Viewers who catch television shows via streaming, especially fans of Apple TV’s The Morning Show, can now watch the editorial works of a former Valley Resident. Andrew Gust has been working on The Morning Show for a few years now and has worked his way up to become an editor with the production.
“I first started on The Morning Show a few seasons ago, in season two, and I came in as an assistant editor,” said Gust. “We worked for three weeks before the pandemic hit and shut the entire world down. Film sets are places where people work in very close proximity, so filmmaking was put on pause for a while. I wound up going to a different project for a little while and then came back for season three of The Morning Show as an assistant editor.
“My mentor with the show gave me more creative opportunities to get involved with the process and by the end of season three, I became a creative editor. For season four, they brought me back as a full-time editor, joining a team of four editors for The Morning Show. I worked my way up on the show by spending a lot of time with the directors and producers, as well as demonstrating to them my creative abilities.”
A lot of work goes into producing just one episode of a television series like The Morning Show.
“On a film of this size, while filming, they capture an incredible amount of footage from multiple camera angles as well as different performances by all the actors,” said Gust. “When they are done shooting an episode, the editor receives this mountain of footage to go through. It’s the editor’s job to piece together all the best footage from all the different performances, camera angles and components that make up an episode.
“Editors, some days, will receive up to five hours of footage a day for a couple of weeks straight, and then they have to whittle that down to one hour for the entire episode. The ratio of footage shot to what actually ends up being seen by the audience is vastly different. There are a lot of decisions that go into what remains on screen.
“The story and performance are number one,” said Gust. “Editors have to piece it together in a way that feels cinematic and allows the audience to become absorbed in the show. The best work an editor can do is sort of invisible. If you are watching a show, if you think about editing too much, it can become distracting. Sometimes, if you watch a show and you just think about the story, and not the editing at all, that is when the editor has done the best job. It’s like being an invisible artist and putting it all together.
“Once the editor has pieced together the footage for an episode, they then present a rush cut of it to the director of the episode. From there, it will go through several different stages with producers, actresses such as Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, because they are producers on the show as well. Then it finally goes to Apple to take a look and give their notes. From there, it goes through all the other stages of post-production. A composer will write music for the episode for all the different scenes and moments.
“There are also a ton of visual effects on the show that people are not aware of,” said Gust. “This is a show set in New York City, but it’s actually shot in Los Angeles. So any time there is a scene inside an apartment or office, the windows in reality are just a blue screen. That all just gets replaced later on by our video effects team to give it the façade of being in New York. Some scenes will be shot in New York, but the filming will only last a few weeks.
“The episode then goes through an extensive sound design and colour production. It’s a long process to get to the final product that people get to view at home. From start to finish, it could take several months working just to finalize the edit for an episode and then months afterwards to finish it.”
The Morning Show has a storyline that focuses on the pressures of working in mainstream media. The episodes reflect a lot of the social issues of our time, such as the Me Too movement and other political issues. It takes a lot of time to get the writing and production work done for each episode, while making sure it is still relevant with the times.
“A show like this with big-name stars is a complicated beast for sure,” said Gust. “The scripts for a show like this try to be as topical as possible, with the news cycle and covering cultural discussions that are happening at the moment. At the script writing stage, they almost take a full year to write it and then finish it, because things are always changing in the world. It takes a very large village to make this show come to fruition.”
Being an editor on a production like The Morning Show has been an incredible experience for Gust. He has learned so much in working his way up and looks forward to other projects in the future as well.
“I’m still pinching myself,” said Gust. “To work on a show that not only has a wide global audience, but also tries to have a social commentary of different sorts, is really a dream come true. To be working on something like this that hopefully can spark discussion amongst people about the topics it covers. It covers a wide range of topics and social issues, and ones that hopefully resonate with everyone, even if the character lives in this larger-than-life world. The relationship conflict and situations they find themselves in, hopefully, resonate with audiences.
“It’s sort of surreal to see my name on the credits of something like this. I’ve always hoped I could get to this point and am extremely grateful to be part of a big project like this. I never would have thought that growing up in rural Manitoba that something like this was a possibility for a career path.
“Season five of The Morning Show is coming up and we will start filming that in February or March. I also just concluded a very different and much more wholesome comedy series for Hallmark called The Chicken Sisters. It’s a lighter watch and was a lot of fun to work on.
“Right now, I’ve really enjoyed working on a project like The Morning Show, with all these people who have had all this exposure in the industry,” said Gust. “I would love to also sink my teeth into a grounded feature film that features blue-collar people and their lives as well. I think that is more of something where I come from and I know that those stories are ones that are important to put out into the world. I’m just waiting on a Manitoba director to write the feature film script about a farmer in rural Manitoba.”