Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/832212
49 Q2 2017 / CINEMONTAGE AH: Treme was ambitious and things can get hectic. It was almost impossible sometimes to finish those episodes on schedule, editorially. Having Matthew, who could step in and pick up scenes on the side and keep the train moving, was such a luxury. So, I don't think anyone had any doubts after going through that for several seasons that Matthew was ready to take on his own episodes. CM: What are some of the difficulties of the straightforward editorial style of this whole line of shows from this production team? AH: The language of David's work has evolved to a degree from The Wire. From a production standpoint, Treme was somewhat more ambitious cinematically and we pushed it a little bit to make it more cinematic, more sensual and kinetic. On The Deuce, we all felt that because of the period and the ambitions of the show, it had the potential to be more cinematic than anything we had worked on previously with this group of producers and writers. But we knew that a lot of the old rules would still apply. KS: I agree. There has definitely been an expansion of the language. I worked on another project with David before The Deuce: the miniseries Show Me a Hero [2015]. That was unique to his productions because we used some subtle score to connect sequences and create unity among a more disparate collection of scenes and characters. There were more cinematic elements, but I still felt I had to be quite careful about executing those things so that I didn't create what David might feel is a sort of manipulation. In every scene and every beat, I'm trying to get as much emotion, feeling and meaning as I possibly can. But we don't want to foreground any of the technique or production. We always want to privilege the writing and highlight the characters. So, things like dissolving from one scene to another or having too many establishing shots or pre-lapping dialogue from one scene to the next to ease the transition — I still feel like we need to do those things sparingly. The other challenge with these pieces, because they're so densely written, is to fit them into an hour or an "HBO hour," which is 58 and a half minutes. Sometimes you have to make some scenes play tighter to make room for other scenes that can then be expanded. I had a dance scene in episode five that took up two or three minutes of screen