Multicamera Features Keep Pace with the New Adventures of Old Christine
Thirty-something, single, and frantically funny - that's how Julia Louis-Dreyfus portrays the title character in the CBS hit comedy The New Adventures of Old Christine, which follows the travails of Christine Campbell, a divorced working mom juggling the demands of her business, her son, her ex-husband, and a string of quirky, newfound romantic relationships. Louis-Dreyfus received a 2006 Emmy award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role on this show and has attracted a legion of fans who tune in for her irresistible antics.
Seasoned sitcom editor Pat Barnett (Everybody Loves Raymond) was tapped to cut the pilot episode, which she edited on a Macintosh-based Media Composer XL system. When the show was picked up, Barnett was asked to join the show, and she decided to stay with the Avid editing system that she had come to rely on for many years. "I used it for nine seasons of Everybody Loves Raymond, and it never let me down," she says.
"We'd be lost without multicam. We shoot with four cameras most of the time, and I count on Avid's multicam capabilities to keep it all in sync."
- Pat Barnett, Editor, The New Adventures of Old Christine
Fast Laughs
The New Adventures of Old Christine is shot in HD at 24p and offlined on the Warner Bros. lot. Source material is transferred to DVCAM for digitizing and cut at 24p in the Media Composer system for frame-accurate editing.
Like most weekly network programs, each half-hour episode is edited at a brisk pace. "My assistant works overnight on shoot night to set up the project and digitize everything that was shot,
and then I come in the next day to start my cut," explains Barnett. "I usually have two or three days to accomplish this, although there have been many times when I've had to do it in a single day. I then send a DVD to the director, Andy Ackerman, who either watches it and calls with notes, or more often than not, comes in the next day to screen and give notes. It's a collaborative process; he may look at other performances or other cameras, but he is also looking for things to trim in order to get the show to time."
Barnett's biggest challenges often revolve around working with audience laughs and trying to match various takes. The Media Composer system's reliable media-management capabilities and full-featured multicam features enable Barnett to handle these tasks efficiently, calling up any shot, take, or camera angle at any time for quick review.
"We'd be lost without multicam," says Barnett. "We shoot with four cameras most of the time, and I count on Avid's multicam capabilities to keep it all in sync. My assistant multi-groups everything from each scene, so it's easy for me to find [all the different takes at various angles]."
This feature is particularly helpful since the show uses a lot of reaction shots to punctuate the comedy. "This show is rather different from how I cut Everybody Loves Raymond. On that show, the show runner liked to hang on the person getting the laugh and not immediately cut around for reactions, but we tend to do the opposite on Old Christine. So it's a bit cuttier," she says.
Barnett also makes use of the Media Composer system's comprehensive audio capabilities for handling multiple tracks of music, dialogue, and sound effects.
"I often do a lot of music and sound effects editing for my rough cuts, especially [for scenes] we want to show the audience. I just finished a big scene that had 'hold' music coming from a telephone playing underneath everything else happening in the scene. I was able to use one of the Avid [system's] audio EQ features to make that work," she says. Barnett exports OMF files from the Media Composer system as a guide for the sound editors, who use Digidesign Pro Tools systems to handle the final sound work.
"I took a Final Cut Pro class a few months ago, but was not at all impressed with its multicamera functions."
- Pat Barnett, Editor, The New Adventures of Old Christine
Tight Timelines
The Media Composer system's reliable and comprehensive picture editing and audio capabilities are essential for making the show's stringent broadcast deadlines. "Each week we pre-shoot several scenes in order to save time and money on shoot night," explains Barnett. "It's up to me to get those scenes together in time to add laughs, music, sound effects, and so on, before we play them back for the audience during the regular shoot. Usually I have less than eight hours to get this done and approved by the producers."
After the director finishes his cut, Barnett adds finishing touches, including final music and laugh tracks, and then sends a DVD to show runner Kari Lizer, who helps manage subsequent reviews by the studio executives at Warner Bros. and network executives at CBS. "After receiving and implementing their notes, we make any final cuts that are needed to get the show to time, and then it is locked," says Barnett.
She then formats each episode to prepare for online editing, adding space between acts for commercials, inserting end credits and logo slugs, and outputting an EDL and a check tape for associate producer Holli Gailen. "Meanwhile, whenever I'm not working on this particular episode, I've started the entire process on the next episode, as they are usually always overlapping," she says. The Media Composer system's comprehensive media management capabilities enable Barnett to easily handle multiple projects simultaneously, using the Avid system's flexible bin structure.
The entire process takes approximately one week from pre-shooting on Monday to network cut the following Monday. Shows are delivered in high-def HDCAM-SR 1080i format and in standard-def 4x3 D2 format.
Anatomy of a Hit
Barnett is always on the lookout for the latest digital nonlinear editing tools and techniques that could further support her work, such as the Media Composer software-only solution for full-featured and portable editing. She also evaluates the offerings of systems from other vendors from time to time. "I took a Final Cut Pro class a few months ago, but was not at all impressed with its multicamera functions," she says.
Today, she remains a satisfied Avid system user, relying on the industry-standard interface to produce top-quality sitcoms under deadline pressure. "I first trained on the Avid in 1995, and then used it to cut a pilot and then a short documentary in 1996. I've been using it ever since," she says.
And the hits, edited by Barnett, just keep coming.
* Credits: ©2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.