Nelson Leonard, founding partner/editor of New York-based editorial house The NOW Corporation recently wrapped editorial on the first season of the FX Network’s new series, Married. A well-known commercial editor, Leonard collaborated with long-time friend and colleague Married co-executive producer/writer Salamo Levin on the series.
Married is a half-hour comedy about being miserably in love. Russ (Nat Faxon) and Lina Bowman (Judy Greer) star in this ensemble piece about trying to remember what life was like before kids, debt and suburbia. Created by Andrew Gurland (The Virginity Hit, Mail Order Wife), who wrote and directed the pilot and serves as executive producer/showrunner, alongside executive producers Peter Principato and Paul Young. Married is produced by FX Productions. The series has been picked up for 13 more episodes, which will begin production and post in Spring 2015.
According to Levin, Leonard’s years cutting high-end commercials has developed the perfect blend of skills for the new series, which is shot “somewhat verité and doc-style,” he explained. “There is quite a bit of improvisation, so it’s imperative to have an editor who is very nimble. Nelson and Owen [Plotkin of NOW] served as mentors for me in the early days of my career. We started talking to Nelson about Married when it was an idea and then a pilot. The final product is everything that Andrew and I dreamed it to be, and a big part of that is Nelson’s editorial craft on the show.”
For Leonard, applying the skills he learned in the advertising genre to television has been a rewarding process. “Editing commercials teaches you how to be very concise, how to tell a story in a very succinct way,” he explained. “The biggest challenge with commercial projects is always the time constraints. With a television series like Married, we were very focused on performance. Finding the nuance and humanity was key for the comedy. So it was so great to be able to breathe a bit in terms of timing and find just the right performances that worked.”
Leonard has collaborated with top commercial directors, including Stacy Wall, Phil Morrison, Paul Goldman and Matt Aselton. His credits include Super Bowl spots for NFL Network and NBC, as well as work for Ikea, Snapple and Burger King.
