NEWS
Primetime Post Masters
MPEG Winners at the 60th Creative Emmy Awards
by Laura Almo photos by Craig T. Mathew/Mathew Imaging
 Lynne Willingham, A.C.E. |
Lynne Willingham
Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Drama Series:
Breaking Bad, “Pilot”
Lynne Willingham, A.C.E., and her husband, Chris Willingham, A.C.E.,
may just be one of the few couples to individually win an Emmy Award
in the category of Single Camera Editing for a Drama Series.
Chris has won three Emmys for 24, while Lynne Willingham garnered
her first Emmy for the pilot of the surprise hit Breaking Bad,
a show that takes its name from a Southern colloquialism meaning to
take a turn off the straight and narrow path.
Editors Guild Magazine: What did it feel
like to win an Emmy?
Lynne Willingham: Well, the funny thing is that neither my husband
nor I reacted immediately because we didn’t think it was me.
EGM: Who did you think it was?
LW: I don’t know. It takes you a minute to click into
gear that they’re actually calling your name––so
it was really kind of surreal. I mean, it’s just one of
those drop-out moments where I wasn’t sure it was me.
EGM: Were you expecting to win?
LW: I had watched all the shows that were up for Single Camera Editing
to see what the competition was, and I thought that anybody could
win out of this group. They were all really good, so it was
not a sure thing.
EGM: Why do you think you won?
LW: I think it’s because the show has so many different aspects
of editing in it––we had comedy, drama, some action, some
glitz––and I think that it showed more styles of editing.
Maybe that just pushed it over to the other side. Plus the fact
that Breaking Bad is just such a good show, and it had been
getting a lot of critical acclaim even before the Emmys.
I also think that AMC really takes its shows to heart with its pocketbook,
and it put a lot of money into advertising, which is a big deal.
You can cut the best show in the world and if nobody sees it or nobody’s
heard of it, then nobody’s gonna watch it.
EGM: You edited both the pilot and the series; what’s
the difference?
LW: No one knows what to expect from a pilot. There’s
more money and sometimes there’s more time on a pilot.
You either get the best of everything or it really falls flat.
So we got the best of everything in the pilot. It’s shockingly
good. It’s so thick with story and it’s got the
best actors I’ve ever worked with, including Bryan Cranston,
Anna Gunn, Aaron Paul, Betsy Brandt, Dean Norris and RJ Mitte.
To come out of the gate with a pilot that works that well sort of
keeps it a notch above.
EGM: What were the challenges of editing the pilot?
LW: It’s funny because for me there weren’t a lot of challenges.
There were little challenges that really didn’t affect me.
Probably our biggest challenge was with the music. AMC is very
involved with the show, especially the music, and they didn’t
care for the music we selected when we first presented it and so they
wanted to bring on a music supervisor. We brought on Thomas
Golubic, who had done Six Feet Under. He really steered us in
a different direction with the music and everyone was very happy with
it. I would say that film-wise, it was as smooth as glass; music-wise,
we were a little bit challenged, but it was certainly fixed.
EGM: What was it like working with writer-producer
Vince Gilligan?
LW: It was so much fun to be working with Vince
again and on such a good film. We’d worked together on
The X-Files and, because we had a long-term relationship prior to
the pilot, we have this shorthand with each other. If there
were certain specific things he wanted while he was shooting, he would
send me a note or I would e-mail him. But he pretty much let
me go on my own until he got back from production––then
he was involved in every aspect of the show. We would just kind
of bounce things off each other. You develop a shorthand with
people with whom you work lot.
EGM: Was there anything particularly enjoyable about working
on this?
LW: We’ve got a really great team creatively and the other editors
are wonderful. Kelly Dixon was my assistant on the pilot and
she was moved up to be one of the editors on the series. Gina
Scheer, our associate producer, and Chip MacDonald, one of the editors
on the series, are wonderful. And I must say that AMC and Sony
were supportive throughout. l
Laura Almo is a freelance writer and documentary filmmaker, as
well as an editing teacher. She can be reached at lauraalmo@mac.com.
 Photo by Carolyn Brandon-Ciup |
Outstanding Technical Directing
for a Series: Dancing with the Stars
Technical director Charles Ciup was working the Creative Emmys broadcast when he heard his named called as the winner. He describes the experience as a mixture of terror and relief. While he’s been working as a technical director for 20 years, this was the first time he had to put his own face on screen.
Editors Guild Magazine: When they called your name,
how did it feel to win the Emmy?
Charles Ciup: I was working the show at the time that it occurred. They had set up a small camera in the booth just for the eventuality that that might happen. My mind just went completely blank. I didn’t thank my wife; I didn’t thank the associate director, Kate Moran, who is absolutely crucial to the success of what we do here on the show. Without her, we would be completely lost. I managed to thank the director, Alex Rudzinsky, and I thanked the camera crew.
EGM: Was this your first time winning an Emmy?
CC: Yes, it was my first time. I had no idea what it was going to feel like. I’ve been around these things for decades but this was a completely different experience.
EGM: What was special about this episode of Dancing with the Stars that won?
CC: There were two performances by Queen Latifah that were really good and, of course, one of the things that helps this show win is the dancers, because they really are sensational. The camerawork on those performances was really good too, especially the work of Hector Ramirez, our Steadicam operator.
EGM: What were some of the challenges of this episode?
CC: The challenges in this episode were the same as most episodes––the sheer number of shots. I have about 500 shots in every show just for dance. We might do ten dance performances in a show and I’ll have 30 to 50 shots in each one.
EGM: This is all going out live, so how do you get the shot at the right moment?
CC: We have ten cameras and each one might have four or five shots in each dance number. Kate Moran, the associate director, is sitting there counting the beats of the music and I’m counting along with her. I’m cutting the cameras according to the beat that the director has worked out. It’s like playing a musical instrument.
EGM: Is there a way to prepare for any of this in advance?
CC: Alex, the director, is like the composer of the piece. He’s decided what cameras he wants to see at which point in the music, and he’s determined what shot that camera should be on, and we’ve marked all of this down on the script.
EGM: This is a live show but it’s scripted. Explain how that works.
CC: Alex would have taped and watched the dancers perform the routines. He also would have decided where he’s going to do the close-ups and wide shots; He builds the show and then we rehearse it. We record the rehearsal, and then Alex will adjust where he wants the shots because the dancers may change their routine or he might decide the shot he had in mind didn’t work so he’ll stage another one. By the end of the rehearsal day, we pretty much have a dance piece that is not going to change more than a beat or two by the time we go to air.
EGM: And the live show?
CC: Between the associate director and myself, we’ll cut the shots that the director has already scripted and he’ll watch. If he sees that it’s not working out, he’ll jump right in and call some shots. For the most part, he lets it develop the way he initially directed it.
EGM: Is this a common way to work?
CC: I’d never worked under that kind of system. Alex is an English director and I have to say that for dance, it works fantastically. You can get some really, really creative stuff happening in a live show that you don’t need to go to post-production to get.
EGM: That sounds like a lot of fast thinking. What happens when the show goes into post-production?
CC: When it’s gone to post-production, that’s the satisfying part of the job. You walk away from there going, wow, that was really something. That’s really a testament to how carefully Alex builds his stuff. It’s also a testament to the dancers themselves, who have managed to re-create their routine time after time––and pretty much hit it the same way every time––and also to the audio mixer, Evan Adelman, who mixes the live orchestra for all the songs. It’s really an amazing show. l
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and Chris McGeary
Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series: Smallville, “Bizarro”
Supervising sound editor Michael Lawshe and music editor Chris McGeary
have been working together on the Smallville series since
it began in 2001. This is the third Emmy for the Lawshe and
McGeary duo, who have some 40 years of music and sound editing experience
between them. While the technology has changed, emotional impact
still rules the day, and it still comes down to this: If you can close
your eyes and know where you are, then they have done their job.
Editors Guild Magazine: This is your third Emmy for Smallville.
How does it feel?
Michael Lawshe: It was actually a bit of a surprise, but it was great.
Chris McGeary: No, we were up against some pretty tough competition.
EGM: So why do you think you won for this one?
ML: There was a lot of detail in it and some really great mixing from
Dan Highland and Gary Rogers, our mixers on the show.
EGM: Was there a scene or something particularly notable about
this episode?
 Chris McGeary |
CM: Yeah: big effects, big action, big everything. It’s
a pretty complicated show week in and week out. Pretty large
events happen on a regular basis and it takes a lot of time and a
lot of detail to really pull those out and make them sound the best
they can.
EGM: Can you give some examples from the Bizarro episode?
ML: There are about five really big scenes that start in the middle
of a dam breaking and smashing through everything. There was
a bridge that was breaking away, a car that was going underwater and
two superheroes––our lead character, Clark, fighting Bizarro,
a copy of himself––who are throwing each other across
the room and into different pieces of equipment…just great
big stuff.
EGM: Describe the process of creating the sound/music design.
ML: We go through the entire show inch by inch trying to build action––sometimes
music and sometimes sound effects. During the mix, we sweeten
the important story points with extra music and extra sound effects.
That happens on the stage when we finally see how it all comes together.
If the camera is dwelling on something that’s an important story
point we’ll go through and re-edit the piece. We’ll
kind of turn the attention of the audience toward what’s important
in the scene.
CM: We try to catch the emotional pace or beat, try to catch all the
different feelings in the episode.
EGM: How do you make those decisions?
ML: We work as a team in that way; Chris and myself and Mark Snow,
the composer. We’ll say, “You take this part for
the emotional value, and we’ll have the sound effects take this
part.”
EGM: How do the two of you work together?
CM: Most importantly, we want to stay out of each other’s way
on the mix––and then complement each other as much as
we can. When Mike has a big effect, I really want to clear out
some room so his stuff can play through. And he clears out for
me when we have a big emotional music moment.
EGM: What were some of the challenges of this show?
CM: In that particular episode, we had a lot of really, really cool
visual effects that we didn’t see until the very last second.
We had to do a lot of building right there on the stage to make it
work––that was a big challenge, one of the biggest of
that episode.
ML: Also, we have more work to do in dialogue than we used to because
the sets are getting older; every time you push a camera across the
set, it snaps and pops like you’re going across popcorn.
Jessica Dickson, the dialogue editor, goes through removing all the
noise. There are places that we have to fill, manufacture, sweeten
and make clean that are nowhere near clean when we start.
EGM: What do you enjoy about your work?
CM: I enjoy the whole creative process–– going in and
seeing a raw picture and then sitting down and figuring out musically
how we can tell the story the best we can. I enjoy the work
on the stage where we do the editing, and I enjoy working with Mike
because he’s such a creative individual.
ML: We are happy to work with such a good crew. The Foley crew,
Casey and Michael Crabtree, have been on the show since the pilot
and they do an amazing job.
CM: And we have really good producers who allow us and trust us to
do our jobs. They let us bring a creative process to the screen,
so it’s really a great working atmosphere. l
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and Scott Weber
Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Comedy or Drama Series (One-Hour)
Lost, “Meet Kevin Johnson”
Working on a ProTools Icon, mixers Frank Morrone (music and dialogue)
and Scott Weber (sound effects and Foley) often work with upwards
of 200 tracks to create the sound and feel of Lost.
Editors Guild Magazine: How did it feel to win the Emmy?
Frank Morrone: I kind of went blank because we already had been nominated twice before, and I was not really expecting it––but when they did call our name we were both ecstatic.
Scott Weber: I don’t think it hit me until the announcer was halfway through starting to read off the names. I sort of had the feeling that maybe this was the year for us.
EGM: Why do you think you won?
SW: It’s a small community and things are obviously judged for their audio content, as it should be, but I think there’s a little bit involved with people knowing who you are and what kind of work you do. We’ve had a little more exposure now, going into our fifth season.
EGM: What stood out about this particular episode?
SW: It was a pretty complex show, like most of our shows are, and it had a lot of pretty effects-intensive scenes. We had a few scenes that we spent a lot of time building environments and backgrounds.
EGM: Any particular examples?
SW: We had a whole pier scene that had a lot of activity happening. We spent a lot of time panning things around and creating a real interesting sound environment. We also had a big car racing through town and crashing into a wall, which was exciting with music and sound effects.
FM: With that particular scene, we were playing with perspectives and going from a music source in a car to the score. Playing all the perspectives is always a lot of fun in an action scene.
EGM: What were some of the challenges of this show?
SW: Most of our shows are all shot on location. We always have interesting issues with production sounds because it’s supposedly on a deserted island––and yet where they’re shooting it is actually near freeways and airports and all kinds of things. So there’s a lot of work that Frank has to do with cleaning up some of that production sound.
EGM: Talk about the challenges of dialogue mixing.
FM: Every show is very, very challenging because the dialogue comes in in fairly rough shape and needs quite a bit of cleaning. As Scott had mentioned, they’re shooting on the beach, and right behind the beach is a highway and there’s an airport nearby. There was also a scene on a freighter where the freighter was supposed to be standing still, but you could hear a motor running! We had to clean out a lot of engine noises.
EGM: Talk about building sound environments.
SW: The show has a lot of flashbacks and flash-forwards where it goes to different
places anywhere around the world. It could be in Korea, Germany or the mainland of the United States. We always have to create the right feel and sound for these different environments.
EGM: You both have a music background, how does this help you?
SW: I think with anything in sound, it’s helpful to have a music background, because if you’re used to blending the balances of instruments and vocals, it’s very similar to what you would be doing for balancing dialogue, music, sound effects and background.
EGM: What is it that you especially like about sound mixing?
FM: Every single show is different and each has its strong challenges. I like the fact that it’s a very collaborative effort. There’s a lot of creative input that goes into the show. It’s really a lot of fun.
EGM: Is there anything else you want to add?
SW: We may be the guys who got to go up on stage and hold up the trophies, but we have an enormous support team–– from our editorial staff to all the engineers who maintain our equipment.
FM: We’d like to thank the creators and producers of the show, J.J. Abrams, Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof, Bryan Burk, and Ra’uf Glasgow. And of course it’s a big team effort from the Buena Vista sound department, including Gil Gagnon, the vice president of post-production services; Tom Degorter, the supervising sound editor/designer; Michael Giacchino, the composer; music editor Alex Levy; sound effects editors Paula Fairfield and Carla Murray; and dialogue editors Maciek Malis, Joe Shultz, Doc Kane and Jay Levine. l
Congratulations to All MPEG Emmy Winners!
photos by Craig T. Mathew/Mathew Imaging
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1. Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series
Smallville, “Bizarro”
Front row: Ulises Esponiza (friend of Al Gomez), left, Matt Torres
(friend of Michael Crabtree); back row: Chris McGeary, Jenny Leite,
Norval “Charlie” Crutcher III, Cody Crabtree (daughter
of Casey and Michael Crabtree), Michael E. Lawshe, Jessica Dixon and
Marc Meyer. (Not pictured: Timothy Cleveland, Paul Diller, Al
Gomez, Casey Crabtree and Michael Crabtree.)
2. Outstanding Picture Editing for Reality Programming
Top Chef, “First Impressions”
Vikash Patel, left, Katherine Griffin, Marc Clark, Sue Hoover, Steve
Lichtenstein, Annie Tighe and Kevin Leffler.
 |
3. Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Miniseries or Movie
John Adams, “Don’t Tread on Me”
Marc Fishman.
(Not pictured: Tony Lamberti.)
4. Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Comedy or Drama Series
(Half-Hour)
30 Rock, “Episode 210”
Bill Marino. (Not pictured: Tony Pipitone.)
5. Outstanding Sound Mixing for Nonfiction Programming
(Single or Multi-Camera)
American Masters, “Tony Bennett:
The Music Never Ends”
Jason King.
6. Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Miniseries
or Movie
Recount
Alan Baumgarten, A.C.E.
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7. Outstanding Picture Editing of Clip Packages for Talk,
Performance, Award or Reality-Competition Program
Jimmy Kimmel Live, “5th Year Anniversary Show (I’m
F*cking Matt Damon)”
James Crowe.
8. Outstanding Picture Editing for a Comedy Series (Single
or Multi-Camera)
Pushing Daisies, “Pie-Lette”
Stuart Bass, A.C.E.
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9. Outstanding Sound Editing For Nonfiction Programming (Single
or Multi-Camera)
The War, “When Things Get Tough”
Mariusz Glabinski, left, Erik Ewers and Ryan Gifford. (Not pictured:
Magdaline Volaitis, Ira Spiegel, Marlena Grzaslewicz and Jacob Ribicoff.)
10. Outstanding Sound Editing for a Miniseries, Movie or Special
John Adams, “Don’t Tread on Me”
Front row: David Fein, left, Patricio Libenson, Dean Beville; back
row: Hilda Hodges, Ken Johnson, Vanessa Lapato, Stephen Hunter Flick,
Solange S. Schwalbe, MPSE; Bryan Bowen and Kira Roessler. (Not
pictured: Curt Schulkey, Paul Berolzheimer and Alex Gibson.)
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• Outstanding Technical Direction for a Miniseries,
Movie or Special
50th Annual Grammy Awards
(Not pictured: John B. Field.)
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