Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/749700
PRIMETIME www.postmagazine.com 13 POST NOVEMBER 2016 been in the six-hour range, so this isn't that bad. Here, you are solely hunting for performance. You know it's there. Everything's there. This show is top notch across the board: the material, the script, the direc- tors — the actors are Emmy-winning. They are great. Everyone on it is awesome. It's our job just to find that great performance that lives there. We know it lives there, it's just finding it and putting it all together." With a three-editor team, how many shows are in the pipeline at any one time? Pavonetti: "It's a seven- or eight-day shoot, depending on which episode we're doing, and then it's usually about three or four weeks of editorial after that to get it to the air. Usually we have about four episodes. You'll have one of the editors finishing up an episode while they are starting dailies, and then the other two will be in 'cut land,' cutting, doing cuts for studio, network and producers." How do you two break up overseeing the post production? Pavonetti: "Honestly, I could not do any of these shows without Tim and everyone. I am on two shows right now. I am doing Pitch and This is Us for Dan (Fogelman). I spend most of my days mixing sound for the shows. Tim is running the video side, making sure to get with the different pro- ducers for color, getting vis effects approved and titling, and making sure of the online. He handles the video and I pretty much handle the sound, and then we kind of meet in the middle." Who oversees the initial editorial? Barker: "That's all Dan (Fogelman). Once he gets it to a place he is happy with, he'll sign off and we'll take it to Technicolor and start doing final touches, onlining, and I'll coordinate with our VFX house, and keep every- one on a realistic schedule to get the show delivered on time." So the initial editorial is being done at 20th Century Fox? Pavonetti: "We're actually on the Paramount lot. We have editorial suites here at the Paramount editorial building. We have six suites for the show — three for the editors, three for the assists. Six Avids. They do all their offline work here, like Tim said. Once Dan and the studio and net- work sign off on it, we do an online and color it, and then we drop in all our VFX. And then we go and title it. Meanwhile, while that's going on, I'm making the sound on the show, and getting that all done. Once every- thing is done, like today, we're going to layback a show and put sound and picture together…Technicolor is right down the street at Sunset Gower. It's really nice, we can actually ride our bikes there!" Can you talk a little bit about the looks of the different time periods? Pavonetti: "I worked with John (Requa) and Glenn (Ficarra) on this. The thing they're looking for is: they like the lens flares. They like the colors. They don't want all the backfill. They never want anyone to look bad. If the makeup is not perfect, we should go in and fix that. But at the same time, if the light is cutting someone's face in half, were OK with that, because that's what you'd see in reality. We are really going for the reality look of things. In some shows, they'll go to visual effects to fix that. We'll leave it in our show." What type of VFX does this show require? Barker: "Most of our VFX are stuff that you won't notice. We shoot in LA, obviously, but a lot of our story takes place in New York. We were replac- ing a lot of the alley backdrops with New York skyscrapers. There's a lot of clean-up work." Pavonetti: "Also, for a lot of the montages at the end, there's one that's coming up where it shows a man — and this is not a spoiler or anything — their ancestor, getting off a boat at Ellis Island. Obviously we couldn't go to Ellis Island and shoot that, so we put up a big greenscreen and shot it here on the backlot." Barker: "A matte painting was creat- ed and it came out great. Everyone was very happy with it." Pavonetti: "It's in Episode 5, which is pretty much my favorite episode right now." Who is handling the visual effects? Pavonetti: "CBS Digital is doing the bulk of it. Craig Weiss is a great guy." Has the show evolved since the pilot? Have you encountered anything unexpected? Pavonetti: "It is so what we expected. It is straight down the pipe. It is a fast- ball across the plate. It's a great show. It seems like other shows that Tim and I have done, as production goes on, it gets harder and harder for us. It seems that because the script and the acting is so good, some of the stuff that we put in post for vis effects, they take away because it's working so well is without having to use it…I've never had it happen that way, where we'll go to a production meeting and they say, 'We're going to do all this crazy VFX work,' and then they shoot it and are like, 'It kind of works without it. We don't need it anymore, it gets in the way.'" Barker: "Straight from the pilot, it's been a pretty easy show — not a lot of headaches." The soundtrack uses music to really add to the emotional elements. Can you talk about that? Pavonetti: "In the episode that just aired, Mandy sings a little song, and I am the one who is helping to produce all of those songs. We've got two songs with Mandy, and Chrissy did her 'Time After Time,' which was amazing. We are talking about putting out an album at some point." Barker: "Yes, Universal Music Group wants to put out an album. It's a big focus of theirs." Pavonetti: "It's great to have more than a pop star, but a true musical talent in Mandy Moore, and to find out another actress on our show has a great voice too. I love doing the music. It's one of my favorite parts of making television." How are the musical segments produced? Pavonetti: "With Mandy, we do a pre-record, because there are a lot of bands and stuff involved, so it's pret- ty complicated when we do Mandy singing on-camera. We'll record her ahead of time and what we'll do it put an earwig — the little thing that hides in her ear — and she sings along to what she's already done. It works out great." Any final thoughts? Pavonetti: "From the actors to the producers to everybody across the board, it's a great place to be. It's amazing to be on a show that is blowing up like this." Technicolor handles the show's online.