This video is brought to you by Music Vine. Get 5 high-end music tracks free by clicking the link in the video description. "Hey, how's it going?" "Good to see you!" This is Josh. He's an editor on Starz' stand-out show "Counterpart", with Academy Award winner J. K. Simmons. "Hi, Howard." Josh: "This is us. It's not glamorous!" Sven: "Nice! I can feel the history!" Josh: "We're the first ones here this morning." Josh also cut on House of Cards and Bloodline. I wanted to shadow him to see what it's like to edit some of the biggest shows in television. Sven: "Oh, wow." I wanted to see how Josh works with specific scenes, but I also wanted to put my focus around five questions. Josh: "This is the office of my assistant, Ambar, who's not in yet. And this is where I am." Josh: "There's a lot of stuff going on. There are different locations of action, you have up in the balcony, you have down below the stairs, you have the police coming in; there are a lot of different, little pieces to juggle that are all happening at the same time. It's an example of a sequence that got worked on a lot. You're like "Oh, that's the scene that everyone's gonna be sick of, hearing that coming out of my room. Like... all season. Very late in the process, I presented an idea of playing the shot on Howard and not showing her get shot." "The emotional moment is her death, and Howard's reaction, it isn't about the action of her getting... you know, this isn't an action movie in that sense, right?" This is part spy thriller, part Science fiction drama where Simmons plays a low-level office worker at the United Nations agency in Berlin, only to discover that it's really a gateway to a parallel world. Josh: "So it's our world, and then you go through a portal to come out the other side, and there's another version of the world that looks very much like our own. And at one point they were the same, and over time they've been slowly diverging. And that goes for everybody, so Howard Silk meets his counterpart, his other on the other side, who is very different than he is." Howard Silk: "I wanna know how you became so different." "Shh." Josh: "This is when Howard faces off against himself, basically, in this room. This is like where you might visit a prisoner, and it's just the two of them having it out. It's a scene that I'm most... proud of. And so the dailies for this are these very long takes. This is an almost 9-minute take, just of, you know, J. K. Simmons. The only other thing I've got is the other J. K. Simmons on the other side, and the only action that is part of the scene is the fireworks, the drama, the exchange of dialogue between the two characters. Howard: "They're all on that side, now on false visas. So, we thought you should know." Prime: "We?" "Yeah, maybe you thought it would be someone else sitting here. Maybe your ex-wife." Josh: "It was helpful to really just map that out and know what each section was moving toward, each turning point." Sven: "Do you map that out on the actual script?" Josh: "First I'll map it out on the script, I'll take the script and I'll break it down into beats. I'll draw a red line in between each beat, where I think each turning point is. Just going into some of my first cuts of this... So I'd arrange it in these chunks. So the first chunk is: He comes in, he sits down, they have their initial exchange, and then things change, because he says Howard: "They're all on that side, on false visas. So... we thought you should know." Prime: "We?" Josh: "Now, that we, within the context of the scene, has significance. That's a turning point. They were talking about their spy business or whatever, their intel that they got... but now it's turned, and now they're talking about their wife. Now the conversation takes a new... "You thought I would be someone else sitting here." Josh: ..."direction." Howard: "Your ex-wife, maybe. The one you told me died of cancer." Josh: "And so I lay all the stuff out about the wife, and then it's gonna turn again." Howard: "I'm looking." Josh: "So now it's been a handoff, like Howard sort of drove that section, and now Prime, he stood up to leave but he's not gonna get out of the room because he's gonna go back at him." Prime: "Not long ago I sent you over there." Josh: You know, and now he's got his... now he's driving him, and he's moving it forward. And Howard Silk is sitting there taking it, so again that's another chunk, that's another idea within the scene. And so I just broke it down just going throughout the whole thing, and then I began refining and building each individual section. So, I don't have to keep the entire thing in my brain, and I don't have to feel overwhelmed by a 9-minute take. Then I can start enjoying myself. But until that happens... it's the worst. (laughs) Because again, each one of these is 9 minutes." Sven: "How long did it take you to cut that scene? Like to do a first presentable cut?" Josh: "Two days." "Until it comes through this room, it is not recognizable as a movie or tv show. It's just a jumble of footage to anybody else. This is where what my mom would recognize as a tv show materializes. And I get to be at the very center of that. And so that's very exciting." Primer: "We really shouldn't be here." "Thanks for the intel, I'll look into it." Howard: "Is there just any truth to you?" Josh: "This scene was so great because there was no problem to fix. You're just watching 9 minutes of J. K. Simmons do his thing really well." Sven: "I find it interesting how his voice is different between the two." Josh: "Oh, I mean, he's... like, everything about what J. K. Simmons did... I remember when I interviewed for the job, there was some discussion about: How do we differentiate between the two? And editorially, what did I think of that?" Prime: "You're enjoying yourself with my family?" Howard: "They hate you." Josh: "And I gotta say, I said at the time: "I would guess you're not gonna have to do that much. Because J. K. Simmons is gonna do it for you. It is gonna be clear by the way he moves and walks and talks, who we're looking at." Prime: "How much denial do you have to be in to continue to idealize her the way you do?" Howard: "I know my wife." Prime: "What? I'm sorry, I don't think I caught that." Josh: "And the director gave me everything that I needed, and it was well-written, it was just like "Okay, this is all good." How do we just get the best out of this, you know?" Sven: "Yeah. How does he, by the way, do the playing himself? Do they read the lines... (...)? Josh: "Yeah, so it's actually one of two ways, it's kind of interesting. This was shot just for the back of J. K. Simmons' head. He's playing opposite his double." Sven: "So that's his double..." Josh: "Right? And so he's just giving him timing, he's giving him an eyeline, it's giving him something to see." Sven: "So is the double an actor or just a dude?" Josh: "You know, I've never met him, he does well, I mean it's not like he's just there; he's giving J.K. Simmons something to react off of. Yeah, and then they'll flip around they'll shoot... the front of J. K. Simmons, and then we got in the back the double's head. And of course they would have shot the back of J. K. on this side and we just marry him up." Sven: "Can we listen to one of those interchanges, how that plays?" Josh: "Sure. In the raw dailies?" Sven: "Yeah." Josh: "Yeah." Double: "Three names for you. Oskar Wolfe, Helen Moller," Josh: "So that's just the double going, right?" Double: ..."we've been helping you." Prime: "We", again. You have feeling for her, Howard?" Josh: "So... There's another scene I can show you." Sven: "It's amazing how J. K. Simmons' voice is already this powerful without anything in the sound mix." Josh: "Yeah! It's true." "I can show you how this gets built... This was a cool shot." Before we move on to the next scene, I want to take a brief moment to thank Music Vine for their support. All music tracks used in the video come from their awesome library, and Music Vine is offering you five free web licenses for pre-selected tracks right now if you sign up by clicking the link in the video description. In addition, they are offering a 50% discount on your first license purchase from a special playlist I created for you, so do check that out as well when you click the link. Now back to Josh. Josh: "I can show you how this gets built. This was a cool shot where you've got the double and he crosses himself, and the camera pulls back to get a sense of this room, and it's like, well, how do you marry that up? The way they do this, it's a motion-controlled camera, so they program the move. Once they decide on the hero, like "okay, this gonna be our lynchpin", then they'll repeat it with J. K. now playing where the double was, this will be the exact same camera move as what I just played before. And they'll leave the double there, because they need him to cross, so they need a clean piece of him. And then, on our end, we did a very rough comp that looked like this. My assistant did this. Howard: "I'll make up the couch for you." Sven: "That's a keyframed animation?" Josh: "Yeah, she just roto'd it out. Do you wanna see the before? Sven: "Yeah, yeah!" Josh: "This offline media is all the effect shots that ultimately got done. So you can see where it gets matted out. And you can see, when they cross it obviously gets fuzzy. But for the purpose of evaluation and to see how it all goes together, you get the idea. Sven: "Yeah. And then how did they do the shot? They do it in After Effects in-house or do you... (...)" Josh: "No, it gets sent out. So this became a shot for our visual effects vendor, so I needed to sort of build these, however rough, as I went, to make sure; and then I would hand out the sequence off, much to my assistant's dismay, I'll be like: "OK I have another version. You can clean up the comps and make it look nicer." Sven: "So you are the assistant editor for Josh? (Ambar affirms). Sven: "And how is it working with Josh?" Ambar: "It's great. It's really great." Sven: (laughs) Ah, okay. That's the safe answer.
Amber: "I really like him." Sven: "So, hat' your main job?" Josh: "She's gonna check sync, she'll get paperwork from the script supervisor, camera reports, sound reports, everybody's listing what was shot and she needs to make sure that what she's giving me is everything that was shot, because I don't wanna end up in here with the director saying "Hey, how come you didn't use this?" And I'd be like: "I don't know what you're talking about, I didn't see that." That's embarassing for me, it's bad, I need to know. So that's a really important job, it's that reconciliation that happens in the morning on ingest into the system." Josh: "We work on shared storage. My assistant sees the same project tree. I have a folder called "Scenes to cut" and I have a folder called "Scenes". One she has prepped a scene for me, she puts that bin into "Scenes to cut" and lets me know that a given scene is ready. "Sven: Feature? Okay, nice." Josh: "Some editors might work like this, in script mode or in list view or... I don't know. Every editor in Avid is gonna organize their bins differently. But everything gets group-clipped, so here's an A and B camera and then here's the group clip of those two shots, and this is like a Mickey Mouse ears. So I'll keep both up and they're arranged in this sort of upside-down triangle configuration. Visually, I can look into this bin and I can get sort of a top overview of the setups. This is a bigger one, maybe... Again: Here's my master, here are these medium shots, I have these reverse angles on him... Sven: "Do you ever use these to actually cut or do you always cut from this one?" Josh: "I'll almost always cut from the group clip, there's no reason not to in Avid. Sven: "So it's just a visual reminder to you that there are two angles and what they look like?" Josh: "Exactly. If all I had in my bin, where all my group clips- because some people just put the group clips in, some people don't want this much stuff in their bin. But I like it, because I don't have to load this clip and flip back and forth between the angles to see... Sven: "It's actually a great tip, I don't use that. Now I will." Josh: ..."I like that." Sven: "And it feels very contained too, which is nice. It feels like... this scene, I can... like, easily grasp what I have." Josh: "Yeah. This is definitely one nice thing about the Avid in that the bins, unlike in Premiere or whatever, they're really free flowing, it's really like a pallet and you can arrange it however you want. Most editors I know, some version of this is their default (...)"
Sven: Do you ever do select reels or that's it?" Josh: "It depends on the type of scene that I'm cutting. If it's a dialogue scene that's very performance-based, I don't do select reels. If you want, I can kinda take you through how I do it. This is what a scene might look like when I first put it together; real simple. Just pretty much, for the most part, we're talking about straight cuts. Woman: "Tell me I'm missing, Howard. Would you fill me in, please?" Josh: "This is sort of like a selects reel in order of the scene." Woman: "Midnight station called me two hours ago." Josh: "Takes that I liked, readings that I liked." Howard: "In your department?" Woman: "I don't know..." Howard: "Who, housekeeping?" Woman: "Could be. Could be fourth floor." Josh: "Some of it is gonna end up working okay, some of it won't. I'm not really worrying about matching or audio glitches or whatever. I'm just trying things out. So here's a scene that has a lot of coverage,
right? I don't like first cuts. So I usually watch all the dailies, and then I'll just say "screw it", I'm just gonna grab the last take. And it sort of depends on the director because some directors, it becomes very clear that they're very specifically going for something, like after you watch the dailies, you see that they're driving to something specific. And then they'll usually get that by the second-last take, maybe second to last take is maybe the one because maybe the last take was just sort of like "Okay, let the actors try something or whatever, for safety." It doesn't really matter yet. I know the coverage, and I'll come up in my head with sort of a design for the scene. What's the most important thing, and I'll just load the last take of each setup, and I'll just sort of drive through each one, and I'll cut in like "Oh, I like that reading there, and I'll drop it in" and then I'll load the next last take, and I'll go "Okay, I'm probably gonna go to the close here." You know, for this moment, I'll build that
in. I end up with just a rough approximation of the shape of the scene. That's where it gets me over the hump, and then I go back, I'll start finessing it, and that's when I go into the other takes to find better versions of what I'm doing. The most important thing is just to... move." I asked Josh how to become a TV editor and I'm gonna get to that in just a second. But there were many more topics that we talked about. If you click over on Patreon, I'll have two additional videos. One is gonna be for free, you don't have to sign up, and it's gonna be specifically how I worked with music in this episode in conjunction with Music Vine. "I'm gonna just turn off what he says, and then I'm gonna have to fill this sound hole here eventually." The other video is questions that the Patreon members had directly for Josh. Sven: "Chris wants to know: What's the software you use?" Josh: "Avid." Sven: "How do you see the future?" Josh: "I see the future, within my corner,..." Sven: "How do you deal with the crazy short turnovers?" (Josh laughs) Sven: "Are you involved at all in pre-production? Do you have any interaction with the director?" Josh: "So, in TV it's a little different than in features..." Sven: "How do you deal with notes that you disagree with?" Josh: "That's a good question." Do check out the Patreon community. And with that, let's find out what's the best to break into TV editing. Josh: "If you wanna work in television specifically, you need to become an assistant first. It can happen without doing that, but I think that is the exception that by no means proves the rule. But if you want to work on TV shows, on HBO, or Netflix, or Starz or whatever, there's still gatekeepers and the way you get in is by being an assistant. Now how do you become an assistant? Well, first you have to know the tools, that part, you know, is relatively easy. And then you just have to get in the mix. I didn't start doing this, I started cutting weddings. And I actually learned a lot. If you want someone difficult to please, it's like... and unhappy bride and her mother. That led into corporate work, then that led to a guy that had an old, good friend who just so happened to be a television editor. And he said "I can put you in touch." And I worked with him for a number of years, he mentored me basically. A really talented editor, Scott Vickery. And then I ended up working with a lot of his editor friends and assisting for them, I did that for about five years. In the meantime, I was trying to cut whatever I could. My first real break, like my first real credit, came about because of a PA that I had worked with as an assistant. "You got a, you know... you got a...
"Yeah..." Josh: "And so you just never know where that door is gonna crack open. So be nice to the PA that you work with." Sven: "Very nice, thank you." Josh: "Thanks Sven, I hope it's good." It's a real treat to be able to see work in progress. A big, big thank you to Tammy Ann Casper from MRC, Justin Marks, Todd Brown and the people at Starz for letting me hang out with Josh and allowing us to take a closer look at some scenes. Do let me know in the comment section if you like this type of content, watching editors or any other type of filmmakers at work. Don't forget to check out the link to Music Vine to get your five free music tracks and I thank you for watching.
This was fantastic. My favourite kind of information about cutting, and probably the hardest to actually find. Thanks for sharing!
super cool, very informative as I havent cut any long form drama. Its clearly the most complicated!
The mickey mouse way of laying out the multi cam and takes is nice... wish premiere could organise shots like that in bins (can it?)
As an editor in Television, I have to say this is the best most accurate walk through I have yet to see. Superb job.
Amazing video with just the right amount of promotion. One thing I wanted more of was the actual workflow, but I understand that it's a process difficult to explain on the spot. Thanks for the video!
Great watch, thanks for sharing
Really cool! Fascinating to get that kind of candid look into the process.
This is cool. It really is. But there's no denying he's got a bad case of editor-fedora-syndrome.
Cool!
Super weird, a buddy of mine is an assistant on that show and I had no idea until I saw this!