Severance is an Apple show through and through, even in ways that aren’t necessarily obvious to the hit Apple TV+ series’ millions of fans. While Apple’s branding, for example, is certainly front and center on the streaming platform, the company’s hardware also plays a crucial behind-the-scenes role in the production of Severance — including in the editing process.
Among the key people involved in bringing the show to life is Geoffrey Richman, one of three editors who work on the show. From his home setup in Brooklyn, Richman collaborates with colleagues, including Severance executive producer Ben Stiller, using a suite of Apple devices. His gear includes an iMac, a Mac mini, and a MacBook Pro, all of which he says in a new interview were instrumental in completing one of the most complex episodes of the series to edit: Cold Harbor, the twist-filled Season 2 finale that broke the internet.
A Mac-powered workflow
Richman primarily edits using a Mac, a platform he says he prefers over PCs for its interface and seamless multitasking capabilities. “I like the interface on Mac a lot better than on a PC,” he explains in an Apple promotional interview, which you can check out here. “I find the way the operating system is laid out to be much more comfortable. I’m able to move between different applications very quickly on Mac.”
His iMac, located on a lower floor of his apartment, remotes into a separate Mac mini running the industry-standard editing software Avid. Sometimes, he works via a post-production facility in Manhattan. “All of the Severance editors work remotely,” he says. “But sometimes I go to the set, which has an edit room with an iMac. I also bring my MacBook Pro onto set at times.”
That portability proved essential for the Season 2 episode Woe’s Hollow, for which Richman accompanied Stiller to the snow-covered Minnewaska State Park Preserve in upstate New York. “I was able to go to the place where Ben was staying and plug my MacBook Pro into his TV, and we were able to edit right off of my laptop.”
Crafting the Severance Season 2 finale
Bringing the Severance Season 2 finale to life was essentially like building an intricate puzzle, thus requiring extensive experimentation with the episode’s pace and structure. “For the finale, there was a lot of experimenting with structure and testing out different ideas about how to play out different scenes,” Richman continues. “It was a constant flow of ideas, and my Mac setup allowed for such a smooth experience.”
A particularly challenging sequence involved the now-iconic scene with the Lumon marching band, which had about 70 angles and takes to choose from for the finished scene. Richman ended up syncing the footage into a multicam clip, and arranging it into groupings of video that played at the same time. “Being able to play nine angles simultaneously in real time — and switch quickly between all the different options — made it a whole lot easier to find what we wanted at any given moment.”
Richman goes on to praise how Apple’s ecosystem made his workflow more intuitive. “I can work on my laptop, I can work on my iMac, I can work at the post facility, or I can work at Ben’s office. As long as I’m logged into my account, everything I do shows up everywhere.
“I could be lying in bed and I have a thought, and I’ll type it into my iPhone. Then, the next day, it just shows up in the Notes app on my desktop. That aspect of Mac I find very handy — to not think about which system I’m physically at.”
Throughout the editing process, Richman also worked closely with Severance composer Theodore Shapiro, making sure that every music cue fit seamlessly. If Shapiro sent over music cues late at night, Richman would often be too excited to wait to listen to them, and he would turn to his MacBook Pro or iPhone using AirPods Pro 2 to enjoy the music immediately.
All of which is to say: From the integration of different Apple devices to the raw power needed to edit an ambitious show like Severance, Apple hardware is as much a part of the fan-favorite series as Lumon’s eerie fluorescent hallways and the many jaw-dropping plot twists.
