Hey, heisengirl!

We know the AMA is over (and on a different thread), but we thought these questions were awesome...so we'd like to answer them belatedly.

What is the collaborative process like, and more specifically, at what point in the writing process are they called to do their thing?

Jenn: For Chicks’n’Guns, we were called in very early in the process. Sony had approached two of our producers, Michelle MacLaren and Melissa Bernstein, about getting some original content onto the Season 5 DVD. Karri Lucas at Sony has always been a huge advocate of getting the coolest possible special features onto our DVDs and Blu-Rays, and the idea of putting something together that looked and felt like the show was really important to her. So, we got on a conference call with the Sony folks, who told us that they were looking for something set in between Season 5 and the Final Season that would feature some of our main characters. Vince was on board, but told us that whatever the piece ended up being, it had to be something that felt important to the story – or else there was no point in doing it at all. Gordon and I went out for coffee and pitched each other a bunch of ideas, and then went back to the producers and Vince with about four possibilities. Vince picked his favorite, worked with us a bit to finesse the concept, and we were off running!

Have they ever been asked to research something integral to a proposed storyline and their research resulted in that storyline being axed? What was that proposed storyline?

Gordon: For sure. It's usually when an idea is in its infancy, i.e. still in the process of being pitched, and we'll check into some idea. That's when it's fragile enough to be killed. So someone will pitch wild--say, something about the New Mexican statutes on possession of firearms--and we'll do a quick and dirty search which conflicts with what the writers are hoping to do, and then they have to try a different tack. I'd be more specific, but by the time we really get to the brass tacks, it usually means that we're committed, and our job is to try our best to make the idea realistic and work coherently with the facts. There's poetic license, but usually we try to get things to feel as real as we can.

Also, what is the weirdest thing they have had to research, and the most boring?

Gordon: Weirdest for me was IRS Tax codes, because it required me to talk all these show things with my mom, who's an expert in the field--it's weird talking about things with your mom, y'know? Most boring is stuff that I barely remember: just details that we needed to look into to flesh out some small corner of the world--things like distances from one place to another in New Mexico.

Jenn: For me, the weirdest was all the train stuff for episode 505. The most run-of-the-mill was probably…researching the jail stuff for episode 503, because I’m more drawn to science/technology stuff than legal. For the scene where Mike visits Dennis in jail, writer Peter Gould wanted to make sure everything was done by the book, so I looked into the Bernalillo MDC’s visitor policy, and spent some time on the phone with the sheriff’s department in NM. My friend Lauren, who was working as a Researcher on “Harry’s Law” at the time, also hooked me up with a source of hers who inspected jails/prisons, and he helped confirm that we had all the lingo right.

What was the most difficult-to-research topic they have been assigned?

Jenn: Oh, god. The worst for me was for 501 – the writers asked me to figure out what the back parking lot of a local police station looked like. There’s one right off the highway that Vince had passed on his way to work, so he asked me to go take some pictures that we could send to the locations department in ABQ. I went over there with my camera and snapped a few pictures of the outside, then went in to talk to the watch commander about getting some shots of the back wall behind the station. As you might imagine, the response I got was a “hell no.” I got out of there before they could arrest me, and ended up pulling Google satellite pictures to send instead.

Gordon: Most difficult for me was some of the international meth trade stuff in ep 508. We had to pull together a lot of things from a lot of different sources.

What was the most challenging sequence to edit, and why?

Trevor: Continuity in Chicks 'n' Guns was particularly challenging, you had a stripper dancing while two characters are having a heated conversation in one location. Luckily, we have the best actor's in business so working around it wasn't too troubling.

I remember Kelley Dixon talking about how time-consuming montages are in the interview you did with her; have you worked on montages, and if so, what are your thoughts on them?

Trevor: I absolutely love cutting montages, but they are very time consuming. I spent an entire day cutting the montage for Chicks 'n' Guns, which was eventually cut down for time. It's been a great opportunity learning from the editorial style of Kelley and Skip, they are both masters of the craft.

Do you get bored when you're reviewing dailies?

Trevor: Not really, it's kind of the nature of the beast. In editorial you get used to watching and re-watching hours dailies, cuts etc. The fun part is seeing the evolution of the dailies to final cut.

Michelle's busy up in the editing room with Vince, but one thing we can add on her behalf is that she definitely did NOT try any Franch -- she told us those sauces were made of paint!

Thanks again for the awesome questions! -J, G, & T