July 19, 2011: Another Transporter production update!

July 18, 2011: My Akemi pictorial! July 20, 2011: Voting Irregularities ...

July 19, 2011: Another Transporter production update!

Whoa! It's a pretty crazy idea. As far as crazy ideas go, it's certainly not the craziest I've had – but it does rank up there with the very craziest. But more on that in a second.

Okay, so I'm full into prep on episode #102 (Carl Binder's 12 Hours). Today, I spent the early morning hours incorporating the french dialogue into episodes #104 and #105 (Thanks to the lovely Sarah for doing all the heavy lifting), then moved on to a tone meeting for 12 Hours. We sat in a room and went through the script, scene by scene, line by line, discussing character motivations, subtexts, and deliveries. That took us to noon and…lunch time! Of course just because it was time for lunch didn't mean we had time to eat lunch. We moved upstairs for a stunts meeting with Cyril Raffaelli in which we discussed the means by which we could make the most effective use of his incredible talent. We went over the fight sequences in 12 Hours including the BIG ONE (I re-jigged the shooting schedule to give him an entire day on that one). As Cyril and his right hand man, MoMo, headed off to check out the location (As I told Cyril, the scripted fight sequences should serve as a guide more than bible. He's great at improvising so he should feel free to be inspired by the room and its various potential props – fire extinguishers, vacuum hoses, detachable floor panels – in constructing his colorful fight sequences), I grabbed a sandwich, then returned to the office where I fielded a gaggle of emails and phone calls on everything from auditions to the ongoing script rewrites. From there, it was off to the extras meeting where we discussed low-lifes, young techies, and Swiss border guards.

So, I was about to sit down to write that (new) closing scene of #104 when I was alerted to some production concerns related to my forthcoming shooting block – episodes #103 (Sharks) and #106 (Payback). They're both my scripts and, alas, don't exactly marry well in the shooting schedule. Unfortunately, they're like geeks at the prom. While they may not go well with each, they don't exactly go well with any other episodes either.

A little aside here to elaborate on what I'm talking about. At the script stage, most of the issues are creative and you do your best to address network concerns, notes, and requests. Once you move into prep, the episode begins to take shape in the form of preliminary budgets, schedules, and timings. And so, the trick is to make sure said episode isn't over budget, doesn't take too long to shoot, and doesn't time short. Often, attempts to adjust issues related to one category will result in a ripple effect over others. For instance, if the episode is looking like it's going to take too long to shoot (ie. an extra day), the obvious answer is to lose a couple of locations and tighten the script. Okay, but what if you're timing short? Losing those locations and tightening the script will help you make your days (and also bring down the episode budget) but it will make the episode even shorter. So what do you do?

This is what producing is all about: sitting in a pub in Hamilton, eating lunch during a location scout, disassembling the preliminary shooting schedule and rearranging the various scenes, marrying nearby locations to avoid big costly moves, and reassembling the pieces to form a schedule that will allow for very makable days including one whole day dedicated to that BIG fight sequence. But don't get ahead of yourself, because once those departmental budgets come in, it'll be time to revisit the script to take another, longer look at all of the many small elements that add up. You have to ask yourself: Do I really need six gorillas or will two suffice? Does the tank really have to crush two dozen SUV's instead of, say, a dozen sedans? Does the villain's office chair have to be made out of real gold?

And, of course, all the while you're making the changes to ensure the script is awesome, producable, and on budget, you're still receiving broadcaster notes.

So, while Paul is on set producing episode 101 (Pilot), I figured I'd jump on the rewrites of the next two scripts he'll be producing (104 and 105) between prep meetings. A great idea – until I realized that while that's all well and good for him, it's not so good for me as I'll still have to do my rewrite of Payback and final pass on Sharks while I'm on set producing 12 Hours!

As I was wrestling with that reality, I was informed of the Shark/Payback block-shooting issue. To those of you who don't know, block shooting involves shooting two (sometimes more) episodes simultaneously to take advantage of like locations. For instance, if we're in a parking garage in both episodes, we can shoot scenes for both episodes in the same place by altering the look of the location. It's a quicker, more efficient way of shooting these episodes which, in turn, allows us to shave time off our production schedule (and, in turn, dedicate it to other episodes in the form of extra days or savings that can be splurged on that big visual effects shot of Frank fighting atop the Eiffel Tower). All this to say block-shooting is great if you have episodes with similar locations. It's not so great if you have two episodes (say, Sharks and Payback) that have very dissimilar locations. When that happens, you've got to think out of the box…

Which brings me to that crazy idea I had. Granted, it's crazy and will, in all probability, kill me – but if it works…

Anyway, waiting to hear word back from Rob, Alex, and Paul on the subject. But they've got to get back to me fast. I'm going to have to move quickly…

Hey, here are those pictures of yesterday's location scout…