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September 2018

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WEB SERIES www.postmagazine.com 21 POST SEPTEMBER 2018 O ne highly applauded, Emmy-nominated hit series and two anticipated new ones are generating excitement on Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and Netflix this season. The shows, from well-known and respected creatives in film and television, feature top acting talent, film-style production values and post work- flows tailored for streaming platforms. THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL Although Brian A. Kates usually edits features, in- cluding the HBO original films The Laramie Project, Lackawana Blues, Taking Chance and Bessie, he finds it "exciting" to cut "a great pilot. It's like com- pressing an entire feature — its challenges and the joys of the creative process — into two months. It's exhausting but fun and energizing." The pilot for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (photo, left), for Amazon Prime Video, set the scene for the late 1950s Manhattan world of Miriam "Midge" Maisel, the perfect Upper West Side homemaker until her cheating husband suddenly leaves her and she discovers her talent for stand-up comedy. The series, created, written and directed by Amy Sherman-Palladino, follows Midge's burgeoning comedy career as she makes her way through the cafes and nightclubs of Greenwich Village on a path that she hopes will lead to a coveted seat on the couch of The Tonight Show. "Mrs. Maisel is a woman who takes pleasure in being perfect. She's the product of the consumerist pressure put on non-working women in the 1950s to make a perfect home," says Kates. "And metic- ulousness was also something we aimed for in the pilot with the production design, the cinematogra- phy and the edit." The pilot was shot digitally in Manhattan, where post was performed at Light Iron's downtown facility. Kates, who also edited pilots for The Big C and Believe, and episodes of the series Kings and Treme, cut on Avid Media Composer V.8.6.3 using the effects palette within Avid and Boris FX for shot stabilization. Associate editor Chris Rand synced dailies, organized bins and was aided by post pro- duction assistant Brie Stodden. "Amy (Sherman-Palladino) is a strong writer/direc- tor so the content and tone of the dailies matched the script closely," notes Kates. "That was a great pleasure for me. It allowed me to focus on variations in performance, intonation and timing; milking the comedy in every moment; and concentrating on the precise interplay of music and picture." Reflecting its 1950s setting, the pilot enabled Kates to demonstrate "the beauty of classical Hollywood style: painterly, well balanced and pre- cisely and deliberately edited to enrich the emo- tional content. With such beautifully choreographed shots it was crucial to know when not to cut for risk of ruining the integrity of the shot design." Music played a key role in the pilot with much of the music sourced from the artists of the day, including Peggy Lee, Connie Francis and Blossom Dearie. "Cutting music in collaboration with the mu- sic editor is one of my joys, and for the pilot I had to figure out ways to keep the music in sync with little details in the shot — shoes stepping, car-bys, doors closing, ovens opening." VFX supervisor Lesley Robson-Foster oversaw numerous VFX shots that helped take 21st century Manhattan back to the 1950s. The East Village's St. Mark's Place and Tompkins Square Park doubled for the West Village of an earlier era with comps of the iconic Washington Square Arch and glimpses of the Empire State Building in the distance. "It was a challenge to manage so many VFX in such a short period of time," Kates recalls. Although "the dailies looked good" and cap- tured the flavor of the period, Kates worked with supervising colorist Steven Bodner at Light Iron to achieve Mrs. Maisel-style perfection for the final color grading. "Color correction is very fine etch- ing," says Kates. "It's subtle work, and Steven found some beautiful textures." Kates continues that "Amy is such a clear-head- ed director and planner and she got such good per- VFX teams put a lot of effort into keeping Mrs. Maisel period accurate. Mrs. Maisel pilot editor Brian A. Kates.

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