Ramy Youssef: In Love premiered back in April and stars the comedian/writer/producer/actor, marking his third hour-long HBO Original comedy special. The show is Emmy nominated in the Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming category and was cut by Joanna Naugle - a two-time Emmy winner, who cut Youssef's prior HBO specials.
"It felt like a homecoming, getting to reunite with Ramy Youssef for his third HBO comedy special, and it was such a lovely surprise to get nominated for the Emmy for Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming,” relates Naugle. “It's been such a privilege watching Ramy evolve as a comedian and writer over the past several years, and I think In Love is his most vulnerable and sharp set yet.”
Naugle says the parts of the special where the comedian interacts with the audience are some of her favorite moments.
“It adds a level of spontaneity that makes the viewer feel like they're sitting in the venue with the crowd, even though they're watching from home,” she shares.
The special was directed by frequent collaborator Christopher Storer, and while many things remained consistent from the first two HBO specials, this time was different because the entire program was shot on film, totally changing the shooting strategy. Instead of recording two performances, four were filmed.
“Previously, we used six or seven cameras while shooting,” she notes. “But this time, there were only three for each show. This made things easier in some ways, since we had more performances to choose from. But it also limited what we could cut to at any given moment with only three angles.”
Another issue the team had to contend with was that the film reels would elapse after roughly 12 minutes, leaving the camera offline for several minutes while the magazines were changed.
“Sometimes we wanted to live in a certain angle longer, but were unable to due to the film roll running out,” Naugle explains. “One day, while cutting with Ramy, we were watching a take and saw the camera run out and we realized it called attention to the analog and nostalgic feel of the footage in a really beautiful way. We liked it so much we ended up leaving in a few of the roll outs in the actual special and used it as an opportunity to cut to another angle. It was something I was really excited about stylistically, since I'd never seen that done in a comedy special before.”
The special was edited in Adobe Premiere Pro using Adobe Productions, allowing assistant editor Davy Gomez to access the media simultaneously from any location, as well as the finishing team at Senior Post.
“Davy made multi-cams of each show, and we labeled each a different color, so it was really easy to see when we switched between performances in our master timeline and zero in on making sure those switches felt as seamless and natural as possible,” Naugle shares. “We also used the transcribe feature on each performance so I could easily search for a piece of text and immediately jump to that point in the timeline. This was incredibly helpful for comparing performances while working with Ramy and ensuring we had the absolute best moment for each joke. Collaborating with Chris and Ramy is always such a creatively rewarding experience and I am so proud of how In Love turned out!”