How I Met Your Father’s supersized second season resumes on Tuesday, May 23rd, on Hulu. There are 9 more episodes on the horizon, and I had the pleasure of speaking with the show’s editorial associate producer, Russell Griffin. We connected the dots between the show that got him interested in his career (Cheers) and this project, the evolution of the sitcom, and the show’s secret sauce that has made it not only funny but also heartwarming.
(Russell Griffin/Hulu)
Alex: As the lead editor on Season 2 of HIMYF, has it been tough to take on 20 episodes in a landscape that typically limits shows to 10?
Russell: Yeah, it's been exciting to do a big season like that. Usually, you're dealing with 10-episode seasons, and for season 2, they decided to supersize it. We ended up breaking it up into two parts, so we had the first part of the season, then we had a mid-season break, and then we're about to start airing the last half of season 2. But it was exciting because it was fun to tackle a large chunk of things and see how the characters changed over the course of all of that.
Alex: In addition to editing sitcoms, you’ve directed them in the past. As an editor, are you on set for the actual shoot? If so, does that help inform the editing process for you?
Russell: A little bit of both. More so because it is a multi-cam sitcom where the editor is usually at the same location as opposed to a single-camera show or comedy show where they're sometimes filming in Atlanta or Vancouver or someplace else, and then they're doing post-production elsewhere. The post-production team, the editorial team, are very close on a multi-cam sitcom. So if I'm not down on set, I have a feed in my editing bay where I can see what we're shooting on the stage, so I can already start editing in my head. And if they have any issues or any questions, they can call me and say, "Could you take a look at this?" And I can say, "Yes, I can see what you're doing. That's going to work great in the editorial process, so keep going." So it's nice to be able to be close enough and be able to see what they're doing right then and there.
Alex: Awesome. I was lucky enough to be at the taping of the season finale, and I know that was their first time getting to have a live studio audience. Did that create new opportunities? Was that a totally different process for them in terms of being able to respond live to audience feedback?
Russell: It was, and I was there, and I was on set for the whole thing, so I probably saw you there in the audience. And yeah, it's a little bit of a different process for the actor because they are responding to the audience, they're listening to how they're reacting, and sometimes they have to allow a little bit more laughter or pace up their performance depending upon how that's going. It's very exciting for them. It's very exciting for us, too, to make sure to get back to how this kind of form started, which is it's a play, it's in front of the audience; that's what we do. And with COVID and everything that kind of shut all that down, now that we're kind of on the backside of that, it's nice to be able to go back to that and have that there. And that particular show, I can't wait for everybody to see, and we kept a few things secret that you'll have to wait and actually tune in to watch when it airs.
Alex: Yeah, I remember they kicked us all out before the final scene, which was a bummer. Now, they were a very professional cast. There weren't many goof-ups, but there were a few fun bloopers or moments where an actor broke. Being that you're tackling this whole season, are you also keeping track of a blooper reel or something like that so you can pass it on at the end?
Russell: Yes, absolutely. We do that for every season, and we have assistant editors who pull all of those gags throughout the entire season. And at the end of the season, when we're done with production, we usually have a wrap party, and we get to show the gag reel that our assistant editors put together, and it went off like gangbusters for this one. It was really, really special. Everyone enjoyed it, and it shows that the entire production is a very tight-knit family. Everybody enjoys seeing the mess-ups and seeing how much fun you had over the entire season. And so it's kind of a celebration of the fact that you've spent all this time together, you've created all these great stories, and you had a great time doing it. So it's nice to be able to take those moments and see the little bloopers and the gag reels, and everybody really appreciates getting a chance to reminisce about the entire season one last time.
Alex: Since sitcom directors often change from episode to episode, does the director come and sit with the editors and have a final say on the edit?
Russell: For How I Met Your Father, the large majority of the shows are directed by a fantastic director named Pamela Fryman. She directed almost all of How I Met Your Mother, so it was a natural fit for her, and she's one of the best in the business. We're very happy to have had her. So the fact that she's able to make her mark on our show this season is fantastic. But we do also have other directors that come in, and the cast is so good that they already know their way. And so the director can put their own little touch on it, but they stay within the How I Met Your Father universe. And whenever I'm directing, or if it's somebody else directing, you want to make sure to stay within that feel, but then put your own touch in terms of making sure that you have the story right, making sure that you're doing what the creators want you to do, and yet you're creating something that you think is great for your specific sensibilities.
Alex: You’ve been in the TV business since 1996, and there’ve been a lot of changes. Does HIMYF feel like a bit of a throwback to you, being that so many shows have moved away from this format?
Russell: It ebbs and flows, and you're right, I specifically work in what you think is a traditional sitcom with an audience. There are three walls, and there's an audience sitting there. But then with the advent of single-camera shows, instead of doing a Friends or a Cheers or those kind of things, you're doing single-camera shows. That’s what we call it in the industry where it's like Modern Family or Young Sheldon, things like that, which are more shot like how a film does. And it kind of goes back and forth. And right now, we're seeing a little bit of a resurgence back with the traditional sitcom. So How I Met Your Mother and How I Met Your Father was a little bit more of a hybrid, almost in between, where we shot a lot of things on the back lot, and we shot a lot of things in places that multi-cams didn't normally go to. But we're very much paying attention to that and yet trying to shape what the future holds. So I'm working on some new shows right now that are very much a traditional multi-cam sitcom and some things. Some years you have more of those, and some years you have less of those. But it's interesting to see over the decades how things kind of come one way and then shift another way in terms of the audience's tastes. And if a show is funny, then people say, "Oh yeah, that's the hot new thing." And then they try to make more shows like that. So we're happy that they're kind of coming around to this, too.
Alex: Yeah, absolutely. It's nice to have this format back in a big way on a platform like Hulu, with a lot of Disney marketing pushing it out there. I know that the filming schedule is really fast. They're usually doing an episode a week. How fast are you spitting out the episodes with a final edit? Does that take a lot longer than they actually take to film?
Russell: Yes. So we'll do basically an episode a week in terms of production. So you'll have an episode, an episode, and then one week you'll be doing what they call a hiatus, where everyone's kind of regrouping, and then you go back, and you do another episode. And so you try to shoot production-wise as fast as you can without breaking the production. And in terms of editorial, we take a long time to do it. So I'll take a number of days, maybe three or four days, maybe five days, to do an editor's cut. Then I'll work with the director for two days, and then we start working with our showrunners, creators, and producers on the show to create the producers cut. That's where the real meat of it happens and where we shape and fine-tune it to exactly what Elizabeth and Isaac want for this particular show. And then we send it on to the studio and the network, and they give notes, and then we finally end up with a finished piece.
So in all, maybe 10 working days, but that's kind of spread out over a lot of different things. And with this particular show, we have such a high-demand guest cast and things that we have to work around their schedule. Sometimes we'll shoot things out of order. So for Neil Patrick Harris, that came back and was in the earlier part of the show, we had to wait till he was available later and then put that into the other episodes. And it's quite a challenge scheduling-wise.
Alex: I can only imagine. I want to ask about commercial breaks. Hulu has an ad-based tier, so there are breaks that are consciously put there for a commercial break. You’ve edited for network shows, which are similar, but also Netflix shows, which didn’t have an ad tier until recently. How are the commercial break points chosen, and how different is it editing with them in mind?
Russell: It's written in there. And the act breaks are specifically, like you said, for those commercials, and you have some shows that are thematically structured just in general in terms of the act breaks. And even in shows for Netflix, you have those act breaks written into the story, but they're not specifically called out. This is the end of the act. This is where the commercial's going to go. But then you have shows on Hulu, where we are going to go to black, and whether there's a commercial or you're paying for the non-commercial tier, and you just go straight through, there is going to be a type of break there. The only major difference between linear networks like NBC, CBS, ABC, and the streaming networks like Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime, and those are the runtime itself. When you're on a physical clock like NBC where they go, "Your show's starting at 8:00, and you're ending at 8:30," you only have a certain amount of time that you have to get those episodes down to. Whereas if you're on a streaming service, you can let the story play for however long it needs to be. Sometimes it's slightly shorter than those type of episodes. Sometimes they're longer than those episodes, but you have the freedom to really let the story dictate the length of the episode.
Alex: As a viewer, that is very refreshing because you can feel it on linear TV when they're stalling to hit that 21-minute mark. And then you can also feel it when they have too much story and things are rushed.
Russell: I'm actually working on a pilot right now for NBC, and it's somewhat heartbreaking because you go, "Oh, it's too good. There are so many goods things," and we're having to pull it out because of time and you wish you could do an extended version or something like that. But yeah, it's nice to be on Hulu where they really let the stories dictate the length for that particular episode.
Alex: Yeah, absolutely. What was it that got you into editing? When people think of going into film or television, editing is kind of the unsung hero that a lot of people just don't think about as a career option.
Russell: Like most people who go to film school or get in this industry, I wanted to direct, and I am directing, but everyone kind of finds their path of how they do that and what they find out that they're good at. I ended up going to graduate film school, and one of the very first things I did was short film. We're sitting around with the professors, and we had all cut our films and people are coming by just checking it out and saying, "How do you feel about it?" And I said, "Well, I don't know." I was a little unsure about it. And the instructor said, "Well, maybe you're not an editor, maybe you'll be a writer, maybe you'll be a director." And then he sat down, and he watched it, and the only thing he said was, "Maybe you are an editor." And then he walked away. So it was kind of one of those moments of, oh, I guess I am good at this. And then, when I started to work in the industry, I realized that that was my foray into it is that, for whatever reason, I'm a good editor, and I can sense the pacing, I can sense the performances, and I can sense the takes, and it's something that I just find that I'm passionate about. Even as I'm editing the episodes that I've directed, I've also edited my own work, and that's been fun to do, but it's been one of those things of like, oh, I see why I enjoy this. Because it's the bedrock of what films are made of, what TV shows are made of. It's the juxtaposition of one visual versus the other visual. It's the storytelling, how you get faster through storytelling, what emotional moments to focus on. I'm biased, but it's one of the core elements of what makes TV shows and filmmaking good. You have the writing, you have the directing, and you have the editing, and then every department is very crucial, but I think it's kind of the core of what this artistic endeavor is.
Alex: There's the famous quote that "Films are made in editing." Do you feel the same is true in TV?
Russell: Absolutely. I mean, well, I'll say whenever I get a cut, my first cut is kind of the bedrock of what ends up happening throughout the final cut. But if you end up working with some fantastic showrunners as we do, Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger on How I Met Your Father are brilliant at this. They really treat editing as the final rewrite. And so when we're in there, we are sometimes moving around scenes so that we can shape the narrative to their vision. So we move things around, we pull lines, and it's all in service of trying to get the story more clearly told, more impactfully told. It's definitely true in films and in television that the story is made in editing.
Alex: Were there specific shows or films that inspired you to want to go into film school?
Russell: Cheers was a huge impact on me. James Burrows was a director, and I remember just watching all these shows and seeing that guy's name, and I said, "I don't know what he does, but he's clearly somebody I want to be like." And so that's what I did. And then also some other directors on that show, Andy Ackerman, who's now a very renowned director, was an editor on Cheers and became a director. People say, "Oh, you're doing in Andy Ackerman?" I said, "Yeah, I guess I am." But those types of shows are the ones, and specifically Cheers, it's not even the comedic moments, it's almost the emotional moments made with the comedic moments that made me want to get into filmmaking and television. And the same thing with How I Met Your Father. You have a lot of shows that are just comedic moments, and those are fine, and those are great, but for me, the best of those are the ones who can touch you emotionally and really get into some of the romance, some of the heartbreak, and some of the deeper emotions that these characters go through.
Alex: There are some parallels between Cheers to How I Met Your Father. They both have their group hangout bar setting where all the storylines intersect. Does that feel like a full-circle moment, working on a show that has its roots in the format of Cheers?
Russell: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the more direct full-circle moment was that one of the episodes I directed was on the Cheers stage at Paramount. And so it was not lost on me how impactful that was for me to be standing there directing at the same place that James Burrows and those guys have done it. But yes, for How I Met Your Father, for this format, everyone kind of has to have a gathering place, whether it's the Friends coffee shop or Cheers bar or whatever it is. It's that main set that people in the audience get to see them live in, and for us, it's Pemberton's and the bar that Sid owns, and that becomes the touch place where everybody goes and starts to tell their stories, and they kind of bond through that. And then we have their other sets and sometimes the other swing sets. But yeah, it's nice to be able to come back and see that that's like a home for these guys, and it feels like a home for everybody on the show.
The second half of Season 2 of How I Met Your Father begins Tuesday, May 23rd, exclusively on Hulu. New episodes will stream on Tuesdays leading up to the two-part season finale on July 11th, which was filmed in front of a live studio audience.