It’s a pretty hectic work week for editor Ed Ornelas. Each episode of
Grey’s Anatomy, shot on 3-perf 35mm with two
cameras, takes eight to 10 days to shoot, generating around two to two
and a half hours of dailies. The editorial crew ‘ three editors and
three assistants ‘ works with the footage on six Media Composer
11.2.1.7 systems with about 2 TB of storage. The editors generally have
two or three days after the last day of dailies to work on their cuts,
which are made in collaboration with the show’s directors and the
show-runner, Shonda Rhimes.

“It’s the hardest show I’ve worked on,” Ornelas tells Film
& Video. This from a guy who used to work on
Huff, which generated between three and four hours
of dailies. What makes Grey’s Anatomy special? For
one thing, episodes tend to employ a complicated audio strategy, mixing
dialogue, voiceover, scoring and song cues.

“The most complicated part is the show openings ‘ there’s voiceover,
and music, and scenes moving quickly,” Ornelas says. “You’re trying to
weave very different elements together. I cut the picture first, cut
the voiceover next, put the songs in, edit the songs, and then adjust
the picture and voiceover. And we always come in around 52 minutes, so
I have to take 10 minutes out. You’re constantly tinkering with
different elements, and it’s very important to have them all working
together.”

Ornelas cuts picture himself, but handles the audio by delegating
duties to the show’s assistant editors. “We break [an episode] up into
six acts,” he says. “One assistant does the sound work on acts two and
three, another assistant works on acts four and five, and I like to
work on acts one and six. That’s where we really have to grab the
audience. And I also like to do the songs.”

The songs in Grey’s Anatomy offer an unusual
opportunity to match sound to picture ‘ or to play a song against the
image it accompanies. “I do a lot of [the song selection], but I have
my assistants do pitches. I’ll say, ‘We need songs from this scene to
this scene,’ and then they’ll go into the song bins, either their songs
or my selects bin. It sends us in the right direction.”

Ornelas makes sure everything is in order by burning himself a DVD to
take home where, he says, episodes just play differently than they do
in the cutting room. But there’s not always enough time to spend any of
it on the couch. “We’re at the season finale,” he explains. “They’re
doing a 10-day shoot in eight days with double crews. We have to
deliver on the last day that dailies come in. We have to turn it around
lightning fast. And it’s also got to be good.”

What influences his cutting style? Ornelas ventures that it’s a
combination of the movies he loves ‘ Scorsese and Spielberg and indies
‘ but figures his parentage and his hometowns also play a part. “My mom
was a musician, and editing is very musical,” he notes. “You bring life
experiences into the editing room, that kind of perspective. The son of
an engineer probably thinks a certain way. And growing up in Phoenix
and Texas probably plays into it at some point.”

Finally, Ornelas says the show is notable for treating its editors very
well. (You’ll be able to catch more of his thoughts on that on the DVD
commentary track to the show’s widely viewed post-Super Bowl episode
that he just finished recording ‘ surely a vote of confidence from the
rest of the show’s creative team.) “Shonda Rhimes and the other
producers and writers have a lot of trust in what the editors are
doing,” he says. “I can create an opening sequence without a lot of
direction, and nine times out of 10 they really like it. I feel like I
have a lot of freedom to interpret the material and tell the story
visually.”