Ok, I’ll admit it. I love the summer. The outdoors, the
beach, the BBQs. So when the air grows a little crisper, the days shorter and
the frigid days of winter are ahead, I need to find something to escape to. I’m
a baseball fan, so football doesn’t do it for me. I’m a bit of a spaz, so for
my own safety and the safety of others, skiing is out; same for ice skating. So
what’s left? I enjoy losing myself in a well-produced and posted TV show.
The new television season is always so full of promise. I
tend to pick a few shows to invest in and then hope for the best — that they
will be picked up for a full season and then for next year.
But that doesn’t always happen — damn you, The Nine and Studio
60 on the Sunset Strip! Damn you to hell. At least Aaron Sorkin saw the writing
on the wall of the Studio 60 soundstage and tied everything up into a neat
little series finale. But, The Nine... oh, The Nine. Great cast, well shot,
well edited, but no viewers. I will never find out what went on in that
god-forsaken bank. Was one of them in on it? Would Tim Daly gamble again? Would
Scott Wolf lose more weight, making his dimples even more cavernous? Sadly, we
will never know.
One of this season’s most talked about and critically
acclaimed shows is ABC’s Pushing Daisies, the Barry Sonnenfeld produced and
directed (the pilot and episode 1, at least) one-hour. It’s about a man who
brings the recently murdered back to life so they can tell the cops who killed
them… then he touches them again and they die once more. It’s quirky, it’s
funny, it’s sweet, and it’s produced and post produced like a little feature
film each week.
Show editor Stuart Bass, A.C.E., who I spoke to this month
for our “Edit This!” column, says the performances on Pushing Daisies are very
realistic and believable. “The show is about a guy who brings people back to
life. It’s a crazy world,” he explains, adding that all the performances are
very subdued. “Barry is very careful about rehearsing the actors a lot and
trying to maintain this level of believability. I think that’s kind of my prime
mission: guarding those performances. All those effects and the crazy schedule
and all the technology… the bottom line is to make sure the performers and story
is told in a very believable fashion.”
He credits his new software-only Avid Media Composer V.2.7
set-up for speeding up the process. He says the ScriptSync feature saves a ton
of time, and that the speed of the software helps him use more of the effects
that are offered within the software. Another plus is that “everything seems to
transfer over to Nitris nicely for when we finish,” he adds.