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August 2014

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www.postmagazine.com 14 POST AUGUST 2014 X Networks recently aired the fourth season of Louie, the half- hour scripted series that stars comedian Louis CK. Each episode spotlights his hec- tic life in New York City, which includes raising two young daughters, dating, observational humor, and performing a stand-up routine. The comedian wears many hats in the show, which is in-part, based on his real life. In addition to serving as its star, he's also the show's creator, executive pro- ducer, director and editor. Ryan Cunning- ham is Louie's post production producer, and recently took some time to tell us how the show comes together. How long have you been working on Louie? "I have been involved since Season 3. In the beginning, it was very low-budget. That was the deal that was made with FX — to keep it low-budget. And it has got- ten a bit more elaborate and ambitious as the seasons have gone on. But they do everything kind of bare bones. "They shoot everything on the Red [Epic] camera. All of Season 3 and the fi rst half of Season 4 was shot in 4K. They switched halfway through the season to the Dragon sensor and are shooting in 5K. The way production goes is that there is often not a lot of time to set up lighting. [Louie] doesn't like to over-light things, so the Dragon sensor is so much better for low-light sensitivity." The show is shot single-camera and many shots are quite long in duration. "That was something he really pushed for this season. They did shoot a lot of cov- erage of all the scenes, but for the most part, he preferred to go with a single take as much as possible." How would you describe the structure of the show? "A typical episode is around 21-and-a-half to 22 minutes. FX has been so won- derful about being very fl exible about timeframes and allowing Louie to deliver things the way he feels are necessary." There's a fl ash-back episode in Season 4 that is very long. "That's actually two episodes, and each is half an hour. They were going to be two episodes, and I believe in repeats it will be two episodes, but FX off ered a 90-minute slot in order to air it as one solid episode. It came out to be 65 minutes. All we needed to do was add two additional commercial breaks. [Louie] was happy to do that in order for it to be the way he wanted." How many episodes make up a season? "It's usually 13. We had 14 this season, but ended up airing 11 and 12 as one solid episode." As the post production producer, what are your responsibilities? "I am responsible for everything from when cameras stop shooting until it airs — everything that has to happen within that timeframe is what I oversee. On some of the other shows I work on, I have more of a creative roll, as far as the editorial, that I don't have on this show, because so much of the show is Louie's vision. He's not as involved during the fi nishing process. He comes to a few of the color correction and mix sessions, but he tries to deliver it to us in as complete a vision as possible." I understand Louie is very involved in the edit? "Last season we had another editor, Susan Morse, working during production and Louie would work at night, and they would trade cuts back and forth. Then he came on full-time as an editor once production was done. This season, Louie decided that he wanted to edit every episode. We structured it so that so he wouldn't have to be editing during production. In the past, he found that to be very frustrat- ing. He loves editing and prefers to do it himself because he feels he has the vision in his head as to how it should be. But it's always been very taxing on him to do production and editing at night and on the weekends." How big is the team? "We have an associate editor full-time. The editorial staff is really bare bones, the way the production is. It's really just me, and we have an associate editor, Gina Sansom, who was on last season as well. And we work with Running Man Post (http://runningmanpost.com). They process all the dailies for us." What is the process after shooting? "We do a full back-up process. That gets delivered to the post house. The post house processes all of the dailies, and processes it to DNx36, and gives that to our associate editor Gina, who works at Running Man. She gets everything orga- nized for Louie, and works with Running Man to make sure there are no errors, and everything is looking good. And then it goes to Louie. Running Man set up a FX NETWORKS' LOUIE BY MARC LOFTUS THIS HD SERIES IS NOW SHOOTING IN 5K. F Louie recently wrapped up Season 4. The show is shot using Red cameras and is edited by the star himself on an Avid system. PRIMETIME

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