Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/501792
39 SPRING 2015 / CINEMONTAGE comics panels. "When you look at comic books, they usually show very tight shots and then very wide shots," Crabtree explains. "We tend to do a lot of that: big, cinematic wide shots, then we move in very tight. We follow that template to some extent. We also have lots of sizes like any TV show, with close-ups, medium shots and so forth." Another way of evoking a comic book sensibility, and making hardcore fans happy at the same time, involves paying homage to familiar images involving particular characters. This is particularly important when it comes to fight sequences, where true fans expect look, style and movement that evoke what they are familiar with from comics. A prototypical example would be the debut early in Season Two of the Bobbi Morse character (Adrianne Palicki), who eventually is revealed to have the baton weapons, fighting methods and a certain pose of the comic book character known as Mockingbird. Her debut in a big fight came in an episode Litman edited. "We have a great second unit team that shoots the fights; they do a fantastic job and give us lots of options," Litman says. "One of the first fights I cut this season was Palicki's first episode, the reveal of Mockingbird. I made sure to use the most impactful, dynamic angles, making sure she looked like a superhero." Because at its heart, the show is about spies and features constant betrayals and misdirections, the editors also face the requirement to sneak in lots of subtle bits designed to evoke ideas or reactions or to foreshadow a story element being developed, but without slowing down the pace of the primary action. Quick glances of suspicion or guilt are commonplace, and there are reams of other elements that are part and parcel of the footage constantly rolling into the editorial department. Each week, this leaves editors with numerous, difficult choices about what elements to trim out among the dozens available for each sequence. Charson suggests this is among the hardest parts of the job, but at the end of the day, the rule of thumb for dealing with it revolves around adhering to the principle of maintaining a consistently brisk pace, whenever in doubt. "We have lots of hard choices with so much good material," he says. "Our target story length each episode is 43 minutes, and our first cuts typically come in on average about six minutes longer than that. "One phrase executive producer Jeffrey Bell uses regarding our characters and dialogue is 'snappy crackers,'" he continues. "He means Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Florian Schneider/ABC Benni Pierce. Jennifer MacFarlane.