TV Land’s first original series, Hot in Cleveland is scripting its 5th season, and if you haven’t discovered the series’ witty dialogue you should probably tune in or set your DVR for a few episodes. The show centers on a trio of former, successful Los Angeles women Victoria (Wendie Malick), Valerie (Melanie Moretti), and Joy (Jane Leeves) who find themselves in Cleveland leasing a house with Betty White playing Elka, the home’s caretaker.
From the hilariously irrefutable one-liners White dishes out to Victoria hanging on to her soap star days, the women friendly sitcom created by Suzanne Martin is the network’s highest rated show. Tapped to piece the narrative together is Ron Volk, ACE, a respected storyteller who’s been cutting frames in TV since the early 90’s. He recently sat down with S&P to talk with us us about his Emmy nominated work.
Most will remember your work on the fantastically produced sitcom Frasier, but you’ve been working on several projects since. Monk, Out of Practice, even Hank. What gravitates you towards picture editing comedies?
That’s easy. If you have to be in a room by yourself for up to 11 hours a day looking at a show, wouldn’t you rather be laughing and enjoying yourself? I never thought about it too much until I worked on Monk for a few months. Monk was a great show, but I couldn’t take all the drama and murder investigations day-in-and-day-out, week-in-and-week-out. I decided then and there to go back to sitcoms, or at least single-camera comedies, and make that my niche.
Your peers in the industry have recognized you with ACE and Emmy noms and wins. Does it feel any different being nominated for a show featured on TV Land, which isn’t widely known for original programming?
No, not really. It’s still a great honor and if anybody says they don’t get excited when they get the news that they’ve been nominated — for either primetime OR cable — they’re lying. Besides, cable has grown way, way beyond the early years of its infancy when it was forced to sit at the children’s table. Most, if not all, the best work being done on television today is being done on the cable networks.The nominated episode, Magic Diet Candy (Season 4, ep. 7) was no doubt funny. But what made you choose that episode to submit over the others?
If you’re going to submit a show for peer scrutiny it has to have two basic elements. One, it has to be an example of your best work. Good story. Good pacing. Good editing. No mistakes. No take-backs. And two, it should have that “wow” factor — something that sets it apart from the other twenty-three episodes of the season. Most sitcoms don’t do elaborate scenes as a rule. It’s just too expensive and time consuming. Keep in mind we do 24 shows —one show a week, every week, for three weeks out of every month. How I Met Your Mother” is a great show that is very ambitious. They’ll go out on New York street at night and do a big song-and-dance number along the lines of Singing in the Rain. Now that’s the kind of show that wins awards!
Are you using Avid or is HiC a FCP/Adobe show?
Avid. I’ve been working solely on Avid’s since the early years. The only show I’ve done that wasn’t done on Avid was Monk which used Final Cut Pro.
Being a multi-camera show, you must have some help with all the footage. Can you talk about some of the workflow that happens before you even start a timeline?
I have an assistant, Scott Ashby, and he handles all the footage before it ever gets to me. And he would be better equipped to answer any technical questions. But I can tell you this, by the time I sit down to edit a show, I’m looking at the script in my Avid (ScriptSync) that has ALL the takes marked. All I have to do is start at the top of every take, click on the script and watch all four cameras rolling in sync for the length of the take. I make my notes to where I think are the good takes and the good reactions and move on to the next take, then the take after that. When I’m good and familiar with the footage, I’ll begin the process of putting the scene together. For every scene Scott has gathered the corresponding sound effects, if there are any, and music cues, if there are any. A good assistant can make the editor’s life a whole lot easier.
Each editor undoubtedly has his own way putting together a story. Where/how do you usually start? Page 1?
I start at the beginning. I watch all the dailies from the first to the last including any and all pick-ups and restarts. I make notes on which performances I like the best and any particular reactions and/or actor’s “business” I think is either funny or meaningful. By the actor’s business, I mean the little physical things they are doing or gestures they are making that can reveal to the audience what the characters are feeling without having to resort to any dialogue.
For instance, if an actor is talking on camera about a rash of thefts in the neighborhood for instance; it would be more interesting and valuable as a story-telling tool to cut to someone standing in the room who suddenly places their hands beyond their back as if they were hiding something and watch them squirm in discomfort as we continue to hear the story about the neighborhood crime spree. On the other hand, this sort of edit might tip the surprise reveal of the culprit later in the scene, so you have to pick and choose your moments of subtext carefully.
If a scene is just not coming together and no showrunner or director are around, who do you turn to? Do you let it breathe and comeback to it or something else?
Exactly! I ask for three days to put a show together (I usually can count on at least two days) so if I come up against a problem scene — and it seems like there is ALWAYS a problem scene — I will keep going until I am finished with the show. It’s amazing how much clearer things become when you’re not having to worry about 100% of the show. When I sit back and watch my first cut. I become instantly aware of what’s working and what’s not working. Then I routinely do a second pass and focus on the 10-to-20% of the show that still needs work to be done. Almost without fail, the so-called “problem scene” is too longer so hard to understand and is easily fixed.
When you see the script supervisor’s notes marking a good take, do you ever ignore it and look for variations or does time dictate how much you can play with you cut?
That’s exactly why I ask for (but not always get) three days to put a show together. It gives me the luxury and opportunity to go through and look at EVERYTHING. Of course I’ll pay more attention to the circled take because that’s the take the director and/or producers liked on the floor. But they are not seeing everything. They don’t know that the cameras were late getting to their marks. They don’t know that there were prop problems. They just know that they liked the line reading and performance of the actor in that take. So I’ll look and compare the circled take with all the other takes, which might actually be better for one reason or another, paying close attention to the tone and the attitude of the take that the director and producers liked.
With HiC, landing the joke is critical. There’s choices that can be made to make it hit louder and funnier, one of them being with reaction shots. When do you decide to cut back to the joke victim or when to push forward?
It’s a case-by-case decision. If a joke gets a HUGE laugh I might cut to reaction shots and back to cover the length of the laugh. With veteran actors like we have in the likes of Ms. Betty White, Valerie Bertinelli, Wendie Malick and Jane Leeves, more often than not when they get that kind of a reaction to a joke they may do a funny gesture like the rising of the eyebrows or a “oh well” kind of a shrug that will get a secondary laugh! Now we’re doubling up on the funny. Those kinds of reactions wouldn’t play as well on a joke that didn’t land. You could do it but it would feel contrived and phony.
Another key element of the show is pacing. With four+ women at the helm, where do you look to find areas to let the show breathe before more dialogue kicks in?
Good question. It’s not formulaic. There is just something in the scene that takes a natural pause. At that point, I liked to cut wide and “let the scene breath.” There are always people who want you as the editor to pace everything up, to keep the show going all the time; but I disagree with that. Whether it’s a comedy or horror movie or an up-temp thriller, the audience always needs the time to “breathe” and re-group so to speak. If fact, I think the pauses helps to build support for the laughs yet to come.
How closely do you work with the showrunners on a cut for an episode like this or is it more the directors who pitch?
After I finish my pass the director (Andy Cadiff or David Trainer) gets a pass. I’ll do their notes and send their cut along to the producers who then step in and take over the show. The time constraints of a weekly sitcom are such that the directors almost never come into my room. They’re too busy prepping for the next show. And to expedite the process the producers of Hot in Cleveland— Suzanne Martin and Todd Millner — will usually give me their notes in email form.
I do the notes and then send them another Avid output, which could be in the form of a DVD or Internet link. The only times the producers from HiC or the executives from TV Land will come into my room is when we have a scene or a “bit” that isn’t working so well. This is when they’ll want to see the dailies and what our choices are to fix the scene. I show them what we’ve got and we’ll experiment on the fly, cutting it this way or that way until everyone is happy. They’ll leave me to finesse the changes and off we all go.
As an editor with years of experience, how do you impose or suggest an idea that you may see differently from creators/directors? What could say to young editors to help them not be just button pushers?
Unfortunately, this will only come with time and experience. Once the directors and producers come to know you and your work and RESPECT you, they’ll be more open to hearing your ideas and viewpoints. Even now when I go onto a new show, there are times when I have to bind my time and hold my tongue while I hear others debating performances choices or fixes for a particular scene.
Keep in mind these are ALL A-type personalities. They didn’t get to where they are by being meek and timid. They are more than comfortable making their own decisions, even if those decisions are wrong from an editorial standpoint. But once you’ve developed a relationship with them, once they TRUST your instincts, they WILL ask you want you think — and that is the happiest moment in any editor’s life.
When you’re not in front of your keyboard what can we find you doing?
I love playing my guitar. I’m currently taking French lessons via Rosetta Stone. I visit the Lumosity site nearly every day to try to resurrect my fading brain cells. I used to surf quite a bit, but my surfing buddy, my son Cody, is now living and attending school in Boston. And my wife and I are just now wrapping up a major remodel of our kitchen — which I would never do again! It’s like five weeks of camping, but without the fun.
If you could eat dinner with any three people who would they be?
1. Abraham Lincoln. 2. Mark Twain. 3. Anybody from the future.
S&P would like to thank Ron for taking the time out to talk with us about his workflow. You can catch more of his Hot in Cleveland cutting work airing on the TV Land channel.