By Patrick Z. McGavin
In the Peacock comedy “The Paper,” Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson) is the editor-in-chief at the Toledo Truth Teller, brought in to restore the paper’s glorious past as he yokes together a mismatched staff of amateur reporters.
The brainchild of creators and showrunners Greg Daniels and Michael Koman, the workplace comedy operates in the vein of Daniels’ American iteration of “The Office” (2005-2013).
The show adopts the same structural conceit of an intrepid documentary crew capturing the foibles and vicissitudes of disparate personalities through a casual, fly-on-the-wall vantage point.
David Rogers is another connective thread linking the shows. On “The Paper,” he served as a co-executive producer, directed Episode 9, and cut the pilot and two other episodes. He edited 98 episodes of “The Office.”
The other editors are Julie Cohen, who worked on Episodes 2, 5, and 10 and co-edited Episode 8 with Bradley Cheyne. Sascha Stanton-Craven cut Episodes 3, 6, and 9. Nicole Artzer worked with Rogers on Episode 7.
During a recent interview, the editors discussed the joys, thrills, and discoveries of infusing the sensibility of “The Office” into new stories.
CineMontage: With the pilot, what were the organizing principles for the shape and rhythm of the show?
David Rogers: The mockumentary field is the same as “The Office,” with the idea that it’s the same documentary crew that has found a new subject. That filmmaking style opens up a lot of possibilities — both for comedy and a framing style of storytelling — but it has rules. We generally don’t score it.
There is a limited number of cameras. If reporters go to a house, there isn’t already a camera inside, like in normal coverage; on this, the camera has to get in there. Once our people are established, they have to move, and the camera has to be with them. For driving, we use lipstick cameras to capture people inside, or we bring a crew member into the car. And we use “talking heads” when people are addressing the camera. It’s a great way to comment on what’s going on or advance the story. Sometimes it’s just a pure comic joke that helps the narrative.
CineMontage: How did you interpolate the documentary that shows the newspaper’s glory days?
Rogers: We redressed the whole set to look like a 1970s newsroom. Greg Daniels and Michael Koman based it on Frederick Wiseman’s documentaries — the black-and-white film look, the texture, the gear. We brought in period costumes and typewriters, even had a few people smoking, and shot on black-and-white 16mm film. Even the aspect ratio was different from the rest of the show.
The idea was to show how big and important working on a newspaper was back then — and how many people it took to deliver the news. You see how cavernous the room was, filled with hundreds of people, and now it’s the same room, but it’s practically empty.
CineMontage: As these very idiosyncratic characters and personalities are introduced, how did you want to bring them together?
Julie Cohen: It’s a fantastic cast. In Episode 2, they actually start reporting. Ned pulls together volunteers — many of them accountants or staff from the toilet-paper company — so journalism isn’t their training. But they’re inspired by him and want to build a great local paper, so they pair off to cover stories around Toledo.
As they attempt to do their jobs, everyone deals with the camera crew in their own way. Oscar (Oscar Martinez) is reluctant to let them back into his life. Ned wants to seem like a benevolent, well-adjusted boss — which, of course, only makes things weirder. Mare (Chelsie Frei) is one of the two people with real journalism experience; she’s amused and a bit skeptical of Ned’s zeal to remake the paper.
And everyone else is essentially winging it, pretending to be the “official press.” There’s a lot of goodwill, not a lot of know how — and that’s fun to play.
CineMontage: How does the framing device influence the cutting rhythms?
Sascha Stanton-Craven: I think it’s important for all the episodes to have a continuity, because it’s the same documentary crew across episodes. One thing that struck me when I started was the commitment to the reality of a two-camera crew. You have to know where the cameras can plausibly be at all times and that your cuts make sense within that framework. If you’re in a wide shot, you see that there aren’t any cameras in all of that space, so getting from that to a close-up is a bit of a puzzle. There’s always a consideration of whether the camera could realistically get to whatever place you’re cutting to on a practical level, to say nothing of how aware of the camera the characters would be during more private scenes.
As the show goes on, you can be a little looser. It doesn’t have to be as strict or realistic as long as it’s underpinned by the feeling that these are real cameras in real space, responding in near-real time.
CineMontage: How much did you want to try out different ideas and not just riff on what’s already been done?
Stanton-Craven: I don’t approach it as though I had to put my stamp on the show, though everyone has their own preferences for performance and rhythm within what’s been established. As Julie said, what’s really interesting and vital is watching different characters’ relationships to the crew become clearer.
Ned’s a little nervous; he wants to look good and sometimes missteps, then realizes, “Oh, that was recorded.” Esmeralda (Sabrina Impacciatore) assumes the doc crew totally loves her and is entirely on her side. The dissonance between how she thinks she’s coming off and how she’s actually coming off is another comedic layer on top of the meat of the story.
CineMontage: How did you design the show to move and breathe in its own space?
Stanton-Craven: Since it’s the first season of the show, I think there was a feeling of finding it as we went along, as the writers and actors discover more about who the characters are. The whole show found its character as it went along.
There is a pace to the show that is not wall-to-wall jokes, like some other sitcoms that are just bang, bang, bang. It has some quiet moments, or a character moment, or just a physical gag. Part of that is the mockumentary style, which often favors longer takes where you can’t immediately cut to the next thing. The directors were very good at controlling pace within takes to avoid dead spots while giving you some additional insight into the characters.
CineMontage: Nicole, what was the creative dynamic between you and David Rogers?
Nicole Artzer: I started working with Dave as his assistant on the pilot, and I had the privilege of getting to cut episode 7 with him. While I’ve worked as an editor on other shows, I found the mockumentary style of filming to be so different from any other show I’ve worked on, and I learned so much from Dave about how to work with the footage as he has been an expert of that style since his work on “The Office.” I cut scenes, shadowed him on the pilot, and I also worked with him on Episode 4, so by Episode 7, I felt the show’s rhythms.
Episode 7 centers on Ned in a moment when his personal life starts to bleed into his role as the boss. Domhnall gave such a great performance, and I remember laughing so much going through takes with Jen Celotta, our director.
Rogers: When I had to step away to prep and direct, we looked at how to schedule editors. As an assistant editor coming up on “Seinfeld,” I worked with Skip Collector, and he let me cut scenes, then give notes — timing, how long to hold a joke, when to speed things up. I try to pay that forward; I like giving assistants real cutting opportunities.
CineMontage: How important was it to recognize this program with its own identity?
Rogers: Greg really wanted to go back to the early “Office “shooting style. Sometimes he’d ask, “Did they move the camera and film this without the camera there?” And we’d have to prove to him that we had two cameras going at the same time — they cross-covered this one, but one camera is behind the door frame, so you can’t see it in the other shot.
We also introduced new elements into the show’s style. In the pilot, there are onscreen captions — when Oscar says, “I’m not letting you use my likeness,” we pop a chyron noting he signed a release back in 2005 with no end date. We’re a bit looser with things because documentary and reality shows have changed.
On one of Sascha’s shows, they were doing something with talking heads. On “The Office,” with talking heads, we’d shoot one camera, and you were stuck in that take. It was hard to cross takes. If we did, we’d usually have to cut to some B-roll, or we’d do a trick and morph something.
Now they brought in this editorial style element where we can pop in tight, and that’s an edit, and even jump things a little bit. That was new, and it freed us to speed things up in certain ways and not be so restrained.
CineMontage: The comedy takes different forms, and the humor or conflict is sharpened by the irony or absurdity of the moment, situation, or the workplace.
Cohen: You’re watching the dailies almost the same way you would watch a documentary, marking whenever something awkward or hilarious happens, whether it was scripted or not. Any time something cringey or unexpected pops up, you grab it and build around it. A big part of that is the reaction shots — leaning heavily into the awkward part by having the whole cast react to it.
‘We did the set as a 1970s newsroom.’
We used a bunch of different tricks to milk those moments, but well-chosen reaction shots are always key. Great reaction shots can let us in on all the weird social dynamics going on. It can reveal something about the character who’s reacting, or it can act as a stand-in for the audience, giving us permission to laugh along and fully absorb the absurdity of the moment.
CineMontage: It’s a classic Midwestern setting, and it’s almost subversive to have all of these foreign actors, like the 1930s films of Ernst Lubitsch.
Stanton-Craven: With any sitcom, you want a distinct bunch of characters. Donal’s playing an American, but he, Sabrina, and Tim Key all play characters who arrived on different roads and bring different flavors.
It’s funny that while Sabrina and Tim’s characters are not entirely distinct from themselves as actors, they feel emblematic of an Italian and a Brit. Some people have pointed out that Tim Key brings a flavor reminiscent of Ricky Gervais’s work on “The Office.” His rhythm is totally different from that of other people on the show. With Esmeralda, Sabrina is doing her own thing, but in a way that makes sense within the show’s world.
CineMontage: The show has already been renewed for a second season. Was the final episode meant as a summing up, or a tease of what’s to come?
Cohen: One of the most exciting things about this finale is that the whole episode takes place outside the office. We’ve met these characters in their own environment, gotten to know their weirdness and quirks, and now they’re interacting with the public.
Jeff Blitz directed it — he worked on the original “Office” and has a documentary background — and despite so much chaotic action happening with all of the characters, he did such a great job of keeping that energy while making sure each beat was articulated.
Esmeralda and Ken have a hilarious speech full of improvisation, and there’s just a ton of funny and heartfelt stuff from each character. It was a 50-plus-minute assembly that we had to cut way down, so we had to sacrifice some of the strongest bits from the set and the original script. But what we kept really pops, and hopefully it leaves people wanting more next season.
Rogers: The hardest thing for us was to sum it up, because without getting into the plot specifics, seeds that were there for many of the characters culminated with that episode. We said we have answers for some things — like, “this” started here, but it’s now also becoming something new to launch into specific relationships and affect other things we’ll see in Season 2.
