It’s a welcomed bit of deja vu for editor David Tedeschi who earned his second career Emmy nomination in the Outstanding Picture Editing for Nonfiction Programming category on the strength of a documentary directed by Martin Scorsese and profiling a music icon.
This year’s nom came for HBO’s George Harrison: Living in the Material World, which nabbed a total of six nominations for nonfiction programming, the other five being for: Outstanding Nonfiction Special, Directing (Scorsese), Cinematography, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing.
Tedeschi’s first Emmy nomination was in 2006 for PBS’ American Masters documentary, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, the second of what are now five collaborations for the editor with Scorsese. The first was the Feel Like Going Home installment of the TV documentary series The Blues, followed by the Dylan doc., then Shine a Light focusing on the Rolling Stones, Public Speaking centering on Fran Liebowitz, and last year’s George Harrison project.
For Tedeschi–who’s repped by Innovative Artists–a prime challenge posed by Living in the Material World was the fact that the story of George Harrison and the Beatles “are both very important and personal to a lot of people who have a strong point of view coming into the movie. Our task was to realize how you can get people to look at Harrison and the Beatles with fresh eyes.
“Plus,” continued Tedeschi, “George Harrison is a very complicated man. I admire him greatly but his story is not easy to tell. Marty [Scorsese] decided to make the documentary as personal as possible. We have home movies. George himself was almost a diarist. We had a lot of his writings and recordings he made through the years. For instance, he had a clip of the first sitar lesson he had with Ravi Shankar. It was an interesting challenge to conjure George Harrison the man through his music, his audio recordings, his writings, his home movies, and interviews done with him over the years.”
Tedeschi described George Harrison: Living in the Material World as “a labor of love but still a labor. Everyone involved put great care into every aspect of the film. To have it get six Emmy nominations is very gratifying.”
Tedeschi said of Scorsese, “He’s always working on a feature film, he has a foundation for film preservation. Marty is one of the busiest guys I’ve ever met. Yet he always goes the extra mile on every project we’ve worked on together. I remember during the Bob Dylan documentary, he was working on The Aviator at the time. He’d come into the editing room at the end of the day a little tired. Just 10 minutes later he was filled with adrenaline, full of high energy. Rock ‘n roll is like candy to him. I’m privileged to be the guy who gets to give him the candy.”
Nomination Justified
Production designer Dave Blass teamed with art director Oana Bogdan and set decorator Shauna Aronson to earn an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Art Direction for a Single-Camera Series on the strength of three episodes–“Cut Ties,” “Loose Ends” and “Measures”–of the FX show Justified, which centers on deputy U.S. marshal Raylan Givens, an old-school law man in modern times whose beat is Lexington, Kentucky, a jurisdiction that includes Harlan County, a rural mining area where he was born and raised.
“This is my first Emmy nomination,” related Blass who’s handled by Montana Artists Agency, “and it’s just such a great honor to be considered in a group with the other amazing shows, especially as Justified is the only contemporary series in the group. [The other nominated shows being Boardwalk Empire, Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones, and Mad Men.] For me, Justified has been a passion project. I have flown down to the real Harlan a couple of times to get immersed in the people and the real world to try to create an accurate representation of a very uncommon world. I love reading message boards from people complaining that we shoot in Pennsylvania or Georgia, and we should just shoot in Kentucky….when in reality we shoot in Los Angeles. I love getting into the details of the Appalachian people and creating the backdrop for our drama to unfold.”
Regarding the biggest hurdle he and his team had to clear for the nominated work, Blass noted, “The most unique challenge was creating a ‘Holler’ community area that centered around a Barbecue Joint and Hog Slaughter house for our new villain Elston Limehouse. It was a place that had to exude history and feel that it had been in this place for decades, have lots of texture and character, and be flexible for shooting. I pre-vis most of my bigger sets, and we worked on this whole area quite extensively working out all the angles, and making the geometry work with wild walls and such so that there were lots of great angles and options for shooting. Then my decorator Shauna Aronson and I just had so much fun with the décor; we did tons of research on the southern barbecue belt and the juke joints of the area, and then found all of these specific items and details that really told the backstory of the place. Looking at the faces of the crew when I showed them the huge box of 3,000 bottle caps that I just bought, they all had the same expression, ‘oh, God…what do we have to do with those?’ Everyone got into the hillbilly spirit and was adding their own little details. It was truly a team effort.”
As for his collaborative relationship with Aronson and Bogdan, Blass shared, “I have worked with Shauna Aronson for about 10 years. We have been through thick and thin, and have developed that special shorthand that I think all successful teams have. We talk about concepts, colors, textures, ideas, swap photos and then go our own ways and come back to tweak the final details. We shoot an episode of Justified in seven days so there is not much time for sit down meeting over coffee. She’s constantly excited about what she is creating and her energy keeps everyone going after long, crazy hours. I designed a bunch of episodes of Cold Case with Shauna at Warner Brothers where I met Oana Bogdan who was just coming off Without a Trace; we immediately clicked as a team. She is incredibly detail oriented and has come up with some great ideas and design concepts that have really brought life to the sets of Justified.”
This is the second major award nomination for Blass who as art director was part of a team (with production designer John Janavs and art director Robert Frye) that in 2007 garnered an Art Directors Guild nom for the Fox show Unan1mous.
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Editor’s note: This is the ninth installment in an 11-part series that explores the field of Emmy nominees and winners spanning such disciplines as directing, cinematography, editing, animation and VFX. The series will run right through the Creative Arts Emmys ceremony and the following week’s primetime Emmy Awards live telecast.
Click here to read The Road to Emmy, Part 1
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 2.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 3.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 4.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 5.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 6
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 7.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 8.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 9.
