Defining Editing Style on Women's Murder Club

Women's Murder Club is a high-profile project with an impressive pedigree. The new prime-time show boasts a popular lead actress (Angie Harmon of Law & Order), a team of talented writers and producers, and a promotional push from a major network. As with any fledgling show, there is plenty of pressure to succeed, creatively and professionally. So what's the key to giving an original program its own distinctive editorial stamp?

"The hardest part of working on a brand new show is the first episode," says Harry Miller, one of three editors on the project. "You are doing something new and, creatively, there are a lot of different directions that you can go in. You have to consider everything: the music, the transitions, the overall look and feel. You are still working out how a show will be cut, performed, and shot. It took us two months to cut the original episode and then we stopped only because we had to meet the deadline for the first show."

Show runner Scott Gimmell and executive producers Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain are the creative forces behind the show, which relies heavily on dialogue to reveal a candid on-screen dynamic among four professional women in San Francisco: a homicide detective (played by Harmon), a medical examiner, a newspaper reporter, and a young district attorney. The one-hour drama is packed with words and action as the four women join forces each week to handle murder investigations.

"People seem to really love a show about women who have an attitude; they are self confident, they have lives."
- Harry Miller, Editor, Women's Murder Club

While the characters' professional lives form the framework for the show, it's the interpersonal relationships that drive the show's narrative. If early feedback is any indication, it is also what keeps audiences watching.

"What's so good about the show is the writing and the characters," explains Miller. "People seem to really love a show about women who have an attitude; they are self confident, they have lives. You don't just see them investigating a crime. That's what makes this show different."

Talking the Talk

The editing style of the show was derived in large part from the characters' verbal exchanges, which are direct and snappy # no pauses. And the rhythm of the editing accentuates this rapid-fire, conversational style.

"The creators of the show wanted these women to be finishing each other's sentences," says Miller, who established editing patterns of how fast the dialogue should be paced along with fellow editors Dave Handman and Clay Cambern. "The biggest thing we did was to keep up a very rapid pace for the dialogue. We also needed to add reactions shots and beats to show when one character understands what another character is saying. Audiences need time to absorb the dialogue and to see how people are thinking and feeling."

The look of the show is visually distinctive, and the show's creators wanted the transitions to highlight the fast-moving storytelling as well as the urban energy of San Francisco. Miller explains, "Early on, we were given the mandate that [the network] wanted the show to have a [signature] style, but we weren't really sure what they wanted. We worked on different ways of moving scene to scene. We tried cutting directly from one scene to the next, using stock footage, and working with a CGI transition of the main building. Then we brought in editor Scott Wallace and his assistant, Tod Fulkerson, to specifically work on visual and aural transitions."

They settled on using aerial exterior shots of San Francisco combined with establishing shots of upcoming scenes to move between sequences. They added visual effects, such as blurs and brightness dissolves, as well as sound effects. To punctuate the end of each act, a large white flare appears to "blow up" the image.

Miller, who uses a Macintosh-based Media Composer Adrenaline v2.7.5 system on the show, uses a lot of the system's latest visual effects plug-ins to handle these and other effects-heavy sequences.

"We do a lot of visual effects work," he says, citing a recent episode in which a dog jumps at the lead actress and bounces off a window. "It was a stunt that just didn't work. I said, "Hey, give me a minute." I just layered the effects, did a split-screen, and used AniMatte to create something that really worked."

With Miller's extensive background as a sound editor (Back to the Future, Days of Thunder), he also adds sophisticated audio elements in the offline to create the most complete cut possible for internal review and approval. He appreciates the precise and comprehensive audio tools of the latest Media Composer Adrenaline setup. "I can play more than eight channels of audio [up to 24 tracks]," he says. "And the audio suite also has new capabilities, particularly EQ 3, which provides much more control than ever before."

He even outputs a complete mix at his workstation while editing. "I use an outboard digital mixer from J.L. Cooper and connect it through the MIDI port of my Avid [system]. I do live mixes that way, and it is the coolest thing in the world. It's easy and fun," he says.

"The creators of the show wanted these women to be finishing each other's sentences. The biggest thing we did was to keep up a very rapid pace for the dialogue."
- Harry Miller, Editor, Women's Murder Club

Settling In

While the editorial style and visual look of the show were the direct result of creative experimentation, the tools used for the editorial workflow were a constant. The show, which is shot and posted at Los Angeles Center Studios in downtown L.A., is cut using four Media Composer systems connected to an Avid Unity MediaNetwork shared-storage solution for simultaneous sharing of projects and media. Burbank-based Modern VideoFilm handles the online on a Symphony Nitris system. Final sound editing is done at Hollywood-based Technicolor Sound Services using Digidesign Pro Tools systems.

After completing the first several episodes of the original 12-episode order, the show's creative imprint was set. "Now there are fewer creative challenges and more of a system in place," says Miller, who is also quick to cite the enormous contributions of cinematographer John Fleckenstein and composer Jay Ferguson. Fleckenstein has been nominated for an American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) award for the first episode.

Now that all the pieces of the puzzle have come together for Women's Murder Club, a successful crime-solving outcome seems nearly certain, week after week.

CREDITS: ©ABC/ANDREW SOUTHAM, RICHARD CARTWRIGHT, VIVIAN ZINK