Criminal Minds Trip Diary: Rick, Kim and I tried to keep the ladies busy during the breaks in shooting on the set. We were invited into the office of one of the editors, Jimmy Hill. He was in the process of editing Andrew Wilder’s upcoming episode "Omnivore". Considering all the things we’d heard about this ep in the two days we’d been on set(it’s no exaggeration to say that folks around here have very high expectations for "Omnivore), we were pretty psyched to see even a little bit of it. We were shown three different scenes – a dramatic one, a transitional one and a quiet movement scene. In the dramatic one, he explained to us how he created the sound of the action. After Omnivore airs, we can return to this and explain in detail that makes a lot more sense, but suffice it say, a lot more than you would think goes into the bang that we’re used to.
In the transitional scene, we saw the team in their SUVs driving around. The actual had no sound. As the editor explained, “there wasn’t a mic for miles”. All of the sound was put in after the fact. The speed of the vehicles was also increased in here. Next we saw a scene of a character getting out of a car and walking to a door. We saw him get out and then he was at the door. The editor explained the common sense involved here; you don’t need to show the entire path from point A to B, folks know that if someone gets out of the car and heads towards a door, they’re going to get there.
Next he explained how the music of an episode is created. How temporary music is placed against the scenes and then sent off to get adjusted to fit the vibe and feel of the episodes.
It was a fascinating look at not just "Omnivore", but how an episode is put together. Folks know about the writers, directors and actors. They’re all telling a story. Well so are the editors. They just use a lot more dials, switches and sound effects to do it.
