LOCKED & LOADED
LegalDispatch 0.21
Good morning.
I’m writing this from my home office, with my 3D printer churning away printing out mounts for my daughter’s Mickey Ears collection. I’m also starting this 15 minutes from an ADR session via Zoom with Hari Neff, who plays Alana Stern in the LA Law pilot.
For the uninitiated, “ADR” stands for Automated Dialogue Replacement, which is just a fancy name for the dialogue we record in post-production to either change a performance, correct for a sound problem or other recording area in production, or — and this is probably its most typical use — adding or changing dialogue for clarity or other creative reasons.
When ADR works, it can be a powerful tool, essentially allowing you to rewrite the episode or movie in the editing room. But just as often as not, it can be intrusive and its execution can be ham-fisted. It’s hard for me to watch an episode of anything or a movie without noticing at least one or two of these less successful. moments.
In this case, Hari’s ADR will be in service of adding a few little lines — with ADR, less is always more — to help with clarity on a few key points. The entire cast, and even one guest star, goes through these ADR sessions. And just like not all ADR is created equally, some actors have a higher facility with the skill of recreating or supplementing an earlier performance as others. Giving notes on the ADR stage towards the beginning of my career was my first real experience working with — and directing — actors and I still enjoy it. When it all comes together, it’s like magic.
Yesterday, we locked picture on the pilot for LA Law. What does this mean? Basically, that barring some kind of unexpected development, we’re finished editing the pilot. What remains is the aforementioned ADR, color correction, sound mixing, and a handful of visual effects.
You might wonder why a legal drama like LA Law requires visual effects. I’ll tell you: After eight years in the Arrowverse, I now insist on using visual effects in every show I work on.
Kidding.
No, even a non-genre episode or movie requires a little VFX help. Sometimes it’s removing an errant crewmember. Other times, it’s to stabilize and smooth out and unintentionally shaky shot. And more often than not, it’s to “comp in” or “composite in” things like iPhone screens, iPad screens, and television screens.
Suffice it to say, the editing process has consumed much of my time this past week. I did, however, manage to make some headway on PROJECT SPECTRE and “only” have 30 pages or so to go on the draft.
Next week, we have the aforementioned sound mixing and color-timing. Ubah and I will also be getting notes on our “Series Document” — a document which lays out our plans for the characters and series should additional episodes beyond the pilot get ordered.
We’re also meeting with scores of writers for a potential writing staff. To date, we’ve gotten over 300 submissions — i.e., far more scripts to read and writers to meet with than would ever be possible. It gives me cause to think that the recruiting system as it is currently constituted is broken, working for neither the showrunners nor the writers who want to work on the show. Something needs to be done, but I’m not entirely sure — yet — what that something is.
(AGH. Ran out of time. I’m off to virtual ADR with Hari. Be right back…)
And I’m back! Hari was brilliant, as always. We also took the opportunity to show her a couple of selected scenes from the pilot. It’s all coming together…
And that’s it from me for this week.
Onward!
And be good to each other.
Best,
Marc
Encino, California
4.24.22
I was thinking today that ABC should do a two-hour premiere of the pilot like NBC did when if premiered and I see that Big Sky is in Limbo and should ABC decide to cancel it, they should replace it with LA Law and put it on Thursday nights at 10 just like the old days!
I’m really enjoying the behind the scenes information about the process of the LA Law show. Thank you for sharing. 😎