eighty eight minutes, cut every way
post production for a london talk show on youtube, taking one studio recording out to a published episode and a run of captioned vertical cuts.
a talk show records far more than it publishes. one episode arrives as an eighty eight minute studio master and has to leave as a watchable episode, a set of vertical clips that work with the sound off, and enough versions for the team to choose from. the edit is the whole product here, so that is where the work went.
the recording is not the episode
a conversation runs as long as it runs. the published episode cannot. the first job is structural, finding the shape of the argument inside eighty eight minutes and cutting to it without flattening how the conversation actually moved.
the second job is that almost nobody arrives at a talk show from the homepage. they arrive from a vertical clip on a phone, playing silently, which means the clip has to carry the point on type alone before anyone decides to turn the sound on.
and both have to look like the same show. the same set, the same mark, the same grade, whether it is running full width on a television or as a nine by sixteen crop with a caption across the middle.
the clip is not a trailer for the episode. for most of the audience the clip is the show.
a set that survives the crop
the set is built so every framing works on its own. the neon wordmark sits behind the two chairs so it reads in the wide, and the mark repeats small in the corner so it still reads once the frame is cropped to a phone. the blue wash separates the speakers from the background at any focal length, which is what keeps a closeup from looking like it came from a different show.
one master, two shapes
the episode and the clips come off the same master rather than being cut twice. sixteen by nine keeps the two shot and the room. nine by sixteen loses the room on purpose, re-framing to one speaker and leaving the middle of the frame clear for a caption, because the clip has to work before the sound does. the end card resolves to the same mark in both.
