Fall 2018
BY BECCA NADLER
2nd AD John Silvestri loves solving problems on set. "The challenge of trying to make what you're working on better in whatever way possible—I think that's the most fun aspect of it."
HBO's Mosaic, directed by Steven Soderbergh, provided ample opportunity for Silvestri to problem solve since the show was structured to be viewed both as a linear TV series and in piecemeal segments via a mobile app. "There was so much prep for it," he says. "We were given a 600-page script that was broken down by characters, [and] only one of the actors had the entire script."
Communicating effectively with the crew also required keeping track of 100-plus-page script revisions, and to add to the complications, scenes were often shot from multiple characters' perspectives. "We came up very early on with the idea to use a character prefix so people would know which script we were pulling from," says Silvestri.
"The harder thing was with the actors, telling four different people what you're doing when on your call sheet you have down four different scene numbers for the same scene."