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lot with the best way to get into a scene," says Laroi. "The drawer being pulled out in Dinner Party or the gavel hit in [the Gavin Cutler- edited spot] House are smart visual cues that help the audience pop into the next scene. It's fun to edit with such great material." The very authoritative voiceover serves as a "sort of disconnect" with the action on screen, he adds. "It's not overtly broad, goofy or funny. It's a serious observer who's saying absurd things. That helps ground the humor." Tom Kuntz shot the DirecTV spots on 35mm film, which Laroi admits is "rare these days." He worked with low-resolution files for his offline on an Avid Media Composer. Co3/NY colorist Tim Masick did the color correction; Mackenzie Cutler conformed the first two rounds of the campaign, but these last three spots were finished at Method, which also did the VFX. Laroi notes that Mackenzie Cutler is gen- erally known as a comedy shop, although all five staff editors have also done serious work. "We all enjoy cutting comedy," he says. "We get to laugh a lot." However, cutting comedy can be "a real challenge. Sometimes you have to create the actor's performance. And comedy is very much a rhythmic thing: it has to be finessed and paced." He says, "the gut instinct you have when you first screen the dailies is so important. No one else has seen [the mate- and Street Luge reprise Maxwell the Pig, seen in an earlier spot crying wee-wee-wee all the way home while holding his trademark spinning pinwheels in the back seat of a car. Max is back in all his porcine adorableness in the pair of clever spots from The Martin Agency/Richmond, which find him pursuing new adventures. Editor Tom Scherma of NYC's Cosmo Street (www.cosmostreet.com) is no strang- er to working with animals and animation. Maxwell comes in somewhere between the two, being an amazingly detailed and flexible animatronic created by Legacy Effects of San Fernando, CA, directed here by Brian Lee Hughes of Skunk/NY and Hollywood. The comedy springs from the infectiously charming character of Maxwell and the outrageous situations he gets into: experi- encing "pure adrenaline" as he zooms past a man on a parallel zip line and racing to vic- tory as a human street luger crashes into a wall of hay bales. Scherma was lucky in having actual perfor- mances from Maxwell to work with. "He was pretty special for a puppet: There was a lot of animation in his performances," he says. "I've had a lot worse to deal with from some actors, Maxwell I had plenty of material and no shortage of the right looks. Because we were so dependent upon the action, it was just a well choreographed, but there were bits we could play with give more silliness to certain zones," he says. DP Paul Cameron used an Arri Alexa camera to shoot the animatronics, capturing a lot of the zip line and street luge action in camera. "I hadn't cut that kind of footage before," Scherma notes. "It was fun to see what could be done in camera." Co3/NY's Tim Masick did the color cor- including non-professionals. With rection for both commercials; Click 3X/NY handled the VFX and conform. Scherma's career has been marked by comedy and dialogue-driven spots, and that experience has fueled the pace at which he cuts humor. But he admits that by the end of the work day, what's perceived as funny "can get a little blurred." When that happens, "it's usually a good thing to stay with your gut" and what made you laugh in the first place, he advises. "As you get into the building of the spot, you almost need to step back, reevalu- ate what you're doing and trust your gut." But it's equally important to remain open to ideas from the client and agency. "You're caught up in the corkscrew process of edit- ing and they're looking fresh at what you've done — something new and funny can jump out at them," he notes. Scherma says "the craft of editing is fun in itself," so cutting comedy is icing on the cake. "Well-written and well-shot scripts never get Cosmo Street's Mike Scherma had some fun with Maxwell the Pig and Geico. DirecTV's "Get Rid of Cable" campaign was cut on Media Composer at Mackenzie Cutler. rial] the way you're seeing it. Our advantage as editors is coming in totally unbiased and looking at it fresh." The editor also knows "when the time is right to bring in other people, to present to the director and agency and start to bounce around ideas," says Laroi. "Inevitably, there will be ideas you never thought of before. But you have to trust yourself and the people around you to not overwork it. With comedy you have to know when to not over-think it and leave it alone." GEICO'S MAXWELL THE PIG Promoting Geico's mobile app, Zip Line choreographed dance to get the spots to do what they had to." The spots' concepts and writing were "really well done. The scenarios they put Maxwell in — the absurdity of them — had a smile attached to them. And the anima- tronics made you see the pig in a human-like way. This was a project that worked before it came into the edit room." Scherma cut footage of Maxwell, clean background plates of his environments and audio of the pig's joyful squeals on his Avid system. Don't underestimate the importance of Maxwell's wee-wee-wee soundtrack, expressing his delight in the moment. "It was boring. They're always a fun process. When you're presented with so many possibilities it elevates your game." DOS EQUIS' "MOST INTEREST- ING MAN IN THE WORLD" Jeff Ferruzzo of NYC's Outside Edit + Design (www.outsideedit.com) remembers when he saw the makings of the first "Most Interesting Man in the World" spot for Dos Equis beer half-a-dozen years ago. "It was a small regional campaign that took off — the campaign was so well received after that first spot; they just loved it." Since then, Euro RSCG Worldwide/NY www.postmagazine.com Post • August 2012 35