiny imaginable. They watch every scene countless times. Occasionally a scene gets cut or moved to a different part of the episode. But often the changes are so miniscule that only a few frames of film are added or taken away.
When I enter the editing bay it looks like a living room, with couches, end tables, lamps and a 32'television. Executive Producers Alan Ball and Alan Poul and writer Nancy Oliver are eating take out food and watching TV. But behind one of the couches is a giant bank of computer monitors where editor Michael Ruscio is hard at work.
Michael and his assistant Lisa Willinger play episode #412 (titled "Untitled") for the producers. They tell me that the goal today is fine tuning. When they're done with it, the episode will go to the network and studio executives for the first time - so there's a lot of pressure to get it right.
"Don't take this personally but I don't think she likes you."
They're watching a scene where Brenda introduces her mother to little Maya for the first time. The scene looks great, but Maya looks up at Brenda lovingly at the moment when Margaret claims that the baby doesn't seem to like her. Because the performance doesn't match the dialogue, Michael inserts every other one of Maya's takes into the rest of the scene. The group watches every version of the scene until they find the best performance - one where little Bronwyn Tosh is playing with a plate of crackers instead. Everyone agrees that the scene works much better. Once the picture is locked, it's time to add the music.
The next day, I sit in on a music preview session for episode #411 (titled "Bomb Shelter"), where Music Supervisors Thomas Golubic and Gary Calamar present their selections for the best songs to use on the episode. These are the guys who put together the Six Feet Under soundtrack, and they have an encyclopedic knowledge of all kinds of music.
Finding exactly the right song for each scene isn't easy. The music must underline and inform the scene without pulling away the viewer's attention. Music Editor Bruno Roussel cuts the songs and fits them into the scene perfectly, sometimes removing an entire section or repeating part of the song in a loop if necessary.
This episode has eight scenes that need music in the background. In today's meeting, Alan Ball, Alan Poul and writer Scott Buck listen as Bruno plays a scene with Claire and Jimmy six times in a row. But each time he plays it there's different music playing on Jimmy's stereo: songs by The Pixies, Throwing Muses, Modest Mouse, Nada Surf, Grand National, and Liz Phair. I quietly root for my favorite band The Pixies, but the producers choose "Peanut Dreams" by a new English band called Grand National instead. And they're right: it's a better match for the mood of the scene.
Once the producers agree on the performance of every character, the pace of every scene, the length of every fade to white and the selection and placement of every cut of music, all the elements need to be put together. This happens at the dub stage, where the music, sound effects, visual effects, opening and closing title sequences and original music written for the episode (called the score) are combined and tweaked until the episode is as close to perfect as it's ever going to get.
I'm at a mix for episode #411, "Bomb Shelter." A massive monitor is on the wall that's almost the size of a movie screen. Two people called re-recording mixers sit behind a 12 foot long console with countless faders, switches, and knobs. Alan Ball, Alan Poul and Scott Buck settle into comfortable couches, eating from buckets of popcorn and watching the episode straight through without interruption. Afterwards, Producer Lori Jo Nemhauser, who's in charge of the entire post production process, spends another five or six hours addressing their notes. The last minute changes are usually really small, like making a line of dialogue sound like it's coming from far away, or altering a cut of music to make it seem like it's being played over a transistor radio. When Lori Jo is done at the dub stage, the show is done - and ready to go on the air.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Mortuary Fact
Ancient Greeks buried their dead with a coin in their hand or mouth to pay Charon, the ferryman who carries the dead across the river Styx and into the afterlife. |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
