When Kelly Lyon, ACE discovered she had received two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Picture Editing for a Variety Special—one for John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in L.A. and the other for Tig Notaro: Hello Again—she was over the moon. Both comedy-special projects presented their own unique challenges, and Kelly worked tirelessly to bring these to life.
John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in L.A. is a live talk show that aired during the Netflix Is A Joke Festival. In six installments, host John Mulaney explores Los Angeles during a week when pretty much every funny person is in town. Similarly, Tig Notaro: Hello Again highlights Tig Notaro’s deadpan humor and personal storytelling.
As an editor and mom, Kelly wears many hats both professionally and personally. We sat down with Kelly to hear more about her and her workflow on both projects, which were edited using Adobe Creative Cloud.
Read below for more details on her journey as a filmmaker, and you can check out her full Premiere Pro timeline for both projects below.
Also, stream John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in L.A. on Netflix and Tig Notaro: Hello Again on Amazon Prime Video.
How and where did you first learn to edit?
My high school in Farmington Hills, MI had a public access TV station. My senior year, I took an independent study at the station and taught myself to edit on the school’s Media 100 editing system. I created a senior class video yearbook and completely fell in love with the process. My high school teacher, Mr. Cobb, encouraged me to pursue it. In his words, “There are not enough female editors in Hollywood. You should go out there and give ’em hell!”
There are not enough female editors in Hollywood. You should go out there and give ’em hell!
How do you begin a project/set up your workspace?
I use different set up strategies, depending on the project. For John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in L.A., all of the sketches I cut were improvised or unscripted. Even the Oh Hello sketch, which had a scripted narrative arc, still had over 6.5 hours of John Mulaney and Nick Kroll improvising as their beloved Kroll Show characters, Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland.
Before I dove in, I had my assistant editor, Ky Kenyon, create a stringout of all of the dailies. Then I had Adobe Premiere Pro transcribe all of the footage so I could easily search for soundbytes later, using the Text window. Ky then broke down the dailies into string outs by location. This helped me narrow down the potential options for each segment of the sketch and not get too overwhelmed by the mountain of hilarious moments Mulaney and Kroll generated.
For Tig Notaro: Hello Again, they filmed her set twice. I had my assistant editor, Ryan Nunnerley, create multicam clips for each show. I did a line cut of Tig’s preferred performance, and Ryan did a line cut of the other performance. I also had Ryan create a stringout of clean audience reaction sounds, like big laughs, laughs with claps, cheers, shocked sounds, etc. It’s very helpful to have this bank of authentic audience sounds to use to cover transitions when I’m switching between shows.
Tell us about a favorite scene or moment from this project and why it stands out to you.
For John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in L.A., I have been a fan of Mulaney and Kroll’s Oh Hello characters for years. I was so incredibly excited for the opportunity to view the raw footage and craft the narrative. As a fan, I was also nervous about doing these characters justice. I always put a green marker on my selects stringout any time I laugh out loud at dailies. This helps me remember which jokes hit on the first viewing after I’ve seen them so many times. My first pass of these dailies had so many green markers, I really didn’t know how I would choose!
I always put a green marker on my selects stringout any time I laugh out loud at dailies.
I almost missed out on cutting Tig’s special entirely. The executive producer, Ally Engelberg, at Above Average had cold emailed me, and it went to my spam box. If my son’s dentist hadn’t asked me to check my spam for a form to fill out, I might have missed out on the opportunity to collaborate with one of my favorite comedians of all time!
What were some specific post-production challenges you faced that were unique to your project? How did you go about solving them?
Mulaney never approaches a project in the expected or conventional way. When cutting the pre-taped sketches, John didn’t want them to feel polished or slick like the SNL pre-tapes we crafted together 12 years ago. Instead, we paced the pieces a little more slowly and favored surprising moments over hard jokes. Many of the pre-tapes were unscripted and required me and my colleagues to build a cohesive and funny narrative in the edit. We were not doing Mulaney’s version of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. We were creating a new tone for the talk show space.
Tig is such a talented comedian known for her iconic patience on stage. I wanted to make sure the pacing of my edits complimented her unique style, so I tried to let her performance play as long as possible before cutting. The biggest challenge cutting this special was figuring out the ending. Tig’s live show ended with her playing piano and singing along to Adele’s Hello, which played in the background.
Unfortunately, we were not able to license Adele’s song for the filmed special. I had to work closely with Tig and her wife/Emmy nominated director, Stephanie Allynne, to help the piano sequence land without Adele’s track to back her up.
What Adobe tools did you use on this project and why did you originally choose them? Were there any other third-party tools that helped enhance your workflow?
For both projects, Premiere Pro’s transcription tool (Speech to Text) and text window were incredibly powerful. Once Tig’s two performances were transcribed, I could easily search for a joke. From there, I could quickly A/B the options and make sure the strongest version of each joke landed in my final cut. When Tig, the director, Stephanie Allynn, and I were reviewing options, they were impressed at how quickly I could pull up anything they wanted to see across three hours of performances.
For John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in L.A., my colleagues, Sean and Ryan McIlraith, and I all collaborated remotely. We used Jump Desktop, Premiere Pro and Evercast to collaborate with the writers, producers, and with each other. The turnaround is always quick with live TV.
After the first episode aired on May 3rd, 2024, John Mulaney wanted to tighten up all of the pre-tapes to give more airtime to the live guests and phone calls. We all raced to tighten our cuts before the subsequent five episodes. Coming from a background at SNL, we were all used to last minute changes and were able to deliver on time (even if just hours or minutes before going live).
Do you use Frame.io as part of your workflow? If so, how do you use it?
I LOVE Frame.io! For both specials, we used Frame.io to share and review cuts. Collaborators really liked being able to leave comments on the video timeline, so I would always know exactly what changes they wanted and where.
We also used Frame.io to post dailies for John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in LA. The writers and producers could review the largely improvised footage, flag selects and leave notes for us right in Frame.io.
If you could share one tip about Premiere Pro, what would it be?
My best advice is to customize your keyboard shortcuts because it makes you a much faster editor. For multicam specials, I have each number key assigned to a camera angle. So, as I’m working on the edit, I can switch cameras with a single keyboard stroke rather than having to mouse over and double click. It is a huge time saver. I also highly recommend mapping the clip enable option to your keyboard. I use it all the time to turn clips on and off to compare options.
Who is your creative inspiration and why?
I’m incredibly inspired by my assistant editors. They remind me to keep striving with that initial fire, creativity, and energy that I began my career with. I love to see how far my former AEs can go in their careers. My former assistant editor from Portlandia, Ali Greer, went on to win the Emmy for Outstanding Picture Editing for a comedy for her work on Barry, my former assistant editor Megan Mancini is now editing for FX’s The Bear, and my former assistant from SNL, Sean McIlraith, is now a colleague and nominated alongside me for our work on Everybody’s in L.A. My current assistant editors, Josh DePew, Ryan Nunnerely, and Ky Kenyon have so much talent, promise and technical knowledge. I learn so much from our collaborations.
What’s the toughest thing you’ve had to face in your career and how did you overcome it? What advice do you have for aspiring filmmakers or content creators?
When I decided to leave NYC and move to Portland, OR, I figured my career would be over. Thankfully, I had built strong relationships with trusted collaborators who have continued to hire me, even if that meant a remote workflow (long before COVID, Evercast, and Zoom).
When I became a mother to a child with special needs, once again, I assumed my career was over. Having a child that requires more of my time and attention, means I must set boundaries with my collaborators and ask for accommodations (like taking time off during normal work hours for his appointments and making up the time when it is convenient for me). I was amazed at how accommodating most productions can be.
How and when you get the work done can be up to you, as long as you communicate your needs clearly and the production is on board.
Now, for the first time in my career, I’m double Emmy-nominated, all while making sure to put the needs of my family first. You have to do the work, and you have to be excellent and efficient. However, how and when you get the work done can be up to you, as long as you communicate your needs clearly and the production is on board.
Share a photo of where you work. What’s your favorite thing about your workspace and why?
I love the natural light, and of course, lots of plants! At least I can pretend I’m in nature instead of staring at a computer all day.
