Editing Mariano Rivera

On Thursday of Holy Week producer Frank Saraceno and editor Marlon Hidalgo began to edit a Mariano Rivera feature.   Facing an Avid DS, they studied footage Saraceno shot of the ageless Yankee closer in his native Panama in the second week of February.

This was a labor of love for Saraceno, who grew up in Rochester and Syracuse, and for Hidalgo, who grew up in the Bronx.

  

This was the start of two-week process, for a piece that might run 10 minutes and have as many as 1000 edits.  

“To me, this is the most rewarding part until the piece hits the air,” Saraceno said. “You feel like an artist and this is your canvas.”

Frame after frame moved across the Avid screens, at Hidalgo’s deft command.  Saraceno scanned his index of logged shots and called out requests.

He chose shots of Rivera inside the partial construction of a new church, which Rivera financed, for the impoverished fishing village he came from.  Saraceno liked one in which Rivera shook the hand of a worker in a hard hat.

He chose shots of Rivera, with his wife and son, as they handed out backpacks and school supplies to the local children. 

 Saraceno and Hidalgo especially liked shots of Rivera, as he drove slowly on the main street, and chatted and laughed through his open window with locals.  The camera, in the passenger seat, saw the same adoring and admiring faces that Rivera saw.

A theme emerged. 

Rivera is a good man.  Saintly, you might say.  Especially for allowing E:60 a rare glimpse inside his off-the-field life.

With the Yankees and Red Sox set to open the season on Easter Sunday, even a Sox fan – such as myself - couldn’t blame Saraceno and Hidalgo for a reverent take.  

Posted by Steve Marantz, April 2, 2010