It’s all in the mix

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• Televisual Entertainment handbook, October 2004
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Both panel shows and game shows share a common problem with comedy shows: getting clean audio. The panels of most panel shows are comprised of comics and most game shows are hosted by comics as well. Anyone with comic timing will usually not wait until an audience has finished laughing before telling another joke, to make sure the second joke gets a bigger laugh than it would otherwise. If that second joke then gets edited out, the editor will need to remove the comic’s voice from over the top of the laughter. But since most studios play the audio feeds from the stage microphones over speakers to the audience so they can hear what’s being said, cutting to the audience’s mike will not get clean laughter – it will pick up on the output from the speakers as well. So getting a clean “tail” to the audience’s laughter from some other point in the programme – perhaps the warm up – is important.

Since most panel shows and game shows are long-running, most producers will want a common style of editing for each show. That will mean either having the same editor on each show or ensuring that all the editors involved confer. Often the editor of the pilot or first episode will set the style in conjunction with the producer and director and those that follow will imitate that style as closely as possible. However, many producers feel that keeping the same editor throughout the series is the best and only way to ensure consistency, primarily because the editor will know what to do without too much “hand holding” by the producer; if a new editor comes on board, it will usually be some time before the producer is confident that he or she can leave the editor without direction.

Many panel shows are now filmed quite close to the time of transmission, primarily to ensure their content is topical. That means that like awards shows, live events and reality shows, they need to be turned round quite quickly. There is typically one big obstacle to this: the amount of footage acquired is usually far greater than the time allotted for its broadcast. There are various ways of increasing the speed of the edit: editing can be done on location to cut out the time involved in getting tapes to a suite; linear editing is still possible with a suitably experienced editor; and the new generation of hard drive recorders, such as Grass Valley’s Profile system, can record feeds straight to disk so that the editor can be editing without having to digitise the tapes, even while the cameras are still recording. Each of these techniques can benefit from good process, and each can suffer from bad process, so producer and editor alike have to be clear in advance how the edit will proceed and what conditions are necessary.

A suite with good acoustics and speakers is important or else the editor is likely to miss background noises that will still be picked up on the broadcast, so a hotel room is probably not suitable for many shows. Some post houses, such as Resolution, have their own mobile suites so are well geared up for location-based editing.

Linear editing is a dying art and many post houses no longer have linear editing suites except for online conforming. Getting an editor experienced in linear editing is far harder than getting an experienced non-linear editor; equally hard is getting a PA who has the timing skills necessary to make sure each shot is the right duration for the edit – with linear, there’s no going back to correct mistakes.

And while hard drive-based recording can save time, many producers are unwilling to accept that going back to correct things as more exciting events unfold is counter-productive – any time savings are lost if the editor has to keep re-editing completed material, so perfection cannot always be achieved with a short turnround.

A professional presenter can also help reduce the edit time. Many become less disciplined as a series goes on, and often start “messing round” in the words of one editor. “They start thinking, ‘I’ve done this for 13 shows: it’s easy’. In a tight turnround situation, you’re desperate to get stuff on to tape. They just want to have a good time.”

With a show like Big Brother, where 24 hours of footage from multiple cameras need to be compressed down into half an hour, proper process is the only way to get the edit done on time. In common with other entertainment edits, keeping a list of “scenes” and making notes of which are good and which are bad will enable the editors to easily find material to work with for the assembled show. Having several PAs monitor the footage from the cameras throughout the day, making notes of interesting events and shots, ensures that the vast amount of dull footage from a 24/7 reality show can we waded through relatively easily by the editors and without the producer or director having to stay conscious and alert the whole time.

Big Brother is in a sense the ultimate hidden camera show. But the contestants know the cameras are there, cameramen can stay by the cameras, pointing them at events, the cameras can be large and use broadcast-quality tapes. For hidden camera shows such as The Jamie Kennedy Experiment and Experimental, this is not always possible. Often, unattended mini-DV cameras and microphones secreted around a location or the star are the only possible ways to get the footage. So there is no cameraman to point the camera in the right direction and no PA to monitor the footage as it comes out to highlight the bad and good takes.

“Being DV material, time-coding is not-existent and I get an awful lot of DV recordings, even from professional cameramen, that are absolutely devoid of sound from beginning to end,” says John Sillitto, who has now had many years of experience working with hidden camera footage. “It’s extremely important to me that some sound is recorded, just as a guide track so I can sync it with the sound from the mikes.” Another tip he gives camera crews is to keep recording footage for as long as possible. “Once I’ve found a sync point, it won’t come out of sync till you stop recording. Once that happens, that’s two more syncing operations I’ve got to do with other cameras and getting it all back into sync is a problem.” Although that generates more footage, Sillitto says the way Avids handle material means it’s easy for him to scan through hidden camera footage to find good sound bites and visuals.

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