Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1468810
F E A T U R E 'I've never cried editing a feature. I was in tears editing this show.' 45 S P R I N G Q 2 I S S U E and four minutes. We got the episodes down to 57 minutes. As we started delivering these episodes to the network, and they realized the content and the story was so good and so fascinating and so well done that they actually bumped our time from 43 minutes to — they didn't even really care in Season 1." "Yellowstone" was big not just in terms of length of any given episode but the sweep of any single scene. "'Yellowstone' exists in a spectacular environment, and it happens to be real," Galster said. "Nothing against green-screen, but this is a real world. We show that off as often as we can. . . . In every season, every episode, every scene of 'Yellowstone,' the land is what is at stake, and that is what this family is fighting for." Roach characterizes Sheridan as hav- ing a "film mentality." "It's so beautiful, Montana," Roach said. "Every location is beautiful, and he definitely made it a point to shoot that and capture that. Our job as editors is definitely to make that happen." Roach points to Sheridan's dislike for cut- ting from one interior to another interior; although such cuts happen once locations have been established, Sheridan prefers to have exterior bridge scenes between inte- riors. "I've found over the first season, and through all four, that he doesn't mind using two or three shots — actually three, if at all possible — to open a scene," Roach said. "It makes it a more elegant television show. It's not like TV. It's not normal television." Even so, Galster said that the team will select takes based on the quality of the performance above all else, and the editor enjoys stitching together quiet moments between characters as much as large action scenes. "In the first episode of Season 4, there's a pretty phenomenal shootout that was a hell of a lot of fun to put together," Galster said. "But in that same episode, there's a quiet scene in the bar with Beth, where her performance is just devastat- ingly powerful, and I loved putting that one together just as much." For his part, supervising sound editor King — like Roach, a fixture on the crews of Clint Eastwood's films — saw his task as creating a cinematic sound while working within the parameters of broadcast televi- sion. "On one of the larger Clint shows, we have five weeks of mixing on a mixing stage, whereas in TV world, one episode, which is half the length, is getting three days," said King, who must prioritize the "big picture stuff" while, when possible, reusing sounds when he can. "Oh yeah, the door from the bunkhouse — that exists in this episode," King said. "We go to Episode 3.03. We find the scene. We grab the door. We put it where we need to do it. We move on to the next door." The upshot, though, is that the sound world is cohesive across multiple episodes and seasons. "It gives me the ability to go back to the identical palette and make sure that that door that they always go through sounds similar every single time," he said. "I don't want us to one time be a glass-sounding door, and the next time it's a wood-sound- ing door. You've got to make sure that continuity is there." The quest for authenticity extends even to the sounds used to represent horses "talking" to each other in the series. Instead of the canned sounds used for horse scenes in many movies and TV shows, King has gone for subtler, more realistic sounds. " O u r w o n d e r f u l e x e c u t i v e p r o d u c e r, Michael Friedman, has a whole lot more experience on horses than I do," King said. "He has been able to lead us down the path: 'This is more of a scared horse vocal. Let's not go this way. This is how they're nicker- ing and talking to each other in a barn.' As a dude from Van Nuys, it's been quite the learning experience." Music editor Clausen praises composers Brian Tyler and Breton Vivian for their "beautiful music," noting that the show has used more and more scoring with each new season. "The first season we probably only averaged 15 to 23 minutes of score," Clausen said. "Taylor really let the actors and the di- alogue and the story tell these scenes. Now, on Season 4, sometimes we're having 43, 50 minutes of score, plus songs." Roach praises the contributions of the sound and music editors to fill out the sonic world of the show. "My whole job is so much fun because I see how it comes out," Roach said. "Of course, there are temp sounds and there is temp music, but it's a whole other level once we turn it over to the pros." It all adds up to a show that viewers across America have embraced — and the editors, as the show's biggest fans, understand why. "Whenever you put Kevin Costner in front of the camera on television, and then you add country and horses, you can't go wrong," Roach said. "You add a little action in there to boot, and it's kind of a win-win situation." ■ Peter Tonguette is a freelance writer whose work appears frequently in CineMontage. Kyle Clausen. P H OT O : M A R K E D WA R D S