Author: Christine Margaret Dodge
Last year, when the production teams of other unscripted series decided to pivot, the producers behind The Circle chose to pivot.
The popular Netflix social media competition series was previously filmed and edited in the UK, but recently came to the US under an IATSE contract to film seasons six and seven (the latter of which has yet to air) – a perfect fit for a talented editing team It’s a huge win for the show being produced.
“Especially when reality TV shows are having a lot of trouble keeping shows in the United States and production and post-production are declining, Studio Lambert decided to do the opposite and bring it here, which I think is a great A wonderful and beautiful thing,” said Jeremy Walters, chief photo editor. “It’s a grind, don’t get me wrong, but I think you have some of the most talented reality, non-reality, documentary reality people working on this, playing multiple characters and drawing from hundreds of Draw inspiration from hours of rawness and reality.
In fact, “The Circle” presented a unique set of challenges, not only because of the ultra-fast 24-hour schedules of editors working on-site in Atlanta and remotely in Los Angeles, but also creatively because of its vastly different storytelling approaches. “Style,” said ACE editor Julie Antepli, who worked on Season 6 with more than 30 editors.
“The concept for the show was developed early on during the pandemic, so it allowed players to join the social media circle from their apartments,” she explained. “Some played themselves, and others were catfish trying to win a $100,000 cash prize. We had all the editors on each episode work like a ‘relay race,’ talking to the players to themselves and each other. The raw footage of the texting was transformed and then edited as if they were all having a conversation together.
CineMontage recently spoke with Walters and Antepli to learn more about how the post team works together to deliver shows quickly and creatively.
Movie montage: How did you come to approach the unique structure of this particular show, where players are isolated and talking to themselves?
Waters: First, I think it’s worth mentioning that production moved from the UK to the US. The first five seasons were aired overseas, and even though the show was essentially an American show, which meant they shot a lot of bloopers and tried to make it look like a nondescript city, they always settled for a comprehensive The body uses the same facade and everyone is said to live in the building.
The sixth and seventh seasons of the series were filmed in Atlanta. They used their entire Atlanta staff. I would say about two-thirds of the editors were from Los Angeles and worked remotely, and they had about 11 editors (or about a third) who ended up working on-site in Atlanta. I got involved through executive producer Susan House, who Julie and I have worked with a few times in the past on shows like The Bachelor, The Toy Box, and Hustlers. She was amazing and really wanted to bring it more towards an American flavor, if you will.
progress: We have a general idea of where an episode is going, like who might be eliminated, or there’s going to be some drama between these two, that sort of thing. That was kind of a goal for us as editors, but as Jeremy mentioned, we had to shoot hours and hours of footage with like nine cameras and each player was in his apartment talking to himself Or talk to a producer for hours.
When my day starts, I shoot a series of raw footage that sometimes lasts up to six hours, and then I find a way to get it done as quickly as possible. One thing you do is put the waveforms on it and see where no one is talking, so nothing is happening – you just chop them off. Sometimes I’ll listen to it twice, just to get it through, and if I hit something interesting, I’ll slow down and make my choices and stuff like that.
CineMontage: What was the workflow like – how was it different from other shows you’ve worked on?
Waters: What’s fascinating is that Netflix executives were on hand, which is one of the reasons we were able to turn over the notes so quickly. They watch footage from each show three times a day to help guide last-minute story or character changes. We’d do a rough cut, they’d sift through it on site, give notes, and then move on to the next series of notes.
We have five finishers working on each round of notes on the EP and Netflix, and these finishers are responsible for story, GFX, music, etc. The people are working tirelessly from assembly, rough cutting, sewing to completion. Then, after that was done, I did a final few rounds of notes and passes on story changes, pacing, GFX, and music before the story went live.
progress: Another interesting thing is that we actually had almost a week of rehearsals, which also included rehearsal editorials, which is unheard of, but it also speaks to how complex and crazy this show is. When we got the actual footage, everyone was ready to start working right away, no questions asked.
We have editors like me who are also builders. We build scenes and then pass them to one or more people, who are what we call stitch editors. They assemble the shows for screening and then pass them on to final editors for the annotation process. Then Jeremy will come in and do the finishing and polishing, giving everything that final shine, so it’s multiple steps to get there and it’s all very quick.
CineMontage: What are you particularly proud of about this particular season?
progress: Our entire show is based on people texting. We do have games and stuff, but it’s all on social media, so how do you make it fun? That’s where our creative challenge lies, trying to find the most surprising reaction. There was a lot of back and forth trying to nail it down so that we could get to the point of the story while making it fun, exciting and interesting.
We would assemble a scene and sometimes the exchange of messages wouldn’t quite fit into the overall story of the episode. So we go back and design the message exchange – let’s say some words are lost or the order of some words is changed, but how do we seamlessly go back to the conversation so that the text exchange still makes sense? This is not something that producers manipulate or produce. Every reaction is genuine. Of course, it helps that the casting is great.
CineMontage: How do AI robots handle these challenges in seasons six and seven?
Waters: Regarding artificial intelligence robots, I think our timing is perfect. I think if we did it a season or two later, it would be too late – the beauty and brilliance of artificial intelligence comes at the right time. It does create its own problems as the game is played fairly, but I think choices are made in terms of how far to let the AI run and give it certain parameters on how to participate. I think this is the biggest challenge.
Honestly, as an editor, it’s just a shot of a box, so how do you make it feel like a character? How do you take it out? We have a lot of people working really hard to tell the story, choose the right music, deliver the message and reaction. A lot depends on how other people react to box talk, since boxes don’t really express emotion. It’s an emotionless read. So I think it’s a little bit different than the rest of the show.
Regarding Season 7, I feel like the best elements of what we’ve done over the past few seasons, not just what we did in Season 6, is in terms of gameplay, style, content. Elements, I think we’re pushing it further. We took the catfish and made it as fun as possible. I think it will definitely be fun to watch.
CineMontage: How does the IATSE contract help the editing team achieve program goals?
Waters: I think through the power of alliance,” take this term literally and union [Guild] That in itself is about bringing things together. I think doing this as a non-union show would be difficult to manage and control and keep everything regulated.
The amount of time some employees put in is incredible. What they did in the allotted time was incredible too. I’ve joked about editing schedules in the past. I don’t know, if something takes one editor six to eight weeks to get a rough cut done, the motto has always been, ‘Well, you get two editors and you’ll get it done in four weeks . You get four and you’ll have a rough cut in two weeks.
To do this, the question is: how many editors can we have at one time? Can we cut it off in a day or two? This is what actually happened. So it showed that it took, I don’t know, six to eight weeks to actually get to the final edit stage that we did in 48 hours. It’s crazy to do this because of storage issues, but keep in mind we actually did it two seasons in a row. We were running all the cameras 24 hours a day just to control the media, and the assistant editors did a lot of that as well. We also have media managers there, but thank God for the union because I think if you don’t have that, I think if you don’t have a set of rules and people to work with and have an understanding of – even a handshake – I don’t think it would Function as effectively as before.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
