'Twas the Nightmare Before Editing!

Announcer: Welcome to Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.

Angry Man: Is this some kind of joke?

Unidentified Voice: Biagio, who is in this episode?

Biagio: It’s episode 128.

Unidentified Voice: Oh oh. So.

Biagio: Today we’re talking about three terrifying things that can get you in post-production the terror of losing work and how to save yourself when you do learning, when and how to pivot your entire production. The real purpose of a filmmakers style and editing question from a podcast listener named Justin. And way too many Halloween puns.

Unidentified Voice: Deadlines. Oh.

Biagio: Did you say dead music? Courtesy Dave Pelman music Dave Pelman.com. Hey everybody. She is joke.

Unidentified Voice: He’s Biagio.

Biagio: We’re married. We make unscripted film and television and want to help you do the same.

Joke: Hopefully by teaming up with us.

Biagio: And speaking of teaming up, I feel like we’re all teaming up to try to figure out how to have Halloween during this incredible time of Covid 19.

Joke: Seriously. They involve a lot of walks around the neighborhood looking up at the brave souls who are still putting up Halloween decorations. They will involve a zoom Halloween school party and. Maybe a candy treasure hunt in the backyard.

Biagio: Could be. Maybe. Yeah, it’s you know, I look, your guys are all going through too. It’s a crazy time, we know, but it is Halloween time. And every year we do our, you know, spooky episode. And this year’s is no different than it was actually inspired. Do you know who inspired a joke?

Joke: A very nice listener who wrote us a question.

Biagio: That’s right. A very nice podcast listener whose name is Justin. And he wrote in with a question about editing. And I realized, wow, editing is one of the most terrifying parts of the entire production process.

Joke: And it’s very clear to us this week when we got that question, because we start the edit on our next project on Monday with editors starting. So our assistant editors have already started and our story folks have started, but it’s like, are we ready? Are we ready to give this. To editors?

Biagio: It’s a mystery.

Joke: Only time will tell.

Biagio: I mean, I think we’re ready, but in case the network is listening, we got this.

Joke: We got. Oh, if the network is listening, we got this.

Biagio: We are. So. We so know what we’re doing. So anyways, Justin’s question, we’re going to actually get to it a little bit later in the episode before we dive in to spooky stuff about editing. A quick announcement. Now, we told you last time about our top secret new TV series that we’re not going to be able to tell you about for a while. We still can’t tell you about it, but.

Joke: We could. Tell you about the exciting new. Podcast series look Out. We’re producing! We won’t be the talent talking to you as we are here, but we have teamed up with the incredible Alexis Linkletter and Billy Jensen. Both are very successful true crime podcasters in their own right and investigative journalists, and we’ve worked with Alexis for close to six years. She’s done a podcast here with us.

Biagio: Yeah. Bad episode. I’ll link to it in the show notes.

Joke: Long time listeners. So you might know. Her.

Biagio: Know the Alexis Linkletter.

Joke: The Alexis the great Alexis. And so anyway, they are going to be doing an anthology series with us on the Long Island Serial Killer, which we’re super excited about.

Biagio: Yeah. And it’s actually in conjunction with Investigation Discovery, who obviously best known for television, some of which we’ve made. But this is like their first like big like push in the podcasts and really excited about it.

Joke: Very excited podcast is not launching until January, but they did just announce it. And so therefore we can share it. But yeah, we’re very much in the edit on that as well.

Biagio: We’re super excited. I’ll put the link to Deadline Hollywood in the show notes where it was announced, and and pretty soon we’ll be able to tell you about our upcoming TV series as well. All right. So coming back to today’s very spooky topic. Three terrifying things that can haunt you in post-production. The first one is something that every producer and editor and every person I know really hates. And what is that joke?

Joke: Deadlines. Oh.

Biagio: Did you say dead?

Joke: I see what you. Did there.

Biagio: You see what.

Joke: I did there? That’s clever. Yeah. Look, deadlines. Can also be a good thing. Let’s be honest. It’s, you know, sometimes my my favorite words when in the post-process is air date. Can’t keep messing with this forever. We have an air date, so that’s not bad, but. But there is this kind of, like, looming, terrifying deadline. You know, can we. Can we get it all figured out by the rough cut date? Can we get it all turned around by the fine cut? Can it all get locked? Can can we get it through color and mix and online all in time to, like, make that delivery date? There’s just something about, you know, once you hit post, it’s just deadline after deadline after deadline, like, it’s, you know, pre-production. It’s like the world is still wide open. We have all these big ideas. And then, you know, when you’re in production, it’s like, oh God, did we get it all? Okay. Like, what else is there? Did we get it all? Did we get it all? Okay. Let’s go. Let’s go try to get it all. And then you’re like, oh, there’s always like a production wrap party. When production wraps, everyone’s like, woohoo! And it’s like, no, man. The real work starts in post and then imposes nothing but deadlines.

Biagio: Yes. And you know, I love my wife.

Joke: I feel like there’s a butt coming here.

Biagio: No no no no no, there’s not. A butt coming. I love my wife because it’s not a but it’s because I love my wife because she handles deadlines very gracefully. I don’t, you know, listen, I think we all know I’m a little bit more of the wild, creative guy. You know, she manages to be creative and logistic all in one person, which is why she’s so sexy. Anyways, she definitely keeps me in line when I start to lose my mind. And I’m trying to, you know, if a lot of a lot of these shows I’m editing on as well as Epping and yeah, you definitely managed to keep me sane and remind me that it’s all going to be okay. Thank you for doing that.

Joke: I lie.

Biagio: It works.

Joke: I mean, what’s the famous deadline quote from Martin Scorsese? You never finish a project.

Biagio: You movie’s never finished, just abandoned.

Joke: Yeah. Certain point. You know, we need to have deadlines because as creative people, we could keep playing with and tinkering and all this stuff. You know, we can we can keep trying to improve it. So. So deadlines are the kind of necessary evil.

Biagio: Oh I see what you did there. All right. So that brings us to our second terrifying thing about post-production losing work. Oh. The worst. So here’s the thing. No matter how rock solid your post-production system is, your team, everybody working on it, you know, sometimes there’s just a ghost in the machine, so to speak, and things go wrong that you simply can’t account for.

Joke: That’s what that’s what the editors tell us. And then I remind them there’s a thing called the save function or autosave function.

Biagio: Well, we yeah, we really try to dummy proof it and make sure we have everybody’s autosave running. But, you know, listen, at some point in every production, something happens and something gets lost. It can be that a system goes down. It can be that an editor who thought they were saving to the right place was saving to the wrong place. Did things happen, you know, and you just got to kind of roll with it and, you know, another way of losing work, and I think you’d agree with me is a little bit more abstract, but it’s the idea that, you know, sometimes there is a breakdown in communication. It just happens.

Joke: Yeah. I’ll tell you how it happens when you have multiple editors working on the same project, and then they are like, okay, take so-and-so’s act three version and do our notes on it, and they do. And then you watch it and you go, wait, this isn’t the right act. And they didn’t take the latest act to do the notes on it. And so that is lost time, lost work, because now all those changes have to be redone on another act. And it’s just like, yeah.

Biagio: And again, that happens rarely, thank goodness. But the fact of the matter is people are human. We all make mistakes. Editors make a lot of mistakes. I can say that because I’m an editor.

Joke: But this is why you need a good post team. Like a good AI post team is super helpful in this. You know, if you think ahead and you do decent naming conventions with timestamps and all that stuff, then that can help avoid a lot of these issues. But like Biagio said, it happens. It happens to the best of us.

Biagio: And that’s also why, by the way, backup, backup, backup, like you always have to have your media in like four different places and at least three different locations. You have to duplicate all that footage that you shot for all those months because God forbid, the building burns down, you still got to finish the show. You know, anything could happen, right? We’re in California with these rolling blackouts. I never know what’s going to happen in at bay. Right? So you really got to make sure you’ve got your footage backed up, not just on site again in case there’s a fire. You don’t want your your system to burn down with your backup drive. You need to have offsite, you know, safe offsite places to keep your media as well. So losing work definitely something that can keep you up at night. But you know, plants like everything else, you got to plan for it. You got to go in with a plan and you got to know, okay, when everything falls apart. This is what we’ll do. And that brings us to our third terrifying thing. And.

Joke: The most scary one of all.

Biagio: The most scary one of all. And that’s facing the truth. Because, you know, the truth is scary.

Joke: Have you watched the news?

Biagio: Well, let’s not get into that. Oh my gosh. But but no. What do we mean by facing the truth is like you get back all the footage is in the system. Now we start putting it together. Did we actually get what we set out to get?

Joke: Did you get to goods?

Biagio: Did you.

Joke: Get it? Did you get it?

Biagio: You know, sometimes you get it, sometimes. You don’t. Sometimes you don’t know.

Joke: I think the thing is, is that Biagio has a saying, which I’m sure you took from somewhere, and maybe he’ll remember and credit. But is that a project comes together three times. You know, first in like, the creative process in scripted films is when you were writing it. And like, you know, a lot of what we’re doing is you’re researching and you’re trying to kind of like, oh, this is going to be the story. And then the second time is when you’re filming it and you’re like, yeah, you lean into the story and you follow story as it happens and you’re you’re getting all the stuff. Hopefully you the good stuff, and then you get to post and you realize, oh, you know, I thought that’s what the story was, but that’s not working. The story is actually this angle or this thing or, you know, you were really hoping this one scene, this one segment or this one thing was really going to like, you know, be the thing that you could, like, hang your hat on and it just kind of falls flat, you know, and you’re just like, oh, you know, what other pieces do I have? And then sometimes, well, I’d say a lot of times it’s a thing that, you know, you didn’t really maybe think about that much or you’re like, yeah, yeah, we got to get that. And then you’re like, wow, that turned out really good. So, you know, it’s it’s facing the fact that what you set out to do is most likely going to change. And then it’s just praying that you still got the goods.

Biagio: Yeah. You know, there’s a quote by Walter Merch. It was very, very famous old school film editor. And he basically said that style, your style, the way you put that production gather your style is how you hide a productions imperfections. And I think that’s such a cool statement because it’s true and not just in the literal as an editor, oh, I better make this flashy, because I got to hide the fact that this isn’t really exciting. But even in looking at story in a different way and coming up with different storytelling devices, different visual devices. Well.

Joke: You have to pivot, right? So if you realize you don’t have the goods because, you know, legal said, oh, you can’t use it that way, or, you know, you have something else. It’s like, okay, well, how do you pivot? How do you you have these pieces of your puzzle, you know, you have to now think bigger than the puzzle you thought you were going to make. So maybe there’s another puzzle. And so I always think back to dying to do Letterman. And at the very end of the movie that we made, we see we wanted to play Steve Mason’s fold, you know, David Letterman appearance, his full set, which was, what, like 5 or 6 minutes or something.

Biagio: Yeah, yeah.

Joke: And legal was like, yeah, you really should only use like one minute because we were using it. And so Biagio came up with this great idea of intercutting it with all of Steve’s kind of practice sets that he did at the different comedy clubs, which we shot and we owned. And so it became this really great, kind of like you see him practicing a joke, and then he’s landing the punchline on the Letterman set and like, it just came together really well. And the funny part is, is at all the film festivals, everyone was like.

Biagio: That was so brilliant, man. You guys really nailed that ending. I love how you cut that. That was so great.

Joke: And we’re like, yeah, that was not our original.

Biagio: Idea that.

Joke: That came about because again, legal was like, you can’t use all of it. So that’s kind of like when we talk about facing the truth. And do you have the goods and what Biagio said, which was the wall to merch quote, which is, you know, style comes about fixing those problems and, and that’s what it is like. Your project is the end result of how you were able to pivot to whatever problems came to you. So, you know, if you had a fast approaching deadline, if you lost some work and now that deadline was coming even faster, or if you realize you didn’t have the goods and you had to pivot like that is really your project is a culmination of how you handle.

Biagio: The scary part of post-production. By the way. Speaking of Dying and Letterman, if you haven’t seen it, and we were actually named recently named one of the ten best documentaries of all time about stand up comedy.

Joke: You sure.

Biagio: Were right.

Joke: I’m not.

Biagio: Sure that those are.

Joke: The exact.

Biagio: Words, but it was someone who gave us a really great.

Joke: Review and listed us with some.

Biagio: Really.

Joke: Big stand up comedy docs, including The Comedian with Jerry Seinfeld. So it felt like good company.

Biagio: To be in it. Did it? Did I think.

Joke: Maybe you should link to it in the blog post?

Biagio: You know what, I think I’ll link to it and I’ll link to it in the show notes. Oh, sorry. The show. Which you’ll be able to find at producing unscripted forward slash 128. 120. Eight because this is episode. One 128. All right. Well, listen, I think we should actually get to the thing that inspired this podcast in the first place. And that’s just this. And that’s Justin. Justin, wherever you are. Thank you for reminding us how scared we are of post-production.

Joke: And to be patient, to listen to this entire podcast to get to your answer.

Biagio: Yes. So I’m going to actually pull it up. I’m going to pull it up in the in the message that he sent. Should I do to.

Joke: The jeopardy theme song?

Biagio: Sure.

Joke: As we wait.

Biagio: Yeah.

Joke: Doom doom.

Biagio: Doom doom.

Joke: Doom.

Biagio: Doom doom. I’m really bad. That was good. Do you think we’re gonna have to clear that? Are the lawyers gonna let us use that? I didn’t. Use the whole thing. That’s true.

Joke: And I did use it in context.

Biagio: Yeah, I’d say it was.

Joke: Fair use. I gave him credit.

Biagio: All right, so here is I. Here is Justin again. Thank you, Justin, for waiting till the end of the episode. This was the question we actually got from Justin that spurred on this whole thing. He said, hi. Can you talk a bit more about String Out edits specifically? I’m wondering where you put B-roll, if it’s a linear edit, or do you have the B roll in parallel video tracks in the approximate place there slated to go? How does that work in your production pipeline at the string out stage? Oh. It’s a great question.

Joke: That is.

Biagio: A great question. And it really depends on the show you’re doing. Does it? I mean, to a certain extent, if it’s an if it’s unscripted television, I think that’s different than making a feature scripted film, right. Because a lot of unscripted. But we’re doing.

Joke: Producing unscripted. So I’m going to answer it from the unscripted standpoint.

Biagio: As well. You should.

Unidentified Voice: Which is.

Joke: We don’t put B-roll in string outs.

Biagio: Nope.

Joke: Here’s the thing. Editors don’t like going to look for bites that they know they have to find anyway, or that they know, like, it’s just so straightforward. It’s like, okay, from this time code to this time code, but.

Unidentified Voice: They love.

Joke: Finding their b roll. And so it’s one of those things where.

Biagio: I.

Joke: Guess if there’s something.

Biagio: Really.

Joke: Specific that we might be like, you know, hey, no need to go find it. This is the clip we’ll put it in. But really, we see string out edits almost as radio.

Biagio: Edits when we’re talking about string out edits. First of all, this is it’s not even quite a rough cut yet because you would never show this to the network. But the way that these string out adits work, or we call them radio edits, is they’re really driven by the sound of the interviews and any verité that you have. And then as far as the B roll goes, we just slate in this stage. We put in slates about like, this is my dream piece of b roll, or this is what I think should go. Here, right?

Joke: I think string outs in unscripted are really there to kind of help, you know, like lay the story out and see, you know, we often said, look, let’s put this on its feet. Right. It’s one thing to look at it on paper over and over again, but once you have it in a radio cut, you kind of see like, oh, okay, that person sounds good or that, that, that flows well.

Biagio: Speaking as an editor, I will tell you what you have to watch out for, especially in unscripted, is you don’t want to use B-roll as a crutch. It’s really easy to use beautiful, gorgeous B-roll to trick yourself into thinking, hey, this edits really working, and when you come at it from that angle, almost invariably your sound ups, your interview bites, you’re verité. They’re not telling the story as well as they could. So when you really focus on that, that audio first, that what what is this? How are we telling this story? How does it sound? And you get it to sound right without any B-roll, man. Then you are. You’re off to the races.

Joke: So I hope that answers your question.

Biagio: Justin. Yeah. Hey, Justin, definitely thanks for for reaching out with your question. And we’re going to send you a little joke production swag.

Joke: Anyone else has any questions? Send them our way. It might inspire us for another broadcast.

Biagio: It might. And maybe you’ll get some joke production swag. You can. You can always just hit us up on Twitter at Joke and Biagio. Or for those of you who are on the newsletter, you can always just reply to the newsletter. And I’m not going to lie, I do not personally check those. We have our assistant help us because we get a lot, but he makes sure that we are that we’re involved in the ones where we can be helpful. And this was one. So thank you so much Justin. Oh spooky Halloween. I feel like we lost the spooky thread there. Justin.

Unidentified Voice: You freaked me out.

Biagio: I’m so spooked. Anyways, thank you guys for listening. Listen, I know it’s a crazy time out there. I feel like we’ve said that the last five podcasts. Will it ever end? Well, it’ll it will it will end. You know, it’s going to be all right. And for those of you who are listening, we just want you to know we wish you the best. Good luck this holiday season. We know it’s going to be strange. A lot of people won’t be seeing their family members at all for safety reasons. Please stay safe. Please stay safe. We will be back next month with our final episode of 2020. And gosh, isn’t that nice to say joke final episode of 2020.

Joke: Of 20.

Biagio: 20 I.

Joke: Know, but you know, I’m just so afraid because I was really looking forward to 2020. And, you know, this dumpster fire has just been challenging. I’m afraid to have high hopes for 2021 because I feel. Like had I not put so much, you know, expectation on 2020, then maybe.

Biagio: It wouldn’t have been as bad. Really, you think, if you hadn’t, like, expected much and then a worldwide pandemic hit, you would have been like, oh, this. Is so bad. What I’m saying is, it’s all my fault.

Joke: Oh.

Biagio: Don’t be so hard.

Joke: On yourself, okay? All right. Well, I’m just keeping my fingers crossed for a better 2021.

Biagio: Figures crossed for us. Fingers crossed for you. Fingers crossed for a better 2021. And until next time, thank you for listening and.

Unidentified Voice: Talk soon. Producing unscripted. Joke and Biagio.