It’s been a long time since I worked on a TV show, in fact my previous experience might not even count. Everything about that show was different. Travel with me back to Beijing, 2006, and feast your eyes on the promo piece I cut for NBA制造2. This piece was used to sell the NBA-produced “basketball lifestyle” program to various provincial TV stations:
Man, that show was a challenge, as it featured many interview segments and I barely spoke any Mandarin at that point. My solution was to type in translations of everything as markers on each clip. Eventually I started understanding enough of the interview subjects to not have to look at every marker. The interesting thing about people’s speech is that it becomes possible to parse out the different blocks of meaning and cadences well enough to edit it even without perfect understanding.
But back to the new show; We Are Men will air Mondays at 8:30PM, starting on September 30, 2013. It’s exciting to be working on something with quick turnarounds that’ll actually be seen by the public within months or weeks of shooting. Most of the films on which I’ve worked featured more than a year of postproduction. It’s like being back in a newsroom, except we’re making a fictional comedy rather than rushing to cover breaking stories. It’s also fun working on a comedy, as whenever I pass either the writers room or the editor’s suite I hear plenty of laughter. It lightens the day.
- At 20% of its original length it ends up feeling very very hyper, an impression increased by the occasional whoosh transition –but it wouldn’t really be a promo piece if it were the same length and speed as the original. And we’re all raised on video games these days, right? It’d be fun to drop such a promo in front of tv-watchers of the late 50s and see if their heads explode from information overload. Blipverts!
- literal translation: “Made In NBA”. A cute play on the phrase “Made In China”.