LOS ANGELES—I’m the supervising editor for NBC’s “The Voice,” which is produced by MGM Television and recorded on the Universal Studios lot. I was the first editor hired on the show 15 years ago, and I’ve been on every episode since—that’s 700 episodes and nearly 1,100 hours of broadcast programming over the last 15 years.
We use Avid as our editing solution. The major advantage of using Avid is we start and finish everything in Avid. From offline to final online to color, everything is done inside of that.
Right now, we have about 35 editors, including about eight to 10 assistant editors. I think another dozen producers and story producers are also all accessing the media, all able to see everything, and they’re all remote. And I don’t mean we have some in Burbank and some in L.A. We have people in North Carolina; we have people in Virginia. We’ve had people in Maine and Japan; we’ve had people all over the world working on our show.
A Unified Solution
Having one, unified program that handles all of that has been absolutely beneficial and the cornerstone of our being on the air. I don’t think there’s any other production that hits the Avid hardware and software nearly as hard as we do.
I’m on Media Composer with the Symphony option and so are two of my online editors. The reason for that is we start and finish everything on “The Voice” inside of Avid, including color, final online and output of the master.
We use a lot of image stabilization. Those save our show because it’s a huge concert, and those cameras jiggle, and there’s nothing worse than seeing your artist or your coach jiggling around. I’d say easily between 600 to 900 stabilizations will be done in a two-hour episode.
We also use the “Animatte” effect in Media Composer for multiple reasons. We don’t like to break the fourth wall by showing camera people running through the audience, so we use that to duplicate audience members to hide cameras. We want viewers to be engaged in the performance, and if you see some guy running across the stage with a camera, that kind of pulls you out of it. Avid gives us the proper tools to maintain our illusion, to maintain the moment, without having to go to an external program.
Creating a Uniform Feel
Every episode of “The Voice” is a challenge because of the nature of the show. In an average two-hour episode, we introduce 13 to 15 new “characters,” if you will. Each story needs to have a life of its own, but we have to have some type of uniform feel to the show so when you turn it on, you recognize “The Voice” for what it is.
Our editors are constantly striving to give enough individuality to each of the story pods to showcase each artist individually, as well as maintain a high level of editorial status and make sure that editors are also as creative as possible, but without going completely astray.
We know our audience has faith in what we do and what we say about our show is real. When the first note comes out of an artist on stage—with the coaches’ backs to them in their chairs—that is the first time coaches hear them or see them when they turn. The audience sees our artists in their stories beforehand, but the coaches don’t get any of that information. It is legitimate; that’s the first note that the coaches ever hear. ●
More information is available at www.avid.com.
