Chapter 14

Timescales

In none of our previous discussions have I mentioned anything about time. No, I’m not about to tread on Professor Stephen Hawking’s toes, but rather I will talk about how long it takes (or more realistically, how long you are allowed to take) to make a programme or series these days.

This chapter is divided as follows:

• 14.1 Past and Present
• 14.2 An Editing Schedule for Still Open Hours (2014)
• 14.3 An Editing Schedule for Rock n’ Chips (2010)

14.1 Past and Present

 Does the Team Think?—Everybody’s a Critic

Budgets are constantly being adjusted downwards, which means increased pressure on those of us who are paid to make artistic decisions, which we all know can take time. The new technology has made the editing process quicker, but at the same time, it has opened the gates for the world and his wife to have a view on any cut. I have sometimes, and rather cheekily, referred to them as the ‘grown-ups’; however, be warned, their numbers are growing fast. Gone are the days of a cut just having to satisfy you and your producer or director.

 The Good Old Days—Oh No! Here He Goes Again

I can tell you that when I started editing programmes like Only Fools and Horses, Just Good Friends, and Terry and June that they were assembled in not much more than six hours, and that was it—no grade, no dub, only reviewed (on another machine) and on the air.

It is true that these programmes contained previously edited filmed inserts and that this material only required slight adjustment after the audience had seen it. In addition, recorded takes were much longer (and there were no ISO feeds), with far fewer retakes than would be attempted these days; as a result, there was much less you could do to the show. Had we known they would still be regularly on the air over 30 years later, providing the backbone for stations like UK Gold, maybe we should have spent more time on them. The good thing is, even looking at them today over 30 years later, they still aren’t at all bad. Yes, they’re a little flabby in places, but generally that flabbiness is part of their charm.

Well, that’s quite enough wallowing in the past for one page; let me show you how much time I spend these days on an actual series. For this I will use real figures from two recent projects.

TRANSPORT CONTROLS OF AN AMPEX-TWO INCH VR2000 QUADRUPLEX VIDEOTAPE MACHINE FROM THE 1970S.

14.2 An Editing Schedule for Still Open All Hours (2014)

Still Open All Hours (Series 1)—A series of six half-hour comedies for BBC Comedy (transmitted January 2015) and written by Roy Clarke, the shooting of which was a mixture of location and multicamera studio days. It was directed by Dewi Humphreys and produced by Alex Walsh-Taylor.

 Still Open All Hours (2014)—First the Location Material

Still Open All Hours was shot on location in Doncaster for two weeks. The unit would send the rushes, in file format, down to London to a company called Outpost at Pinewood Studios, where the material was copied and transcoded into an Avid. I was given nine days to get the material together before spending two days with Dewi doing some fine tuning before the audience was to see the material as part of each episode’s recording.

 This Week—Still Open All Hours: The Studio Shoot

A Still Open All Hours studio week had two main recording days, one without an audience (a pre-rec day, as it is known) designed to record scenes in ‘guest’ sets or getting complicated scenes which would be impossible to shoot in front of an audience out of the way. A pre-rec day usually produced about 12 minutes of cut material. The rushes were ingested overnight so that they were ready for me to assemble the next day. Dewi would only get about a half hour with me during his ‘lunch break’ to look at what I had done. The programme inserts (complete with location scenes as well) had to be ready for a dress run of the episode at about 4:00 p.m. prior to an audience record at 7:30 p.m. The audience sees the show in dramatic order, but has to cope with scene repetition and retakes—but it’s free.

More ingesting of this new audience material is done overnight and the complete programme recording (laughs and all) is ready for me the following morning. I work with it from 9:00 a.m. until about 4:00 p.m. (about seven hours), by which time I get Dewi to come and see it, and we look through the cut with the intention, by the end of the day, of producing a 29-minute first cut for distribution to the writers, the producer, and BBC executives. This is not by any means a rough cut. How very dare you! Dewi and I pride ourselves to cut the show down to the delivery duration (here of 29 minutes) because if we didn’t, the fine cutting process would take much longer and be considerably more chaotic. It is all too easy for someone to say, ‘Ooh, I missed that bit’, but much harder to decide what ‘other bit’ should be cut to allow a reinstatement.

Handing the production team a ‘to time’ cut makes the arithmetic simple—whatever goes back in causes something else to be cut.

 The Final Cut—Still Open All Hours: The Editing Schedule

We go round this track five more times and generate six 29-minute shows with a bunch of notes from our first cut recipients, their partners, their children, their cleaners, clever pets, and close friends. All right, only joking! Six further days of fine cuts with close liaison with the writer and BBC execs, and we walk away with six really smart, locked shows.

 S and V Satis—Still Open All Hours: After the Cut Is Over

Further processes outside the edit suite include: two day prep dub (per show), one day dub (per show) with a dubbing mixer to finalise the sound, and a half-day (per show) with a colour grader.

All shows come back to me, this time in an online suite, for the insertion of graphics, rollers (or scrolls), bars, and tone and ident clocks. At this stage, I make sure clean elements are placed at the end of the tape or file, ready for delivery. This takes two days, as I can easily ‘top and tail’ (as it’s called) three shows in a day.

 Final Score—Still Open All Hours: The Scores on the Doors

So our results board is as follows:

• 11 days editing the location material.
• 6 days (1 day per show) editing the pre-recs.
• 6 days (1 day per show) to produce a first cut.
• 6 days (1 day per show) to do the fine cuts.
• 2 days ‘top and tail’ (adding graphics, a leader, and clean elements).

A total of 31 days in an edit suite to produce six 29-minute shows for BBC1, giving an editing average of 5’37” per day.

And outside of the edit suite:

• 3 days (a half day per show) with a colour grader.
• 18 days in a dubbing suite.

For the dubbing suite we get 9’40” per day’s use, and the grading suite where 58 minutes is produced per day. As you can appreciate, the edit suite with its driver accounts for a sizeable part of the programme’s budget.

14.3 An Editing Schedule for Rock n’ Chips (2010)

Rock n’ Chips—A 90-minute comedy drama written by the much-missed John Sullivan (transmitted January 2010) that took the characters from Only Fools and Horses back to 1960 to find Del, Trigger, Boycie, and the rest just leaving school. Again, it was directed by Dewi Humphreys and produced by Gareth Gwenlan.

  Rock n’ Chips (2010)—The Editing Schedule

Turning to Rock n’ Chips, this was an all location shoot with no audience recordings to deal with and, consequently, the editing process was much more straightforward. The totals were:

• 21 days editing to a first workable cut.
• 5 days fine-cutting.
• 1 day ‘top and tail’ (adding graphics, a leader, and the clean elements).

Therefore, we spent a total of 27 days to produce a 90-minute programme, giving an editing average of 3’33” per day.

Grading took three days and dubbing (including prep dubs) took seven days.

Having written all that out, I’m not sure what I’m trying to prove, other than providing a possible benchmark for you.

Here is a spreadsheet of one month of the studio/rehearsal/editing schedule of Still Open All Hours.

A STUDIO/REHEARSAL/EDITING SCHEDULE FROM STILL OPEN ALL HOURS, NOVEMBER 2014.