If you’ve read any of my HOW WE DID IT blog posts, you’ve heard all about our incredibly short turn-around times in the SNL Film Unit. Most of what I’ve written about is naturally from my perspective as the Director of Photography, chronicling the challenges of our single-day shooting schedules. I’ve written a lot less about an equally challenging, often mind-boggling part of our process: the even faster turn-around post production of our spots. If we shoot all Friday night and wrap in the early hours of Saturday morning, how in the world does the spot make the air THAT SAME DAY?
The answer to a big part of this mystery is guy named Adam Epstein. While I collapse into my bed as soon as our AD calls “That’s a wrap!”, Adam (along with our tireless director, Rhys Thomas) gets to start another very full day of work. Adam is our jack-of-all-trades: picture editor, sound designer, visual effects supervisor, title designer, music editor and sometimes even voice-over talent. In other words, he’s a great example of what an EDITOR needs to be in today’s media culture.
The reason I’m mentioning all of this is that Adam is about to start his own workshop tour this summer – THE CUTTING EDGE POST PRODUCTION TOUR. For any of you who were able to attend my ART OF VISUAL STORYTELLING workshop last summer, this is the natural Part Deux. Where I was teaching the production side, Adam is picking up where I left off, using examples from his own work to illustrate – including many of the spots that we’ve made together. He’ll be following along a similar 32-city path that I charted last year and that Vincent Laforet just completed with his equally excellent DIRECTING MOTION workshop. Adam’s tour is being produced by the same company, MZed, so if you enjoyed the production value of what you saw from my tour and/or Vince’s tour, you’re in for another great show.
If you’re on the fence about attending and looking for someone to vouch for this workshop, I’m your guy. I’ve been working with Adam on an almost weekly basis for over five years at SNL. I’ve seen first hand how Adam can seamlessly match the editorial style of whatever genre we’re shooting; how on so many occasions he’s able to actually add unscripted jokes through a great piece of sound design or fix a problem shot through a quick spot of VFX clean-up. server ip I’ve also been in cahoots as Adam designs this workshop and there is not a doubt in my mind that this will be the complete post production experience that we’ve all been looking for.
I may pay my bills as a cinematographer, but like so many of you, my passion is to make my own films. A complete understanding of the post production process is essential for any of us who aspire to be truly independent filmmakers and that’s why I’ll definitely be attending this workshop myself. See you there!