Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/187650
the new series, which was shot with a Canon EOS 5D over two weekends. Hailing from an improv background, she felt that the scripts, some of which spoofed specific elements of HBO's Girls, served to structure the shoots but also left plenty of room for the actors to improvise. "Editorially that meant I had a lot to work with, and each take was very different from the last," she says. "But a lot of the success of post depends on preproduction, and I was super-organized since we had a lot to shoot in a short time." Matt Blessing, director and executive producer, was present throughout the post process, providing "extremely vital" input as she cut scenes. Ariany did the rough cut on Final Cut Pro. Then she brought in editor Chris Villa to lend a fresh eye to the process. "I find that after you're editing a while things start to look the same, and you begin to question your own judgment," she says. "I needed the perspective of someone who wasn't there from the beginning. Chris put together the fine cut and cleaned up the sound for us." It wasn't always possible to record clean sound at locations such as an LA rooftop. While they tried to pause in the action and wait for fire trucks and airplane noise to fade, they couldn't do anything about sometimes windy conditions. "Chris taught me some tricks, like adding background noise to conceal some of the wind," Ariany notes. Cutting comedy, especially an episodic narrative with a full cast of characters, a degree of improvisation and a short running time, is no small feat. "It was a matter of what worked best, what looked best and what kept the pace up," says Ariany. "Pacing is crucial to comedy, and we felt it had to be quick for Web audiences. Each episode has its own personality and works as a standalone piece, yet we had to think about how it affected the episode before it and after it." The humor and language of LA Girls is "definitely out there," she warns. "We tried to keep in mind that this is YouTube, so we had some G- and PG-rated versions of the dialogue. But when it came time to decide which to use, nine times out of 10 we went for the raunch." Ariany opted to handle color grading in Final Cut, adjusting brightness and contrast for a "clean yet natural look." She spent time in prepro with production design, wardrobe and make up to create "the look and feel we wanted in-camera, with vibrant colors that popped and stood out," she explains. Ariany, who has directed documentary and narrative short films, believes filmmakers shouldn't assume that they can get away with lesser quality productions just because they're targeted to the Web. "People want to see quality," she says. "They may be more forgiving of certain things because they're viewing content on the Web, but you don't want to take advantage of that!" Stand by for season two of LA Girls, which has already been written. MODEL WIFE What happens when an average guy, with two crazy neighbors, marries a supermodel? The comedic possibilities are endless as the New York-based Web series, Model Wife, produced by Cory Cavin, Bill Grandberg and Josh Lay, reveals. Season one recently wrapped with a two-part finale that required a different approach from East Light Digital's (www.eastlightdigital.com) Sean Donnelly. "I came in around episode four of the 10-episode season," he says. "They were shooting with Canon 5D and 7D cameras, but for the finale they had the option of shooting with a Blackmagic Cinema Camera and asked me if they should do it. "I suggested shooting 2.4K raw, which might sound excessive for Web delivery, but the camera has a lot more latitude and resolution than a DSLR and they were shooting almost exclusively at a nightclub. It was also a good point in the season to make a change since the finale was isolated a bit from the rest of the shows and looked different." Donnelly did a one-light color correct with Blackmagic's DaVinci Resolve to make the dailies and stored the grades from the dailies pass "to make it very easy to jump back in where I left off for the finishing." Typically, one of the show's creators or a freelance editor does the offline on Final Cut Pro. For the finale, the editor created some VFX with filters, blending and speed ramps, then Donnelly upped the ante. "I added some very stylized effects," he says. "With Resolve, the options are basically Model Wife was shot with Canon 5D and 7D cameras, but switched to Blackmagic's Cinema Camera for the finale. Stormy Weather on Super 35mm and HD StormStock® The world's premier storm footage library. (817) 276-9500 www.stormstock.com www.postmagazine.com Post • September 2013 21