Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1492834
23 S P R I N G Q 1 I S S U E F E A T U R E schedule was just five days. While the hours were long, and the work always fast and fu- rious, the team also found the task thrilling. "Every week you go into the edit with a sense of what the story might be, but some- times you have to pivot completely, and the editors have to find the story with the clock ticking," said Conrad Green, executive pro- ducer on "DWTS." "The team we have is the best in the business at doing that." CineMontage caught up with the editor, Duane Fogwell, to go behind the scenes toward the end of last season. CineMontage: How did you first get involved in this show? Fogwell: I'm Australian. I've been in LA for eight years, and I used to do these kinds of shows back home. I didn't do dancing back home, but I did "Master Chef" and a lot of those reality-type "shiny floor" shows, as we call them. Over the last eight years, I've been working through the ranks. I had the good fortune, just before the pandemic hit, of meeting [executive producer] Conrad Green on a show in 2019. It was a game show called "Don't" for ABC, which Ryan Reynolds was producing. It was a really funny show. Adam Scott was hosting, and I ended up being on that show for nine months from start to finish. It really got me through those early dark days of the pandemic, and I really got to know Conrad. He told me he had done "DWTS" when it first arrived in America. He had brought it over from the U.K., where it was called, "Strictly Come Dancing," and I was just fortunate that I got to know him. He got a call saying, "Would you like to come back to 'Dancing With the Stars?'" and he called me straight away and said, "Would you like to come and do the show?" I was ecstatic. It's one of the biggest tentpole shows in America. Everybody knows it. It was doubly exciting because of this move to streaming, so I was really interested to see how they would pull it all off. CineMontage: What preparation did you have as far as the reconceptualization of the show for streaming? Fogwell: Well, nothing until we got in the chair, so to speak. I had done my own research about what had taken place and how it came to be on Disney+, but it really wasn't until Day One of editing a few weeks ago when we had an all-team Zoom call. Essentially, what they told us was, "We want to put the heart and emotion back into this show and that's why we have you guys in the chair." It was nice to hear that they picked all of us, really. I think there were one or two people who had done the show before. Noth- ing was discussed about "no more ads," or moving to Disney+. It was more focused on the idea that everything we do has to be directed towards emotion and story. CineMontage: Could you explain the timeline of that since it's airing live? How does the editing process work in tandem with production? Fogwell: We are live on Monday nights. Production then — their day one — is Tues- day. They get the talent back in the studios and they start rehearsing for the following week. I'll start on Wednesday, and I'll have a little bit of footage from whatever they did the day before, and we will start just mapping it out between now and Sunday. It's really interesting on a show like this, because the footage does just come in dribs and drabs. You'll have an outline, you'll know story beats that we want to hit this week, such as if somebody messed up their tango last week. Last week, there was a COVID case, so one of the dancers couldn't participate, so I'm assuming that's going to be a big story point. Essentially, I'll start mapping it out. We'll do the easy stuff first. I know that each package will have a flashback to last week, so it starts off, "Last week, Joseph woke up to the news that Daniela had tested positive." There'll be that beat. But essen- tially, as editors, we start the week running and we don't stop until Sunday night. Last Jordin Sparks and Brandon Armstrong in "Dancing with the Stars." P H OT O : D I S N E Y