Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/990701
43 Q2 2018 / CINEMONTAGE every single one of my cuts to another editor to ask if there's anything he or she would do. You never get things perfect on your own. There is no one hero on the team; it's a team of heroes banding together to make a great show." Pierce cuts most of the cold opens. "It starts us off and gets us excited," he offers. "It lets us know what town we're in and who the characters are, introducing the faces and ideas we'll be seeing." A cold open, says Pierce, is between one-and-a-half and two minutes long and takes four days to get into shape. The process starts Monday, when Pierce receives a script from the executive producers and a song that will play behind it. The editor prints out the song's lyrics and puts the song on a loop for 30 minutes. "I have a giant white board in my room and I brainstorm any ideas that come into my head," he reveals. Next, Pierce lays down the soundtrack, which is comprised of an announcer voiceover, competitors' sound bites, the music and sound effects. That "radio edit" goes to the producer for comments, and then he and Storm go back and forth. Finding the visuals might seem like the easy part, but of course it isn't. "You want an impactful moment, so finding that shot can take a long time," concedes Pierce, noting that he has bins for previous season runs, submission videos, competitor video media selects and hometown videos from which to choose. The opens also change as the season progresses. The first episodes are character- and emotion-driven, according to Pierce, who adds, "When we get to the second set of the same cities, you'll start to see footage from previous episodes and their home packages." Kyle Barr, along with a couple of other editors, cuts the hometown packages that give insight into each competitor. "It's a little bit of their Ninja editors, from left, Tom Erwin, Jeff Bartsch, Kyle Barr (back), Curtis Pierce, Mary DeChambres, Michael Kalbron (back), Marcella Serrano, Nick Gagnon, Michelle Messina, Jon Provost, David Greene, Corey Ziemniak (back), Martin Singer and Scott Simmons.