Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1203636
Viola Davis and director Lily Mariye on set last year. P H O T O : A B C 45 S P R I N G Q 1 I S S U E F E A T U R E understand the language." Annalise Keating has spent six sea- sons attempting to answer the question "how to get away with murder." Another question to ponder is how the postpro- duction crew is able to churn out such a daring and inventive show week after week. As Pevic sees it, audience interest is maintained through story arcs that don't resolve themselves in single epi- sodes but unfold over an entire season. "You get a nice story-of-the-week every week, and that kind of whets that appetite that you want from a procedur- al," Pevic said. "On top of that, there is a really big mystery that is happening throughout the season that you can't wait to see unfold." Season-openers, Lorusso said, open with "some sort of gag" that previews a future event, such as a murder or a shooting. "Then we go backwards in time for a few months or just one month . . . and we kind of play up to that moment in our winter finale," Lorusso said. To keep the story firing on all cylinders, and to keep track of the characters' progress from show to show, the entire team must be "talking to each other, watching each other's episodes when we're able to," he said. In the case of Season 6, audiences were clued in early on to what might be the eventual death of Annalise, whose funeral is glimpsed. "We're working our way towards that," Pevic said. "We know 'When we're locking a show, sometimes we're under a time crunch and every- body kind of jumps in. We have all the assistants involved.' demands of the series. "This show is heavily built in post, which means that every team member of the post team — editors, assistants — is working so hard to make the show work," said creator Peter Nowalk, who also serves as showrunner. "I really rely on my editors to have a story brain and to be co-writers with me in that final part of the process." Assistant editor Blake Harjes, who joined the series following a career in fea- tures, describes the series as unusually challenging. "It's a lot of work — there's a lot of re-creating the material in the editing room, with Pete, obviously, col- laboratively," Harjes said. "I think that process can be challenging for some peo- ple, and because of that, the people that are left at this point, by the final season, are really battle-tested. We're all pros." Over the course of the run of the show, editors have often received promotions from within the ranks, including Lorusso, who began as an assistant editor on Sea- son 1 before being bumped up to editor, and Pevic, who was hired as an editor on Season 2 and eventually was given the title of supervising editor. "It's the same with the writing staff," Nowalk said. "It takes a while to learn a language, so the longer someone is here, the more they