Spies Like Us: The Collaborative Post on “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”

NAB

article here

The premise for new Amazon Prime Video series Mr. & Mrs. Smith is like online dating. “You show up and meet somebody and you see how far it goes,” says the show’s lead editor Greg O’Bryant.

It is of course a riff on the 2005 hit feature starring Angeline Jolie and Brad Pitt, a married couple who are also spies working sometimes for and sometimes against each other to ‘hilarious’ effect.

The Amazon redo is from the storytellers from critically acclaimed series Atlanta, Donald Glover, and writer Francesco Sloane. Glover and Maya Erskine star as the two title characters (John and Jane), who operate as an undercover married couple while working for a mysterious spy agency.

“Technically, it exists in the same cinematic universe, which there are some hints about in episode four. But it was everyone’s intention to tell a different story with a different tone,” O’Bryant explains in interview with Matt Feury on The Rough Cut.

Showrunner Francesca Sloane used the analogy of the “storytelling sandwich.”

“That means the characters’ relationship is the bread and the spy stuff is the meat of the sandwich. It’s there, but the ratio should be skewed towards the relationship parts. We wanted to tell a story about modern relationships, why we get into them, and why we stay in them. If you think about it.”

He adds, “John and Jane had a pretty dire and immediate reason to stay together, but I think it was more about the heart than it was about action. Hopefully we achieved both.”

There were multiple editors across the eight episodes, including Kate Brokaw, Kyle Reiter and Isaac Hagy, but O’Bryant cut the pilot, has a hand in each episode, and is also a co-producer on the show. “I tell everybody that I know just enough to be dangerous,” he joked.

“I think it’s helpful to have an editor’s perspective on everything, whether it’s reshoots, color, sounds, visual effects, or music. It’s different on a film. Film is a director’s medium. TV is a writer’s medium. Writers usually appreciate having a technical head in the game.”

He was heavily involved in creating the score with Sloane, composer David Fleming, and Donald Glover, approving the VFX and working with Harbor Sound on the audio mix.

“The idea is, once we start editing, everything comes through my room before it’s done, whether it’s another editor’s cut, a VFX shot, a music cue, or a score cue.

“What makes TV special is when it feels like it’s all done by the same hand. It’s not just me. Francesca might be in my room. The other editors might be in my room. But it’s all going to come through the same tiny pipeline and, hopefully, that adds a level of consistency to it all.”

There was some pretty extensive reshoots, which O’Bryant says was helpful. “I know the larger world tends to think, ‘Oh, reshooting? Something must have gone wrong,’ [but] I think it almost always helps to go in and pick up a couple of shots for this or that episode, or even add in scenes,” he says.

“We redid whole scenes for the Mr. and Mrs. Smith pilot. They reshot two scenes entirely in the same location and everything. The team looked at what we had and said, ‘Hey, we’ve learned some things about this show. Let’s go back and do it a little differently.’”

In one episode, John and Jane are seeing a therapist about their marriage troubles. Within that we see vignettes of different missions they’ve been on.

O’Bryant says this episode had the most straightforward comedy and the most improv. “There’s a fair amount of improv in the show. Donald and Maya are both comedians, so there’s a lot, but that one had the most improv.”

Episode four was originally planned with an extensive action sequence in the Mexican jungle but the trick was making it work with comedy as well as thrills in the edit.

“We tried it a bunch of different ways. We spent weeks tweaking just that little sequence. We really beat the bushes before coming up with that fast, vibe-y, out-of-control thing we ended up with. I think we found a good middle ground. But more importantly, that’s the tone of the show. The tone of the show is about how to get that hard cut to be funny. We need to remember that these guys aren’t that good at being spies.”