NEW YORK — Post Factory NY (simgroup.com) recently provided post production services for O.J. Made in America, director Ezra Edelman’s five-part documentary series for ESPN Film's
30 for 30. The facility hosted Edelman and his editorial team for over 12 months as they have cut together the series, which explores the life and times of the former football star. Post Factory NY also handled sound editing and mixing, editorial conforming, color correction and the production of deliverables for festival release.
The film screened in its entirety (7.5 hours) at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City and the Hot Docs Film Festival festival in Canada. Broadcast delivery will quickly follow with the first episode premiering on June 11th on ABC, ESPN's sister network. Episode 1 and the rest of the series will air over the course of a week on ESPN beginning June 14th.
O.J. Made in America examines Simpson’s life and career from his football heroics and work in movies and commercials to the murders of his wife and her young friend, his sensational murder trial, and his subsequent imprisonment on robbery charges. The story is told through interviews with scores of people connected to the real life events, as well as an array of news footage, film clips, home video and other archival media.
“There’s much more to this story than just the trial,” notes producer Caroline Waterlow. “We also tell a parallel story about racial history of Los Angeles and the LAPD that put the events involving O.J. in context.”
Post Factory provided editing systems, work space and technical support to the show’s editorial team during the months they spent reviewing source media and constructing the show. Six Avid Media Composers were linked to a SAN, giving editors Bret Granato, Maya Mumma and Ben Sozanski shared access to the voluminous source files.
“Originally, the show was meant to run five hours, but we found a lot of great material and felt we needed to further develop some of the story points,” Waterlow recalls. “ESPN liked what we were doing and encouraged us to make it bigger and better.”
Post Factory assisted the editors by performing tests on archival audio and video material to determine if they could be brought up to current broadcast standards. “It was very helpful to be doing everything under one roof,” Waterlow says. “It made it easy to test things early on and see how much better we could make things look and sound.”
Post Factory supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Keith Hodne spent considerable time in restoring 30- and 40-year old sound elements that were poorly recorded or had degraded over time. His aim was to build a soundtrack that was consistent and conformed to modern standards while preserving as much as possible the character of the original material.
“Ezra wanted the documentary to have a raw feel,” Hodne explains. “In telling the story, he wanted the elements to be as real as possible and so we did just enough clean up to ensure that dialogue was clear and everything played well in a theatrical environment. When you hear an old clip, the hum and hiss has a nostalgic feel that is an important part of story. We didn’t want to suck all that out.”
Hodne edited and mixed the sound on an Avid Pro Tools system. The final mixes for the theatrical and broadcast masters were done in 5.1 and include rich sound design and a haunting score by composer Gary Lionelli. Overall, Hodne describes it as restrained. “We found that less is more,” he says. “We used a lot of pauses and silence to elevate the tension so that when we come in with other elements—music or sound effects—they are even more powerful.”
In order to complete the series in time for its first screening at the Sundance Film Festival, editorial compositing and final color correction began even while offline editorial continued. Finishing editor/colorist Seth Buncher performed all of that work on Avid Symphony. That system, he notes, proved very efficient in adjusting for the varying formats, aspect ratios and frame rates of the source media. Still, many scenes required further technical fine tuning to blend seamlessly into the show.
“Avid was very good at getting everything into a single timeline, but having something play is not enough,” Buncher explains. “We used Avid’s native motion adapters and third party plugins to get everything to play together smoothly. We didn’t want the motion of a clip to take the viewer out of the thoughtfulness of the content.”
Buncher applied similar care in color correction. Much of the archival footage needed individualized attention to restore faded color and repair damage. Working directly under Edelman’s supervision, he gave the series an overall look that was consistent without appearing overly processed.
“We spent a lot of time prior to final post developing a look for the show, so that when the footage actually began to arrive the process could flow seamlessly,” Buncher recalls. “Given the tight delivery schedule, that was essential. When the footage started to come in, it arrived in pieces…the editors continued to tweak things throughout the grading process. We were still integrating new material as we were preparing the DCP. The finished show looks great!”
It’s been a little more than 20 years since Simpson’s murder trial began in Los Angeles. Waterlow says that the intervening years have created the distance needed for viewers to reexamine the dramatic events with fresh eyes. “There is a whole generation of people who don’t know O.J. or only know him as a prison inmate,” she says. “He was also a groundbreaking athlete and the first black spokesperson for a major American corporation. He was beloved. That part of the story has been forgotten. We want to show people why what happened to him mattered so much, why we cared about him. We remind people of important parts of the story that have been lost over time.”