I grew up in Southern Cal and graduated from UCSB with a degree in Film Studies. I have 3 kids and I love photography. My road to working at NBC is unique and filled with some incredibly interesting moments of life experience. I started my career with numerous internships and then became a film loader and 2nd AC for various productions. I then got a job at the World Wrestling Federation, later WWE where I worked in the New York Sales Office editing commercials and producing behind the scenes projects. Fast forward to today and I have been with NBC for 4 years. I work in the Custom Content Department where I produce and edit content pieces for our various shows. Below is a write up on one of the bigger projects I worked on to demonstrate the passion I pour into what I do. A little over a year ago my camera man Rick Walker (with 15 bags of gear) and I flew out to Spain and then to Budapest to interview the cast of Emerald City and to shoot the amazing sets and locations the show was filming on to create Oz Reimagined: The Making of Emerald City, a 1 hour special to support the series. It was quite an adventure for me but nothing like the adventure production went on to produce this series. It was a bear of a project to get through for only a handful of us assigned to work on it. We conducted 20 interviews with cast/crew and captured over 100 hours of behind the scenes footage. We then organized and cut down this footage with over 40 music tracks and lots of sound design to make the special. We edited the bulk of the show over a 3 month period and cut the final act in the last week. The show is structured with 5 acts. Act 1 provides an introduction by Vincent D’Onofrio from the massive stage of the Wizards Catacombs at Korda Studios outside of Budapest, where he sets up the characters and the reimagined story. The rest of Act 1 is supported by interviews from the cast and crew to set up this new version of an iconic story designed to bring the viewer into a world familiar, beautiful and more dangerous than ever before. ACT 2 focuses on the amazing sets and locations. The shows director, Tarsem Singh realized that the only way to take people on a real journey was to go to places that film crews and television crews never shoot at. VFX Producer Tom Horton explains that while scouting for the show Tarsem took his team to the top of a mountain in Spain and said, “OK, this is it. This is Oz.” From there it was like, “oh my god how are we going to get a crew of 250 people up here?” Previously this part of Spain had not been shot at because it was impossible to access. So they built a 7 kilometer road and built their access to it. Three months later they were filming. Production shot real locations for most of the buildings, castle exteriors and for many of the various breathtaking vistas where the yellow brick road was laid. For many of the cast and crew it was surreal to walk along the yellow brick road and to realize they were working on something so iconic, something with so much history. Dave Warren the shows production designer explains how they created the yellow brick road. They knew they couldn’t actually use a real road because of the locations it needed to go into and yet they wanted the road to look as real as possible. After doing some research they ended up creating a road modeled after the old stone Roman roads. They fabricated the road out of rubber so it could be installed in sections into the various locations it needed to go, while also being something they could quickly remove and take on to the next location. To see the road installed so homogeneously into the landscape like it had lived there for hundreds of years was testament to productions level of detail and expertise. For me one of the most interesting aspects of the road was what made it yellow in this version. The shows writer decided the road would be yellow from poppy flower pollen floating through the air and falling to rest on the road. This was a brilliant twist to the original. The incredible sets created for this show were all built at Korda Studios outside of Budapest, Hungry. Each set was like a work of art. Each set had so much detail. Detail the viewers at home would never see but that would lend itself to the actors during their scenes. An actor could open a drawer on one of the sets and find something inside to draw inspiration from. One of the most impressive sets was the witches’ chamber where a massive mosaic wall was built depicting the history of Oz. The mosaic was all hand built by local craftsman and inspired by the Goudy architecture from Park Guell in Barcelona. ACT 3 is all about FX. The act is titled “Science vs Magic” because in the series the Wizard of Oz has outlawed magic and is attempting to control Oz with science. In the real world I think Tarsem would prefer to outlaw VFX as he is not a big fan and always tries to shoot his FX in camera, practically. But with this show having stone giants, magic, witches, tornadoes and lots of fantasy, VFX was a necessity. Hence "Science", Tarsem vs "Magic", Tom Horton the VFX producer. Both the VFX and practical FX are extremely impressive in this production. Tarsem even hired 2 Mig jet fighter engines and large industrial fans to simulate tornado wind. They built a rig to make a house flip upside down, they built amazingly detailed sets and props and so much more. Toms VFX are also quite impressive, especially for a TV show. From fully computer generated environments like Glinda’s Castle and the City of Ev, to the procedurally generated neighborhoods surrounding Emerald City castle, to the awesome tornadoes and so much more. There were about 1000 VFX shots in the show and they had about 1/3 the time of a big feature film to pull it off, yet they still needed to maintain the ambition and scale of a big feature. If you watched the series or even our making of special you will see how they pulled it off big time! ACT 4 showcases the spectacular costumes of Emerald City. Trisha Biggar is the shows costume designer and has worked on everything from low budget projects to massive films like Star Wars. Trisha gives an in depth interview and talks about what it took to create all the costumes. She talks about how for the most part it took 2 or 3 people working a minimum of 2 weeks to make a single costume. Joely Richardson who plays Glinda was very impressed with the costumes and explains how each costume is literally like a work of art. "Every bead, every little diamond, the fabrics, everything. Each one belongs in a museum". Each of the witches had their own color palette. Glinda was dressed in white. Which interestingly was the same color as the walls of her house and usually something a costume designer would avoid, but in this case it worked very well. The Wicked Witch of the West runs a brothel in this version and she has an opium addiction. Her costumes were designed accordingly with reds, teals and darker colors. To satisfy her addiction she prepares and drinks opium tea. In doing so the tips of her fingers are stained black. The Witch of the East was probably the most striking of all the witches in her amazing red dress and ruby gauntlets. In this version ruby gauntlets take the place of the ruby slippers. The Wizard is big and full of himself and his costumes represent that. The Lions costume took 4 months to make and looks impressively like a real lions head. The Tin Man's costume was intricate and unique, even having a working mechanical heart. His costume took 6 months to make. Dorothy has a simple costume that was far different from the original and served to make her look like more of a bad ass. The Scarecrow is found tarred with straw and strapped to a crucifix with barbed wire. His face in this scene dramatically represents a reimagined Scarecrow and served to set the tone for how different Emerald City would be from the original. The Wizards Counsel and Guard each had their own wonderful costumes that worked very well in the series. Lady Ev had some of the most beautiful costumes which included the intricate masks her character always wore. Her masks were designed to show an emotion. She had 14 in total and each was made from a digital scan of her face to fit perfectly. Trisha and her wardrobe department did such an amazing job on each costume. They worked around the clock to make jewelry, die fabrics, age fabrics and create patterns. Everything that someone wore in the show was produced by her and her team, including the costumes worn by the 500 plus extras. Wow! Movies, television shows and really any produced content all share one common thread, the journey. From the spark of an idea to releasing the final completed product, every production no matter how big or small has a journey to go on. And for the cast and crew of Emerald City that journey was very much its own yellow brick road adventure. So ACT 5, the final act highlights productions journey with stories from the cast and crew detailing some of their most unforgettable moments. As Dave Warren explains, “these kind of jobs are always a huge adventure but on this particular one we all tested ourselves to our limits. Many of the crew would say we have never done anything like this one before!” Vincent D’Onofrio mentions how all the actors and crew came into this saying, “all right we have this gigantic journey to go on. And we knew we were doing something extraordinary, especially with Tarsem directing all 10 episodes”. This is very unusual for TV and allowed them to shoot the entire season out of sequence like a 10 hour movie. The logistics of this are staggering and yet they pulled it off. Tom Horton tells a story of how the crew basically went on its own yellow brick road adventure and how it was so surreal at times. On one particular day they were shooting the witch of the East at a mountain location in Torcal, Spain. East was to be positioned on top of a ruined building where the trails of her red dress would blow out behind her. When they got to the location they noticed that the clouds that had been sitting down in the valley all week were suddenly pushing up the mountain. Everyone was worried that the clouds would engulf them making it impossible to shoot. But as the clouds got up to productions location they somehow perfectly rolled up right behind Easts position on the ruined building. Tom mentions how, “Tarsem was like roll camera, roll camera. Everyone was in shock and could not believe this was really happening. Just as they rolled camera they were able to capture East with her red gown blowing in the wind as those amazing clouds passed behind her. It was stunning”. Tarsem talks about how the week they were shooting up at La Calahorra castle; a location that is rarely used for filming, Assassin's Creed decided to shoot there and was trying to kick them out. He was hoping to finish his shoot in time and get out before they arrived. Luckily he did. Trisha Biggar talks about the challenge of not being able to meet Vincent D’Onofrio until 5 days before shooting because he was on another project. In order to get his costumes ready in such a short amount of time they had to set up a special workshop in Barcelona to make 6 of his costumes in 5 days. And they did it! She reflects on what a great moment it was standing on set during the first day of filming after having finished all those costumes and watching Vincent and Lady Ev in their first scene as the sun rose above Barcelona. Oliver Jackson Cohen talks about how each of us has a connection to the Wizard of Oz from our childhood. He shares a memory of when he was a kid and how the witches in the original terrified him to the point that his parents had to remove the VHS player from his room because he thought the witch in it was going to come out and get him. So for him it all kind of clicked when he and Adria were standing on the brick road and he realized, “oh my god, I know this story and here we are shooting a reimaging of it!” And for me the guy who got to make this behind the scenes special it was pretty cool for me too. It was a wonderful opportunity to work on such an iconic story. To be able to see many of these locations and sets in person and even to walk along the yellow brick road. My small contribution to the show actually had its own very unique journey that has since inspired me to better document my travels and experiences on my next adventure.