Life & Death in the ER: Editors Cut for Impact

How do you plot a medical mystery in four acts, with three exciting act breaks and a teaser, and make it something people will want to watch following American Idol?

That’s the dilemma with House, the Fox hospital series starring Hugh Laurie, according to co-producer David Foster, M.D.  One element of the solution: the show’s fast-paced editing.

“I came into House its second year. There seemed to be a cutting pattern already established – I had to make a big adjustment to rapid-fire,” said editor Dorian Harris, A.C.E. “I had to up my cuts-per-minute. The editors have a little competition as to how many cuts we have per episode!”


Foster and Harris joined fellow producers and editors in a Television Academy Professional Development seminar exploring the ways that editing enhances television storytelling, “Life & Death in the ER,” held October 18 at the Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre.



Other panelists included Scrubs executive producer-creator Bill Lawrence and editor Rick Blue and Baghdad ER  producer-director Jon Alpert and editor Patrick McMahon, A.C.E.  Television Week vice president, publisher and editorial director Chuck moderated.

Depending on the scene, Laurie’s performance may also set the House editing tone. After all, explained Foster, “The medicine on our show is always here to serve a purpose. If two characters are having a debate about whether to do a CT-scan or an MRI, it’s really about conflict between the characters.”

For NBC comedy Scrubs, “We try to bridge the gap between moments of broad comedy and real medicine,” Lawrence said. “My editors always [do that].  The doctors are very normal people, sometimes funny, sometimes self-righteous.

One thing I said to Rick and the two other editors is, ‘The comedy part will go very quickly. When you get to the drama, you have to slow it down as if it has weight.’ So Rick is cutting two shows, a slapstick comedy and a drama. Without the editors, I don’t think we could switch gears.” (Editor John F. Michel won a 2005 Emmy Award for his work.)



To achieve that balance, Blue said simply, “Form follows function.”

Working on the Emmy-winning HBO documentary Baghdad ER , which depicts war-wounded soldiers and the health care staff at an Iraq hospital, took an emotional toll on the editors.

“When you’re filming, you see it once,” McMahon pointed out. “In the editing room, that arm gets amputated over and over again.”



In one segment – culled from 300 hours of footage – a young Marine in need of  pulmonary artery repair died despite an initially promising outlook. His mother requested that his identity not be disclosed.



“His face was in almost every shot,” McMahon recalled. His decision to cut back and forth between members of the hospital staff solved the problem and added another layer to the story. “When you cut between the faces,” said McMahon, who was nominated for an Emmy, “you see them. You see what they’re about.”

The editors and Alpert jointly made the decisions about how graphic the selected footage should be, with HBO’s Sheila Nevins as final arbiter. It wasn’t always body parts that were omitted, though. After showing one soldier whose lower body had been shot off, the filmmakers followed up with his funeral, where the whole town turned out.



“When Pat edited it the first time, I was paralyzed. I wept for 30 minutes,” Alpert said. “Everyone else did, too. The scene was edited out because it overpowered what came before it in the hospital.”



The evening was produced by activities committee vice chair Michael A. Hoey, A.C.E. and editing peer group co-governor Jason Rosenfield, A.C.E. Barbara Wellner is activities committee chair. Robert O’Donnell is director of activities for the Academy.

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