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www.postmagazine.com 29 POST FEBRUARY 2015 POST FOR REALITY TV 'MASTERING' THE COOKING SHOW EDIT LOS ANGELES — Charlie Ryan, lead editor on Fox's hit cooking competitions MasterChef and MasterChef Junior starring celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, knows a thing or two about the food show genre. An editor for more than 20 years on a number of variety shows, Ryan went to work on Wolfgang Puck's Food Network show for several seasons, where he won two Daytime Emmys for directing and producing before joining the MasterChef franchise in 2010. His duties on the two MasterChef series are varied, including finishing, editing key show acts and se- quences (season openers, finales, special elements, etc.), helping to develop show motifs (for instance, the very specific way the team edits music in the show), as well as creating guidelines for the other editors to follow. He even does the voiceovers for both series. But Ryan says the key to successfully editing an un- scripted cooking competition like MasterChef, with so many moving parts, is all about finding the story. "When we look at the show, it's like, 'Wow, we have a lot of things to cover,'" says Ryan. "Like any show, whether a drama or reality show, we look for the sto- ries. We look for which stories are the most involving, most emotional, most exciting. Those are the things you want to track. You break it down in that way and you follow the characters as they either succeed or falter, and I think that's the key." Ryan stresses that in doing so, the focus is really about sifting through the footage, honing it down and focusing on each character. "First and foremost, it's not so much about making a fast cut or about adding a bunch of effects to something, it's always about the characters in the show and just good storytelling," he says. "We don't feel like we need to make a jazzy montage somewhere because we haven't had one in a few minutes. We want to lock into that place, where we can just be good sto- rytellers and make sure that there are moments in that story that just land. We're not afraid of having a moment or two of silence or letting something play out that's more quietly edited — it's not always to pitch things at the same level or not to scream every moment but it's to present variety and surprise the audience." According to Ryan, his team, which can range anywhere from two to sometimes four editors, works on Avid Media Composers V.6.5 to complete 42-min- ute (MasterChef) and 43-minute (MasterChef Junior) shows, and then stores the "massive amounts of material" on an Avid ISIS. "It's a multi-camera show [Sony F800 XDCAM, Sony F3, Red Epic and GoPro Hero 3+ Black cameras], and we'll have, for the season of MasterChef we just finished, 19 one-hour episodes, plus between the two seasons of MasterChef Junior, we did 15 episodes, which are all in various stages. That's a lot of media that's going through all of these systems. So that [system] works really well for us. I suppose everyone says that, but it's because it works." Ryan says the biggest challenge he faces isn't a tight deadline or the environmental sounds of a noisy kitchen, but rather, the huge amount of footage ac- quired during production. "The producing on this show is so fantastic and the characters are so great, it's trying to include all that and not make anything seem rushed that's a challenge — getting that show down to show time and not lose the moments. But we're all just trying to make the best show possible. Here, everybody just really enjoys the show and we always want to surprise each other with how we treat things in a very special way and how we make that story really punch out and come forward. I think that comes across when you watch it; it has a good feeling about it." — BY LINDA ROMANELLO jungle, the Florida swamps — Manhunt has a reputation for extreme environ- ments. "We lost 25 cameras on the first series; I hope we don't do the same this year," says Eddie Barbini, executive producer for Discovery Studios (www. discoverystudios.com). The show's primary cameras are Sony PMW-EX3 XDCAMs, which prove to be "rugged, durable and easy to handle" in the tough conditions where Lambert tries to elude his trackers and reach a pre-de- termined extraction point. "We also use GoPro Hero 4s as the smaller cameras the producers run with in the field and Canon 5Ds," he says. "Last season we had a lot of intense heat and humidity. This year we have some extreme cold." Post production is done at Discovery Studios in Los Angeles, which has close to 45 Avid Media Composer edit bays. Four are devoted to Manhunt with one editor per show cutting concurrent with production. "When you take a run 'n gun approach there are no story producers taking notes; we run as lean and mean as we can in the field," Barbini says. "So you get back to the edit bay without really knowing what you've shot in the field. You go in with an idea of what you expect, but it takes quite a while to plow through the footage and find the nug- gets of the story." He explains that unlike some "reality" shows that actually follow scripted plot lines, "real reality shows are sculpted in the edit bay, where the pacing and the stories unfold. The exciting part is finding all the little moments that surprise you and that you can build from." All the Manhunt episodes have a dra- matic structure so "you always know how it will start but not how it's going to end," Barbini says. "In Act 1, you learn about the hunter force and the terrain, then the story unfolds organically." In the field are two DPs, one with Lambert and one with the hunter force, a sound recordist, and several field pro- ducers who fill multiple roles. "They're in great shape so they run along with Joel and the hunter force," says Barbini. "They also have great story instincts and are able to shoot, too." Discovery Studios runs daytime and nighttime shifts to ingest footage as it arrives. "A media manager in the field downloads cards, backs them up, sends us one drive and holds onto the other," CONTINUED ON PG 47