When we got invited back to produce Stavros Halkias's second Netflix special, Uncle Stav, we were tickled pink. Then it got better: Matt Johnson, fresh off his collaboration with Stav on Tony, would be directing. We filmed at the beautiful Lyric Theatre in Baltimore, a homecoming for Stavros, and what we all made was nothing short of magic.

Put Stavros, producer Danny Harris, EP Ben O'Brien, and Matt Johnson and his incredible Canadians in one room, and ideas fly. We were all ears, because the concept went way past a typical special. Stav would be framed on stage by a dive bar plucked straight from a beer-soaked haunt. Matt wanted to film audience members in a way that blends narrative with doc. Stav pitched a studio-produced Mission: Impossible satire to tease the release (such a unique sketch it needs its own page).

We said yes to everything, then got creative to pull it off.

Designer Becca Morrin and her team built the bar set from pieces literally pulled from bars Stav frequented, including walking around Baltimore and borrowing stuff off the walls, then added custom neon and a whole lot of aging to dirty it up.

We worked with the legendary lighting designer Alan Adelman and DP Jared Raab to set the look and tone. We kept the raw stage elements behind the set and brought them forward, so the bar looks like it was dropped from the heavens onto a big theatre stage.

We shot with 8 cameras: cinema zooms, sliders, and mounted angles. Extra roaming cameras stayed ready to grab and go for audience interaction, in the theatre and beyond its walls. Willie cut every live camera in video village, and those line cuts set the editing team up for a blistering turnaround. Matt Pearson's final color grade tied it all together.

Every idea got made, and made well. It was a real reminder that anything is possible with enough talented people and a solid plan.

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