How the mind-splitting world of Severance comes together on Mac

How the mind-splitting world of Severance comes together on Mac

Geoffrey Richman, supervising editor on the global hit Apple Original workplace thriller, shares his creative process, why Mac is an indispensable tool, and his thoughts on who’s behind the video editing at Lumon.

In the fictional world of Lumon Industries, the biotech titan that’s central to the Apple Original series Severance, it’s possible to separate a person’s work and personal selves through a surgical procedure. And yet, for some employees of the cutting-edge company, video editing proves particularly challenging. In episode four of season two, “Woe’s Hollow,” we got a glimpse at a lo-fi attempt in the video that welcomes the Macrodata Refinement Department to the Outdoor Retreat and Team Building Occurrence (ORTBO).

“It’s hilarious,” says Geoffrey Richman, one of the show’s real-life editors and a three-time Emmy Award nominee. “With the jumpcuts and glitchy edits in the ORTBO video, it feels like Milchick [played by Tramell Tillman] cut the video together quickly with Miss Huang [Sarah Bock] in the back room behind his office.”

Richman can’t relate. From his iMac in his at-home edit bay in Park Slope, Brooklyn, he works closely with his colleagues — including executive producer and director Ben Stiller — to create a visually and aurally stunning, genre-blurring, certifiable hit show.

While Milchick may have access to unlimited paper clips and celebratory melon platters, he most certainly doesn’t have access to the Mac-powered setup that Richman relies on to do his job so successfully. His ecosystem of Macs — which includes his iMac, Mac mini, and MacBook Pro — became even more essential during the season two finale, “Cold Harbor.” This was one of the show’s most challenging episodes to edit, according to Richman.

 

“For the finale, there was a lot of experimenting with structure and testing out different ideas about how to play out different scenes,” says Richman. “It was a constant flow of ideas, and my Mac setup allowed for such a smooth experience.”

“In cutting the marching band, there were about 70 angles and takes to choose from, so we synced them all up in one multicam clip with banks of nine [3×3 arrays],” he continues. “Being able to play nine angles simultaneously in real time — and switch quickly between all the different options — made it a whole lot easier to find what we wanted at any given moment.”

The only thing Richman relates to about the Lumon crew is that he descends a level to work each day, much like the show’s protagonist, Mark Scout, played by Adam Scott. On a lower floor within his apartment, Richman edits on an iMac, which remotes into a separate Mac mini. This Mac mini runs Avid — the industry-standard video editing software — from a post-production facility in Manhattan’s West Village.

It’s a familiar setup for Richman, who says the vast majority of all the editing work he’s ever done is on Mac. “I like the interface on Mac a lot better than on a PC,” he says. “I find the way the operating system is laid out to be much more comfortable. I’m able to move between different applications very quickly on Mac.”

The setup is also ideal for a job that doesn’t always take place at a single desk. Though Richman, along with the rest of the editors on the show, is remote, he occasionally heads to set, where there’s an edit room with an iMac. And he’s also brought his MacBook Pro onto set to have easy access to cuts for reference on location as needed.

“I can work on my laptop and I can work on my iMac, and I can work at the post facility or I can work at Ben’s office, and as long as I’m logged into my account, everything I do shows up everywhere,” says Richman, who appreciates the seamless data sharing and device collaboration that happens with iCloud and Continuity. “I could be lying in bed and I have a thought, and I’ll type it into my iPhone, and then the next day, it just shows up in the Notes app on my desktop. That aspect of Mac I find very handy — to not think about which system I’m physically at.”

While working on “Woe’s Hollow,” Richman depended on the performance, portability, and exceptional battery life of the MacBook Pro for a visit with Stiller near the snow-covered Minnewaska State Park Preserve in upstate New York, where the episode was filmed. Richman also appreciates the multiple ports on the MacBook Pro, including an HDMI port, which is important for collaboration during an edit.

“I was able to go to the place where Ben was staying and plugged my MacBook Pro into his TV, and we were able to edit right off of my laptop,” he says.

Richman is also a fan of how easy it is to multitask on Mac. “I like running all the things that I use throughout the day all the time,” he says. “So I have Avid running, as well as the Notes app, Slack, Mail, Messages, Calendar, and Safari. All these things are open and running all the time, but then I love that I can use a shortcut to access Mission Control to switch over to a different app.”

Multitasking is a major component of Richman’s work, as he sometimes works with Stiller on individual scenes — such as the birthing cabin sequence in the season two finale — before the assemblies are completed.

“I would send Ben cuts of scenes as I finished them to get early feedback on them,” says Richman. “He would either send notes in an email or we would talk about it on the phone, then I could do another pass of the scene even before getting through the whole episode. That way, we knew we were always climbing the same mountain.”

An episode’s score also happens simultaneously with the edit. Richman speaks with Theodore Shapiro, the show’s composer, regularly during editing. And if Shapiro sends music cues after the workday has ended, Richman is often too excited to wait until the next day to hear them, so he listens immediately from his MacBook Pro or iPhone using AirPods Pro 2.

“Music is such a big part of enhancing the show,” says Richman. “You can actually shift a scene into a darker tone based purely on the music. Even though everything about the scene would otherwise look pretty light, the music can bring you into the way a character is feeling as opposed to what you’re seeing onscreen.”

Shapiro composed the two marching band songs used in the season finale, an episode that required an extreme amount of coordination in the editing. Working on his iMac, Richman had to make sure the instruments on camera stayed in sync with the music — all while building one of the most frenetic, tension-fraught sequences of the season. Organising the marching band footage alone took over a week, and with so many angles and takes to choose from at any given moment, there were potentially hundreds of ways to cut the scenes.

“Those were definitely scenes where I was jotting down notes on my iPhone and then — to get a different perspective — I’d work on my MacBook Pro, sketching ideas while sitting on my couch or in bed, before bringing those thoughts back to my iMac,” he says.

For audiences, the finale delivered higher stakes, new insights into the mysterious inner workings of Lumon, and likely a more menacing view of marching bands. For Richman, the finale brought both big obstacles and major rewards.

“I mean, the marching band scenes were extremely challenging,” he says. “But I hesitate because with the finale, for example, where we were doing a lot of work with structure, that’s a part of the process I particularly enjoy. So it’s challenging, but it’s also very satisfying and just fun.”

Season two of Severance is now streaming on Apple TV+. Watch Geoffrey Richman, Ben Stiller, and additional Severance editors discuss the making of the season two finale in Behind the Mac, available now on YouTube. (Warning: this film contains spoilers from season two of Severance.)

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