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47 S P R I N G Q 1 I S S U E F E A T U R E that there is a fireplace poker that has a lot of blood on it, and somehow that is involved in some sort of murder." The workflow on "How to Get Away with Murder" is comparable to other television dramas, with editors Hatha- way, Lorusso, and Marion alternating episodes; for this final season, Pevic has stepped in to cut the first and final episodes. Yet, to facilitate the storytell- ing style and manage the grueling pace, editors and assistants are not siloed from each other. "Sometimes in a postpro- duction team, it's very much the editor and their assistant," said Jessie Marion, who joined the show this season. "In this environment, we're all very much all-hands-on-deck. We're all talking all the time, we have lunch together almost every day, and we help each other out in terms of work." "When we're locking a show, some- times we're under a time crunch and everybody kind of jumps in," said Mi- chael Hathaway, a two-season veteran of the series. "We have all the assistants and other editors involved." Assistant editor Jonathan Yoni Rus- nak — who, having joined the show in the fall, is its newest initiate — confirmed the commingling of the postproduction team. During his first days on the show, Rusnak was assigned to work with Mari- on, but since she had just completed her most recent episode, the assistant editor was tasked with helping Bower prepare effects and music on another episode. "If you aren't working on something spe- cific for yours, they'll recruit you to help everybody else," Rusnak said. "It keeps it interesting." Key creative decisions are made at a tone meeting, during which the script for a particular episode is examined one line at a time by the showrunner, writer, director, and editor—and, often, supervising editor Pevic. "Matt will sit in on all the tone meetings also and I'll say, 'Hey Matt, will you show this director that episode where we did this?'" Nowalk said. "He just has, in is brain, the library and can pull that up and show the direc- tor what I want or what style I mean to replicate in their episode." After the editors assemble and polish an episode, directors and producers are each accorded additional amounts of time to further refine the cut — especially important to assure that the show 's hopscotching structure remains compre- hensible to viewers. "It's a very creative process to put all that together and make it work so the audience knows where they are," Hathaway said. "We use different vehicles to do that, whether it's coloring the scenes differently, or sound effects." To keep the audience oriented, the team turns to its bag of tricks. Music cues can tip viewers that they are about to journey into the past or venture into the future, but the editors have also developed what they call a "poppy-pop." "It's just a really quick — maybe less than six frames — bit of sped-up footage," Pevic said. "It's super-fast, just for like six frames, and it just gives you that jolt: 'Oh, OK. Now I know I'm in a new dimension.'" Less challenging for the editors is cutting the work of the cast, led by the Golden Globe-nominated and Primetime Emmy-winning Davis and also featuring a group of supporting players that is re- freshed each season. The performances, Marion said, require only the slightest bit of fine-tuning. "You're not having to build a performance as much as just shape the show," Marion said. "Yes, we shape performances a little bit, but it's because they gave us different colors to play with — not because we're making something out of nothing." "This is what I am going to miss most about this show," Pevic said. "I love the plots, the twists and turns, and all of that stuff, but being able to work on footage that contains Viola Davis and all of her magic [has] been a super-big treat." In fact, sometimes — as in a Season 4 crossover episode that featured Cicely Tyson and "Scandal" star Kerry Wash- ington — the challenge is what to leave on the cutting-room floor. "You have all these powerhouse actors [and] there are tons of shot choices," said LoRusso, who worked on several scenes in the DIGITAL DAGGARS Back to the Start (112 & 415) SON LUX We Are The Ones (301) SNOW CULTURE Intro (508 & 515) WOODKID Run Boy Run (314) PERFUME GENIUS My Body (301) IAMX I Come With Knives (101) DEAD CAN DANCE Summoning of the of the of Muse (209) ZOLA JESUS Vacant (601) GIL SCOTT-HERON Me And The Devil (413) CONRAD RICAMORA All Of Me Of Me Of (508) LAWLESS Dear God Dear God Dear (501) DELAURENTIS Big Part of A of A of Big Sun (412) MISSIO Bottom of the of the of Deep Blue Sea (503) PRIMER The Firmament (601) ASTYRIA Hold Your Breath Your Breath Your (602) HONORABLE MENTIONS BRITTANY DUBAY'S BRITTANY DUBAY'S BRITTANY 'MURDER' PLAYLIST THE BEST TUNES FROM THE SHOW'S SIX YEARS 'We talk about how this show has an operatic, very dramatic feel.'