Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1262492
37 S U M M E R Q 2 I S S U E F E A T U R E about cancelling our premiere and the party because of fear of the contagion, but it turned out to be a lovely evening. Jonah and Lisa Joy, our showrunners/ co-creators, and also husband and wife, addressed the packed theater, everyone seemed to enjoy the episode, cocktails were imbibed, hugs and compliments were exchanged. The pandemic seemed far away. Season 3 of "Westworld" had long been on what I like to call the Dooms- day Schedule, where there are no days to lose without the price tag going up or the quality going down, in the pro- cess of f inishing and delivering the episodes to HBO. All of the shows were picture-locked, so our picture editors were gone, but everyone else – assistant editors, post-production staff, the sound editing team, and Chris Kaller, our music editor -- were all working 12+ hour days. And it was going to be crazy-intense for the next five weeks, until the last episode was delivered. How could we overcome the additional impediment of working from home? Together with Elena Beecher, the office manager of Kilter Films, the show's production company, and Ron Madnick, Kilter's tech advisor, we started to map out a plan to finish the season remotely. How many Avid systems would we need in assistant editors' and visual effects editors' homes? Would the editors have remote access to our shared server at Kilter, which held all the media files, or would each home system need its own local server? We knew that a big part of the solution would be Clearview Flex, the hardware/software system that allows streaming of picture and sound to remote computers. We had already used Clear- view during the picture editing process while Jonah was on location in Louisiana on "Reminiscence," Lisa's feature film directing debut. How many Clearview boxes would we need to make our remote system work? Next I contacted Universal Studios, where we mix, and Fotokem, our film lab and post-f inishing house, to see what plans they were making in case of a shelter-in-place edict. How could we continue to mix the episodes if the mixers were quarantined in their homes? Could our color timer and conform editors work remotely? What was the lead time necessary to make those remote systems operational, and how would the untested process affect our delivery dates and the quality of the final product? Then there was Visual Effects. Our Visual Effects Supervisor and Designer, Jay Worth, and the VFX Producer, Liz Castro, created the VFX production pipeline. Jay and Liz assign different VFX shots to different vendors, spread all over the globe. One vendor is great at fire effects, another at face replacements, yet another at world building. That was the most cost-effective, and creatively effective way to get through the massive volume of visual effects work that is "Westworld." Our VFX team already had a murderous schedule without the added complication of the coronavirus. On the night of the premiere, March 4, roughly two-thirds of the season's 3500+ VFX shots for the six remaining undelivered episodes had not been completed. What would happen to that VFX pipeline, to those many VFX vendors, if they were all required to shelter in place? A s t h e p r o b l e m s i n C h i n a a n d Northern Italy turned into a worldwide pandemic, and we stopped calling it P H O T O : J O H N P . J O H N S O N / H B O Kelly Calligan. Aaron Paul, Thandie Newton.