Old folks, it's show time. People pay good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater, they want cold sod. That's
corner in. No monsters in the Projection Booth, Everyone for ten podcasting isn't
boring? Shut it off. Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode
of The Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White. On this special
episode, I'm talking with aj Catiline and Melissa McCoy, the editors of ted
Lasso, one of my favorite shows on TV. The Final Show Maybe is
dropping on May thirty first, twenty twenty three. Be sure to check out
that and I hope you enjoyed the interview. Melissa, you went to Western.
Are you a Michigan I am yeah. Are you a Michigan Yeah,
I'm just outside there Detroit right now. Okay, cool. Yeah, I'm
from Lansing originally, and I went to Michigan State for a little bit and
then I was like, I'm want to do film and Western had a really
cool program and went there and then Keymonts, California for grad school. With
that Chapman, I wanted to focus on editing. I did an internship with
the local area commercials for like snowblowers and things like that, and like in
another life, that's where I was going to stay. And then I said,
no, I think I want to do something more. I'd love to
cut a snowblower commercial. It was a lot of fun. Local area commercials
are a lot of fun. I did that for a little while after college
as well, and get some interesting clients, that's for sure. There's a
wealth of s and l s gets probably in there. AJ, how about
yourself, how did you get into editing? I went to NYU and that's
when I first discovered I'll date myself tape to tape editing, where you had
to go find the actual tape and load it up and shuttle around of her
cord deck and the play deck. And I loved it that it was so
tedious. And then came out to LA because I had some family and friends
out here and I wanted to check out the West coast and the USC had
a program that I went to for a couple of years, and there I
saw the first Avid and one being a lover of computers and being a computer
geek and having one of the original macintoshes. That's what's so cool to be
working on an Assle TV show. Now I was so impressed. I like,
this is amazing. Now, this takes the annoying part of editing out
of its fun. I loved writing and it just felt like writing a picture
and sound. And I got involved with a documentary early on needed an editor
and they didn't have a ton of money, and I got involved with that,
and I just met a lot of mentors at the USC who were getting
involved in post production and it just really seemed like an avenue that kind of
just sucked me in that people saw that I was eager and met a lot
of people, and that's the moral of the story. I was just down
at USC recently talking to some home students and I said that to them,
getting to know people is so important. I necessarily that they're going to give
you a job just to be in that community. And then one day when
you know people ask around about you, the more people that know you will
work in your favor. And Mel and I both started in unstricted It in
reality and we both worked out Flavor Loved back in the day, a classic
and then that cool and turns out Flavor flav that was one of our biggest
ted lass up fans, and I remember he was tweeting about the show and
I tweeted that back to him, like I used to cut your shuttle flame,
and he tweeted back, give me a thumbs up. Oh I didn't
know that. Yeah, so cool. If memory serves you two have worked
on almost every single episode of ted Lasso, the group, just us two
editors. Yeah, it's been us the beginning, and there our two assistants
who bump up and help us every once in a while, Francesco Castro and
Alex Salvo all wonderful teammates. And yep, we have a great crew,
and we started at the og crew and we've grown season the season to add
more, but we've always stayed the same for four As I like to say,
how do you approach the work having you two and then your team's working
on stuff. Are you saying you edit this episode, I edit that one,
or are you both working on one together? How does that work?
And season one we actually did work on one together. In the prior seasons,
I would do the eavens and Mel would do the odds. So Mel
did the pilot, which is very important to set the tone in the show,
you know, And I remember Bill Lawrence came up to me and studying
what we're doing here at Meldre's. That's going to be the kind of the
vibe. And then mel Get's cut the finale. This year we swapped I
did the odds and melded to eat and we break it up and we focus
on each episode, and then of course they shoot the episodes out of order,
so working on episodes three you have to put it on the shelf and
they go work an episode seven and then a scene comes in back on episode
three, and then all episodes stay open and we don't finish the until Jason
comes into the process at the end. It's a lot overcastic collaborating now constantly
checking on with each other, asking each other questions and what do you think
of this? Are you noticing this enough footage? And checking on with each
other how we're feeling and picking up ideas. Are all the shows shot in
the UK? And then you two edit in your home base and is your
home base la for both of you? So I have my up pull watch,
I have plug for another plugs. Well, we're just going to drop
them through this. We are not take note where's our anyways? But like
you can put a little widget and I would put London time so I could
know is it appropriate to maybe like where are they on their day? And
can I ask this question? Or does they have to wait till the morning
or that kind of stuff. But yeah, so that's we try to get
out to London maybe to get to set, and it's an all hands on
deck. Everybody's working around the clock, I think, start shooting and footage
comes in and yeah it's we block shoot, so we're never not in a
down period. Stuff's always coming in. And so, yeah, we were
in la and they're all in London. But I think because of the success
of the show were most I've known a lot of the people on set wildly
because when they come out for press or the Emmys, they were coming out.
So we got to meet a lot of people and it bonded us,
which is really lovely, Like production designer and Paul came out, and hair
and makeup Nikki came out and they shot some stuff for the finale here,
so we got to go. We actually did get to go to set,
so that was nice. We went out there and got to experience. Yeah,
we had one time run. Yeah, Yeah, I got to experience
ted lasts a little bit. It's been interesting, but we make it work.
That's the beauty of how things run now. It's like you can be
anywhere, and I think the pandemic made us feel that. For sure.
Are probably shares the sentiment and as we do being in the office. We
did all of season two remote because of the pandem Season one, it just
had started. We were just finishing stuff, so we spent most of season
one at Warner Brothers. Season two was all remote, and then season three
it was a hybrid. But once we really started locking episodes and Jason started
coming in and we were in every day, and it's just something about being
all together in the room and screaming, Like even when it's just me and
my sister Francesca, like love to screaming the episode together and get a feel
in the room together. It just feels different. So I love the hybrid
workflow. I'm still reeling a little bit by what you said, Aj,
as far as the episodes are shot out of order and things aren't locked down,
So is it like they're shooting one major movie for the entire season rather
than eight, ten, twelve mini movies as we go along, it definitely
twelve mini movies. Each of these episodes really grew in length, where we
started as a half hour comedy and now they're fifty minutes to an hour,
and that's just because the characters are so deep and rich that they deserved more
storylines, and Jason is very generous to share those storylines. They mostly shoot
in order. Jason likes to work narratively, so they do episodes one and
two and then episodes three and four. But they did shoot I think episode
seven and episode ten out of order, and that doesn't mean they didn't finish
it. All. They have to go back and grab something that they haven't
had a chance to do. I think the biggest example of that isn't cutting
the football games together that is all shot on different days. First of all,
we're not never in anywhere near a stadium, although we do have some
scenes shot in at the Hot Stadium where Man City plays, and we went
to Chelsea as well, but those are just un in the stands, all
in one element. The coaches are acting from the sidelines and shot him at
different time, and that's the different element that we Rebecca Higgins ki Lee watching
from the elder's box is different the pub is different. So it's about taking
all these elements that are shot different days with different vibes, and they're very
good at keeping it at a float and we get the feelings all happening in
the same moment. It's the match to beta thing you put all the other
It really is. Wow, it's really flown. Even thinking about is seeing
like inside of the locker room. How many setups are there to capture all
of this stuff, because it feels like we are moving all over these rooms,
but you guys tied together so well that it does feel like it's just
happening like that, especially because the quips go back and forth so quickly.
Yeah, they'll do a lot of different setups, but sometimes too, if
they're really running and gunning, it'll be a moving camera so they'll pan sometimes.
I had a few of that the season two, if it got to
be a really big locker room scene with everybody in it, and the moving
camera would shift and so you really have to pay attention to the whole Take
Okay, this is how this line's happening, and remember which takes for that,
Because you set up your thumbnails and you're like, oh, just because
it starts on this frame doesn't mean that that's what it is to the whole
you know take, So it's remembering where all the bodies lie. But yep,
they become a little bit of a puzzle piece. Ted a lot of
times anchors it so his people looks over this way. We like to use
him to throw a look over there, or why we're going where we're going,
And you know Aj has talked about this too. Sometimes lines of dialogue
help us know where to go, and we want to hit like a specific
moment that maybe lands on a character that's going through something, and so that
helps us maneuver around a scene like that. And then the jokes, of
course, so just equipping along is always getting joke to joke to joke,
but reactions help us a lot. It generally starts why they tend to do
the master shot first, and then then they'll take a break for lunch,
come in for a closer shots, and then Jason is a big believer.
He wants always be shot last. That's great because that last take is so
good because he knows the scene. But it's also challenging editorially because something that
they've shot lasted four in the afternoon. They didn't think of when they shot
the wide shot ten in the morning, So that just becomes the editorial tricks,
like how we can merge those two shots together and when to go to
the close. But you'll find a lot of gold in the close house.
But sometimes we play it in the wide if it works there, because it's
great to see everybody in the shot. Now, do you do the same
thing that Melissa does as far as keeping stuff in your head or do you
have a different way of notaping things or keeping track of stuff. We have
different workflows, but similar we create a system editors to keep things organized.
I use a software called it script Sync, which will light up the script
so I can see how many times they did that line and which takes and
coverage, and then it's just about go through and we lead notes like I
really love this performance. I don't know how they delivered that line. A
good example is Genie Tark's poop, a line that kind of was discovered in
the set, and I use the one where he first discovered it had the
best communic energy that was anchored to that. I knew I have to use
this in the scene during the in the sewer reason it's just poop a let
it flow, and so that when you find something that you know is a
nugget, communic goal or dramatic goals that I want to get there. So
then it becomes a puzzle like how can I get there? But reorganizing four
shots before it and three shots after it. That's the puzzles every days puzzle
problem solving Jason's off and asking what do we have a shot of this?
We don't have it, and you get that, so it becomes what tricks
can we do to merge? You know, we'll take different piece of the
line here or a word that they said over there and will create a line.
So there are some unscripted techniques that will find its home inscripted. But
no, we're great writers who write these scenes and there's a plan and but
yeah, yeah, there is a will comment stealing a shot and there's tons
of examples of that throughout the season where the camera just happened to be over
there and it grabs an amazing reaction or something and that becomes a really cool
shot. Thank god they got its kind of happenstance, but they get rare.
You always are using whatever tricks you've learned along the way, because I've
been lucky enough to work on like action comedies and action actions. And then
in a little break, I did a little kind of documentary that had some
narrative pieces to it. And but the most part, I think I'm always
just what's running through my head in a scene, whether it's comedy or drama
or whatever it is, like, Okay, I'd spend first reread the scene
in the script before I cut it, and what are the what are the
things we want to do in this scene, like whether it's the story we're
telling or this or that or the other. And then you look at the
performances and what makes you laugh and what you think would be for comedy maybe
or makes you feel for drama or what this performance does, and then you
pull your little the rules sometimes where sometimes faster is what you want to do
and not have any breaks. And then or you're like if you get to
a place where you're kind of like, what should be my next cut?
And sometimes you think, okay, cutting on action because our action in this
and cut on the action. So it's like you pull in those little tricks
to help you maneuver around. But I think for me, the approach is
always the same no matter what I'm cutting is first and foremost as script or
what you want the scene to do in the film and what that means sort
of thing. I know the season finale is happening on the thirty first of
May. Is this it for you? Guys? Is this the end of
ted Lasso? Do you have the next gig already lined up? A million
dollar question? Was it over? I think Jason has spoken to this.
I think he says that this particular chapter of ted Lasso is going to complete.
Could there be a future return to the story? Talk? Maybe possibly
that. I don't know any details. Yeah, I think none of us
know. We're just the same with everybody whenever any new headline comes up or
like, oh is that the new thing? You know what I mean?
And I think everybody feels that it's kind of fun in that way. Right.
If this is what it is, then I hope we did it,
and then if they want to do more. I think AJ and I would
get the bank, get the band back together. Yeah, we definitely would.
So I'm very grateful for the experience you've had these three seasons. Sure,
I absolutely love to do it, but also it's great to have a
bit of a break. Yeah, I think AJ and I gave a lot
this season, so I think we're both looking forward to a vacation and then
reevaluating our lives. But I think we probably speak for you J. It's
like, I feel so satisfied in my soul with everything we did, everything
we got to do, and how we got to work and who we got
to work with one another and all that kind of stuff. So I feel
very satisfied and creatively personally, so I hope everybody feels that. Story wise,
we literally left it all in the field exactly. I feel like I'm
ready for Martinia who buy the beach or whatever, the field or the pitch.
Yeah, thank you, thank you so much. I know usually Aja,
you get that right, left it all on the pitch. Obviously,
I haven't seen every episode yet, but it is one of the best shows,
hands down. I never thought i'd be watching a sports show about it's
so much more than that. And I didn't check to see who edited this
one, but the Amsterdam episode, that's definitely gold. That was a special
one for me and Francesca, my co editor on that my amazing teammate editorial.
She really loved that script. We both just I was like, Yeah,
this is the one we're doing together. That one was like a little
movie. It was a little like the way Matt Lipsey shot at our producing
director. He just did some beautiful camera work in that work. I'm thinking
one of my favorite shots in the whole thing where I was like, I
have to get to this because he nailed it as a when the Dutchman was
whistling to Rebecca and she's on the phone and it rat it's like a close
on her and it racks into the distance and he's standing on the houseboat and
it just gives you geography and every it does everything, and then when they
nail it like that on set, you're just like ah. So anyways,
he did a lot of beautiful camera moves like that and in a beautiful city.
I think just just added got real lucky with location on that one too,
because so beautiful. But it's just beautiful, just beautiful looking the interiors
on his boat, the goldenness of that. Everything looked so dreamy. It
was great for me. I was really focused on that color. When they
did the color pass on that, it was like we looked at what it
was in dailies because we lived with the dailies for so long and it just
felt so rich and candle lighting and just did a really beautiful job on that.
So yeah, I was really focused on getting the color right too.
We would get color CCMs back and you know, we would send it to
the DP and we're going in the good rich direction really on that for that
for those scenes. It's a fun one. Melissa AJ. Thank you so
much for your time today. This is such a pleasure talking with you.
Thank you so much. Yeah. Sure, the last two episodes there one
yeah, really, Yeah, I can't wait. I can't wait. They're
too also too mini lasts on the movie. Yeah, eleven is really special,
like twelve. You know, we'll get you in the Eleven is an
Eleven is a special one for me of one that I didn't get cut where
I'm like where I was like, ah, AJ got a good one,
Oh like a got good today. I'm I got episode eleven exactly. Yeah,
and then yeah we saw I think mouth said this to Meil all the
time. I still I've watched this stuff a thousand times. I still get
the fields. So I'm let's get a little misty eyed and yeah, that
still does it. I mean every episode or every other episode. I'm just
wiping away a tire at the end. Great job, guys, terrifict me
so much. Thanks, thank you, thank you, Mike. Take care
you slow down for a second, take your time. You know if you're
as if you remember that mine. And when everybody's telling me I have no
time, I come well, but can knows I no, My hands will
be tied down. And now I'm the lathing down. ZI can finally see
the truth so simple but so clear, accepting the notions that would reach you
mean you if you come out everything in you know, I be there in
the first begin And when everybody telling us we have enough time a boomer of
gear, Yeah, he has this tide where he knows out true it knows
off to try