Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/360038
www.postmagazine.com 15 POST AUGUST 2014 system in Louie's house with Avid and Pro Tools. They also wired his theater room so he could view dailies and cuts. "This season he found it tremendously helpful to be able to look at dailies al- most immediately and watch the footage over and over again. Even though he wasn't editing during production, he was watching the footage almost constantly, and it really helped him make decisions in his head, because when it came time to editing, he was able to put the epi- sode together really quickly." What is the show cut on? "Avid Media Composer. We moved over to Avid, but all the previous seasons were Final Cut. With Version X, it's just not pos- sible to use on the professional level, with multiple editors and sharing media, and the magnetic timeline makes it impos- sible to lay things out properly the way you need to for finishing and turnover for sound and finishing. Basically, when Final Cut moved to Final Cut X, we said this is not even a possibility." Does Louie have a preference? "Louie learned how to edit on Avid, and switched over to Final Cut at some point — I am not sure when. He learned to cut on Avid in the '90s. There were some frus- trations. We switched him over to Avid on his HBO special, Louie CK: Oh My God, which he did in March of last year. That was his first Avid project, and we did that because they shot with eight cameras and we needed to be able to multi-cam eight cameras at once. Using Final Cut 7, you can do that, but it's extremely slow and bogs everything down. It's not really a possibility for as tight of a turnaround as we had for the edit on that. We used that as his reintroduction to Avid, and then moved comfortably over to Avid for Season 4." Do they shoot a lot of footage? "Out of all the shows I work on, it proba- bly has the least amount of footage shot. He is very efficient. He only does two to three takes of things, with a few excep- tions. He really does like to do things in one'ers. He will go in and get coverage, but I would say at least 50 to 60 per- cent of time, he doesn't even touch the coverage when he's editing. His directorial vision, especially this season, has been pushing to do everything in one take. He feels that it's more truthful and powerful." Talk about the soundtrack? "All of the music is composed. Matt Kilmer is the main music supervisor. He has a jazz band and Louie attends all the sessions. They'll start with riffs and look at stuff, and provide an entire library for each season. Last season he licensed one song in the 'Barney/Never' episode. I think it was Night Ranger. The previous seasons they licensed the 'Brother Louie' song for the theme, but Louie wanted to move away from that and not take up so much content time with the show open." The show open is just a title card? "We did it with no open, with just the 'Lou- ie,' which I think was extremely effective." Is there a set structure? "It usually starts right away with Louie, and every once in a while we have a bit of a cold open. The thing about this show is that there are no real rules, which is kind of exciting. And it's great that FX allows us that." Where is the show mixed? "We go to Parabolic in New York City and Lew Goldstein is our mixer." What is the relationship with Running Man? "They provide the edit rooms and the equipment. Gina is a freelancer, working for Pig Newton, which is Louie's pro- duction company, and then working at Running Man. They do all of our color correction as well, at Running Man." Does the show use VFX? The 'storm' episode must have been a challenge? "We had so many meetings about this in pre-production, and there were a lot of plans for visual effects, but for the most part it, was done entirely practically. "The visual effects are pretty minimal. We are cleaning up production things, like we are cleaning up booms a lot. We also had all of the fake news stuff, and the whole elevator saga. That was all visual effects. We had a couple in 'Pamela Part 2,' when they were watching the shooting stars in Central Park. That was created by Brainstorm Digital (www.brainstorm-digi- tal.com). They are on 37th Street." What type of look are you going for with the color process? "Louie is very specific about preserving the look that they are seeing on-set. He doesn't like to make things look too pretty. He's fine with things being dark. In the 'Model' epi- sode, with the benefit in the Hamptons with Jerry Seinfeld, they are walking backstage and you will notice that it gets very dark at points. He felt it was important to leave it that way and not brighten it because that's how it really was at the location. "In Season 3, 'Daddy's Girlfriend Part 1,' he's in the girls' school walking down the hallway. When he went to the color correction, they made it look nice, but he was like, 'No! It had that shitty, terrible, green fluorescent light. We want it to look like that.' He really wants it to be as natural as possible." Talk about the finishing process? "We color the show on the Digital Vision Film Master. We color everything in Red log film, and we actually work in 4K, even though FX only requires an HD deliver- able. Louie is very cognizant of archival and the future. If you watch the show 20 years down the road, you want it to look as good as possible. We archive in 4K. Troy Thompson is the colorist and our dailies processor at Running Man." Ryan Cunningham (left) and Louie (below). PRIMETIME