By Matt Jeppsen, January 8, 2008
ABOVE: The original SNL cast (from left): Laraine Newman, John Belushi, Jane Curtin, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd and Garrett Morris.
The year was 1980. Producer Lorne Michaels had just finished a five-year run with Saturday Night Live and decided to take a break from the show. SNL syndication deals were struck, and an edit room was added in an office building a few blocks from the show’s New York City studios at the famed 30 Rockefeller Center. That room is where the first five seasons were cut for syndication. From there, another room was added. Then another, and another. Such were the beginnings of Broadway Video.
Cut to present day; the company’s sprawling studio complex takes up three floors in the same building on bustling Broadway, and they continue to support SNL production while working on related shows and specials for NBC — all in addition to handling their own high-end client base. Just last year, they embarked on an ambitious restoration project of the original first few seasons of Saturday Night Live. Because the show’s syndication is what kick-started the company, it is fitting that Broadway Video is restoring those first classic SNL seasons to their original luster.
Last year’s Saturday Night Live Season One restoration and DVD box set release was one of Broadway Video’s first forays into using Apple hardware and software for a major project. For its Second Season restoration project, they added several new Intel Mac systems equipped with Final Cut Studio 2 and Shake. Broadway makes use of a CommandSoft FiberJet SAN for shared storage with approximately 3 to 4 terabytes (TB) capacity.
DV recently caught up with the team working on this project at their New York City studios, speaking with 23-year Broadway Video veteran producer Mike Bosze, audio engineer Shane Conry and editor Mike Poole.
ABOVE: Audio engineer Shane Conry at work on the SNL project.
DV: Talk me through how the Broadway Video team started on this project.
Mike Bosze: The crew at SNL had been digitizing and archiving much of the older footage into their SAN. We took these files and used them as our main sources. These were the best versions of the shows and seemed to be in pretty good shape. There were still issues mostly due to tape degradation; however, it was a good place to start. In addition to working with these files, we pulled alternate sources from the SNL archive. We worked off of 1” element reels and assorted master and protection copies. Our goal was to make these shows look as close to or even better than the original broadcast versions.
DV: Was the condition of the original tapes one of the driving factors in the decision to do the restorations?
Bosze: Yes, absolutely! We have more options now than we did in the past. It seemed logical to move toward a file-based archive rather than allow these materials to continue to degrade through time.
DV: Tell me about the footage you had to work with. What sort of restoration issues did you run into, and what clean-up was required?
Mike Poole: The first five years of SNL have been digitized from 1” tapes and stored uncompressed at 29.97 fps. We did the cutting first; we cut all the episodes using Final Cut Pro 6 at the very beginning of this process in about two weeks. The cutting wasn’t so bad.
Bosze: We basically created a pulled-up version of the live show that originally aired. The only things cut were the bumpers, which are traditionally used to get in and out of commercial breaks. After that we did a color correct on every episode and addressed dropouts, shifts and any other video problems.
Poole: We used a few different plug-ins in FCP to fix dropouts, and obviously we are always trying to find better original sources for things that are really bad. A lot of the original switcher issues, you just can’t do anything about it. It’s on every source.
Bosze: Before we’d tackle a show, we’d sit down and come up with a strategy on how to best handle not only the video hits but sound issues as well.
Shane Conry: Depending on the shape of the show, we sometimes had to go back to the un-synced 1/4” audio tape that wasn’t running a time code and make a ton of edits to keep the audio in sync with the show. The musical bits were hard, like every frame or two you’d have to make three cuts because you’d see it out of sync or drifting. So that takes a little more time and care than normal, but the 1/4” sources sounded great. So when at all possible, we took audio from those tapes. I remember one show with Santana, the whole show had time code bleed from the 1”, so, obviously, that was unusable. For a song like that there could be several hundred cuts in three minutes. You zoom out, and it just looks black because there are so many cuts. And it wasn’t just one thing, for some of the 1” tapes we basically had to re-sync the entire show.
All the audio sources were mono. We experimented with stereo spatializers, but in the end we thought it would be better to present the shows in dual-mono. It’s not just a show, it’s a historical document — it’s like American history. When we were restoring, it was always a balancing act. How good can we get it, how much noise can we take out without starting to sort of “crappify” it.
Bosze: We played around with it; we pushed it. And most of the time we pulled back to keep the audio more authentic. Our goal, again, was to keep things as real as possible.
DV: What software plug-ins and filters did you use in the restoration process?
Poole: CHV-Electronics makes a really good plug-in dropout remover that allows you to go in and isolate a dropout and pull from another video field to fix it
. In some shows we had to move nearly frame-by-frame, fixing hits. It varied by show, but in some shows there were hits everywhere. And you never knew where the hit was going to happen; it’s not always in a specific area of the frame, so you can’t automate the process. We’ve been using Final Cut’s 3-Way Color Corrector to baseline the color and fix shifts. I did use Color to work on some shifts and color casts with varying success. But we generally just used the 3-Way filter on this project.
Conry: On the audio end we pretty much exclusively used the Waves Restoration Bundle, specifically the excellent Decrackle plug-in. It’s also an EQ thing, that’s probably where most of the de-noising happens. And for that we used the Rennaissance EQ. I like the sound and functionality.
DV: Can you explain how you chose to lay out your Final Cut Pro project files and organize media and shows?
Poole: Since we were having two rooms editing at the same time, we decided it would be best to have one show per project file. Also, they tend to get a little big, so we kept it all one show per project. That way, I can work on something and then quickly switch it over to someone else. The First Season restoration, we put a bunch in one project, and found that it was a bit overbearing.
DV: I understand that, historically, Broadway Video has been considered an Avid shop. What drove the addition of Mac editing systems here?
Bosze: Basically SNL is working these systems over at NBC, and again, it’s a way for us to share files. We’re working on the same show, and it helps to efficiently trade information back and forth. It also helps with budgets and deadlines on these projects. There are many more options than in the past.
Poole: When you finish a product, you put it in Compressor and tell it “I want this kind of file, and this kind, and this kind,” and it outputs it. For this project we make a final 10-bit uncompressed file, put that file in Compressor, burn in time code for the close-captioned people, and then make the MPEG-2s for the DVDs. It’s really nice that one application will do it all.
DV: Did you have any unforeseen software issues crop up in the process?
Conry: Audio-wise, we pretty much got away unbruised. We did have some issues early on with the new version of ProTools coming up with some anomalous volume changes, seemingly on it’s own. We still don’t know why or what circumstances produced that particular event and have been unable to duplicate it in any on-demand way. That was the only real hiccup we had in the audio department. After that it went swimmingly. All the audio was processed at 24-bit/48K.
Poole: We’ve been using Final Cut Studio 2, so it’s brand new, and there’s a render issue where it will lose renders every once in a while. Just... they go away. Another problem is since we use FiberJet, the way it works is that one person has access to a drive and the other person only has read access to that drive. So if a project has previously been rendered on one drive, and now you only have read access, Final Cut is attempting to grab those render files that are locked, and it wants to throw those renders away when you do a destructive edit. It can’t since you’re on a locked drive, so every once in a while you’ll get this message saying, “it’s a locked file.” But that’s more of a storage issue.
DV: How have you handled backing up the project files and media?
Bosze: At the end of this project, both NBC and Broadway Video will maintain copies of the final episodes on their respective SANs. We’ll also keep versions on external drives, DigiBeta and DLT, once the season has been authored. So we’ve got it backed up in several different formats.
DV: So when you lock a show, what then is the process for finishing?
Bosze: Once all of the media is ready for authoring, we’ll run a few tests with Compressor to decide which settings work best. We’ll then build our DVD menus and other graphics in a Smoke and After Effects environment. From that point on, the rest is screening. We’ll watch the entire season through for anything missed. We’ll then watch it through two more times before the final product actually goes to press.
DV: What extras and special content can fans expect in the box set?
Bosze: This season we’re doing a scrapbook, which will be a collector’s-edition exclusive. We’ve gone into Lorne Michael’s archive and found some really incredible material including personal notes from the cast, old Polaroid shots and various backstage photos. We’ve also included the SNL Mardi Gras Special, which I believe aired only once as a primetime special on NBC. You’ll find Andy Kaufman’s original screen test as well as audio outtakes from dress rehearsal, all of which have never been made public until now.
Conry: We’re all feeling a little privileged or honored to be working on this thing... It’s very close to my heart. I remember some of these shows from when I was little in footy pajamas. It’s a little romantic like that. And Mike’s got an impeccable aesthetic as far as the show goes. He’s like an encyclopedia of SNL.
Bosze: That’s the good thing about Broadway Video, it’s comprised of a professional team who enjoys the work and enjoys seeing an result that is going to make them proud. That makes my job a whole lot easier, but in the end it makes for a better final product.
DV: When can fans expect this Season Two box set to be released? Do you have plans for further restorations?
Bosze: The release date for this box set was December 4, 2007. Saturday Night Live is something that has entertained people for over 30 years and continues to do so. People love the show. As long as there is demand, and there seems to be a very high demand for it, I would think that we’ll keep working on this restoration series.
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