MAKING A SCENE
CSUB alum debuts as director on ‘Law & Order: SVU’
‘Once Upon a Time in El Barrio,” the story of three teenage girls trafficked from Juarez, Mexico, to New York City by a brutal gang, was one of the more challenging episodes of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” to shoot.
In the beginning, one of the girls is set on fire, a scene so intense an editor was hesitant to work on it when she read the script. Later, a female police officer helping search for the girls is mowed down by an SUV. There’s a standoff at the end involving a dozen cops, criminals and victims.
It was quite the “SVU” directorial debut for Oscar Rene Lozoya II, who has been working his way up the editing and directing ranks of episodic television since graduating from CSUB in 2009.
“There was just a lot to think about while we were shooting,” Lozoya said from his office in Los Angeles about a month after the episode aired on NBC. “The show had a lot more stunts and night exteriors than a normal episode.”
Lozoya would know. He has been working on “Law & Order” franchise shows for 13 years, starting as an intern and moving up to production assistant, editorial assistant, assistant
editor, editor and now director. He’s worked on the original “Law & Order” plus spinoffs “SVU” (his favorite), “Criminal Intent,” “Organized Crime” and “LA” (second favorite).
Lozoya has also done editing work on “Rizzoli & Isles,” “Alcatraz,” “Californication” and “Chicago Fire,” as well as written and directed a feature film, “How We Met.” His short film “The Forgotten Place” is on the festival circuit and has won more than 20 awards.
Lozoya’s story of showbiz success is unique, said veteran television editor and producer Leon Ortiz-Gil. He didn’t attend a prestigious film school or have rich, well-connected parents. He just worked
his way up by seeking out mentors, filling in where he was needed, constantly honing his craft and being a joy to work with, Ortiz-Gil said.
“He was always active. He was very dedicated. By helping people out, he helped himself out,” said Ortiz-Gil, whose work on shows including “Matlock,” “24,” “Battlestar Galactica” and “Law & Order” earned him an American Cinema Editors Career Achievement award in 2018. “My recommendation for anyone coming into the business is to be like Oscar.”
FUN WITH LIGHTSABERS
Lozoya is an Albuquerque, N.M., native who always wanted to move to California and chose Bakersfield after a year of college in New Mexico because family friends lived there. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life but was good with computers and so took computer science and business classes at Bakersfield College and then CSUB.
A friend taking film classes at BC asked Lozoya to act in his films. The movies were terrible but fun to make, Lozoya said.
When the friend failed to do anything with footage from a “Star Wars” parody they filmed, Lozoya asked if he could mess around with it. He happened to have Adobe Premiere and Photoshop on a laptop given to him by his photographer father.
“I remember looking online and figuring out how to do the lightsaber effects. I literally rotoscoped, frame-by-frame in Photoshop, a lightsaber onto the broomsticks that we used,” Lozoya said. “Even though it was very tedious work, I was like, ‘Oh, man, this is kind of a lot of fun.’”
After shooting more and more films with his friend, Lozoya knew he’d found his career.
To get experience, Lozoya edited video for Bakersfield CBS affiliate KBAK and the Bakersfield Jam, the city’s now-defunct NBA D-League basketball team. He also made YouTube videos and short films.
CSUB communications professor Mary Slaughter encouraged Lozoya with positive feedback; journalism professor Judith Pratt taught him narrative storytelling. Professors Slaughter and Donna Simmons pushed him to pursue internships; Gary Byrd taught him to learn by doing.
With support from the California State University Entertainment Alliance, which helps CSU students, faculty and alumni break into the entertainment business through connections and financial assistance, he landed a data analytics internship at Warner Bros. It gave Lozoya the big break he needed.
“I know it sounds very silly and cliche, but I seriously would not be here without them,” Lozoya said of his CSUB communications professors. “... It all truthfully started with them being an advocate for me.”
Lozoya was a standout student, Slaughter said. He
was charismatic and playful while also determined and resourceful. Instead of worrying about grades or other people’s opinions, he took the initiative to say what he wanted to say with assignments while still staying within the assignment’s parameters.
Most importantly, Slaughter said, he took advantage of opportunities to learn and advance outside the classroom. Students can learn a lot from his example, she said.
“Take initiative,” Slaughter said. “Approach your work with a sense of excitement instead of fear. Don’t procrastinate. That was Oscar.”
‘DUN-DUN’
After Lozoya earned his bachelor’s degree in communications with an emphasis in digital media from CSUB, he secured a summer internship with NBC Universal/Dick Wolf Films working on three “Law & Order” series:
“SVU,” “Criminal Intent” and the original show it calls “The Mother Ship.” When that ended, he assumed he’d go back to working for the Bakersfield Jam as a tricaster director and shooter of promotional material.
But then, Wolf Films offered him a post-production assistant job and he took it. Post-PAs do whatever the post-production team needs done, from delivering DVDs of episode cuts to executives to fetching people breakfast. During downtime, he sat with assistant editors and editors to learn their craft.
“He came in at the very bottom of the barrel,” Ortiz-Gil said. “But he was always curious. He would stay late. He wanted to know everything about editing.”
Lozoya counts himself lucky to have spent time with people like Ortiz-Gil, producers Tim DeLuca and Mark Dragin, and producer-director-editor Arthur
Forney, who has executive-produced hundreds of “Law & Order” episodes. He soaked in everything they had to say about storytelling and what did and did not work in the making of shows.
“I was able to sit in the same room as people who developed some of the most iconic television in history,” Lozoya said.
From there Lozoya worked up to assistant editor on “Law & Order: LA,” organizing footage shot the previous day, adding sound effects to scenes and getting footage to the promo department for production of teases to the next week’s episode.
“LOLA” was one of the most problematic shows Ortiz-Gil has ever worked on, he said. People were so determined to see it succeed that they shot and reshot scenes, overwhelming the two assistant editors (including Lozoya) with work. The other assistant was a “top-notch, seasoned veteran,” and Lozoya kept up with him, Ortiz-Gil said.
When “Law & Order: LA” was canceled after one season, Lozoya hopped over to “Alcatraz,” a Fox drama that lasted one season, and “Californication,” a Showtime comedy-drama starring David Duchovny that aired for seven seasons. The latter gave Lozoya experience helping tell stories in one large chunk versus five acts broken up by commercials.
In the summer of 2012, Forney asked Lozoya to be an assistant editor on the pilot of “Chicago Fire,” a new Dick Wolf series. When the pilot was picked up, Lozoya joined it midway through the season.
In 2015, Lozoya was promoted
to editor on “Chicago Fire,” having proved himself volunteering to cut scenes for busy editors and filling in for an editor on maternity leave. He was a “Chicago Fire” editor for 18 episodes over four seasons.
“It’s a very cool job because not only do you use your creative brain but also your technical brain,” Lozoya said. “And it really is incredible what you can do in the cutting room, you could totally reshape a story.”
He really enjoyed “Chicago Fire,” about the professional and personal lives of firefighters and paramedics in the Chicago Fire Department, because it had everything: action, drama, emotion and even comedy, his first love. But when an editing position opened on “SVU” at the end of 2017, Lozoya took it and has been there ever since.
“You want to work, to go where people are good to you and loyal to you and nice to you. And everyone at Wolf Films has always been incredible with me,” Lozoya said.
NOT QUITE OSCAR-WORTHY
Lozoya has always aspired to direct. He’s directed short web series, commercials and sketches with his buddies for YouTube. A couple of sketches went viral, including one where he dressed his cousins in Jedi costumes and had them fight with lightsabers. It drew attention from “Good Morning America,” “Today” and The Huffington Post.
One of the great things about working at Wolf Films is that lots of people
there are willing to critique your other work, Lozoya said. That include his 2016 feature film “How We Met,” an action-comedy-romance about a couple whose blind date goes horribly wrong when they accidentally kill a crooked cop and have to cover it up.
Lozoya and friend Chadwick Hopson wrote the script in a week, grabbed a couple of buddies to help produce, and filmed in Flagstaff, Ariz., the summer between work on “SVU.” Flagstaff, his friends’ hometown, turned out to be a great place to film.
“We’d go to these business owners and say, ‘Hey, we’re interested in filming something here at your location. How much would it cost?’” Lozoya said. “And they would be like, ‘Oh, you know, we don’t have any money right now to give you for you to shoot here.’ And we were like, ‘No, no, no, we want to pay you.’”
Hopson also starred in the film. His co-star is Christina Moses, now part of the main cast of ABC’s “A Million Little Things.” With a budget of just $1,200, the only lodging they could offer her was Hopson’s childhood bedroom.
To get the film shot in a week without exceeding the number of hours Screen Actors Guild actors can work per day, Lozoya had to do some creative and exhausting scheduling. Making the movie taught Lozoya more than any other project has and was great preparation for his promotion to editor at “Chicago Fire.”
He describes “How We Met” as a “bit of a college-slash-stoner comedy.”
“Honestly, I was just trying to make a fun movie,” Lozoya said. “People expect, being that I work for ‘Law & Order,’ it to be high-brow material, stuff that you’re really going to think about.
“Granted, I do think there are a lot of very cool emotional moments and very good things you could take away from the movie. But I know that it’s not going to win an Academy Award anytime soon.”
GETTING BUSY
As much as Lozoya enjoyed shooting a feature, he wants to hone his craft as a television director. He also loves the quick turnaround of episodic work. He started shooting “Once Upon a Time in El Barrio” in February, finished it at the beginning of March and saw it air April 7.
Ortiz-Gil, still an editor on “SVU,” said “Once Upon a Time” was one of the best episodes of this season, and he expects Lozoya to get more directing assignments. The fact he can both edit and direct, and that there are nine hourlong Dick Wolf shows, bodes well for his career, Ortiz-Gil said.
“He can be so busy that he has to turn things down,” Ortiz-Gil predicted.
When Lozoya made his “SVU” directorial debut, he emailed Slaughter to let her know. He told her how much he appreciated the education and support he received from her at CSUB.
Slaughter was touched.
“He is a very impressive guy,” Slaughter said. “If we had any tiny part in him getting there, we are thrilled.”