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Home » Archives » June 2008 » How to Vancouver
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06/12/2008: How to Vancouver


I recently answered one of two questions sent in by Gentle Reader Amy in Colorado. Here is her other, equally good, question:

Your recent posts about being up in Vancouver made me wonder -- how does that work? When the writing staff and the production are in two separate locations, I mean. How do you keep in touch with each other; how do you have production meetings; where are other members of the production team located (i.e.: the show runner, other producers, etc.) Are the logistics a small nightmare, or does it work pretty smoothly in this virtual world of ours? My partner and I have written a pilot that is set in Colorado, and in a perfect world, it would be shot here. [In CO.] So I have wondered what that would mean...

Great question. First off, you might find that if your pilot were produced, Colorado would look a lot like Canada. Scenes from Smallville often featured snowy mountains looming over the Kansas plains, remember. There's no reason to think that your fictional location will match your actual one. At least the snowy mountains would make sense for you.

But to answer the bulk of the question, each writer/producer makes the trip to Canada when their episode is being shot. The production pays for first-class airline tickets (I am told that this is a WGA-required perk and I applaud it heartily), and puts you up in a nice hotel with a little kitchen in the room. The general plan is to fly up the day before the production meeting, which takes place a couple of days before shooting starts. You attend the meeting and do rewrites up there (they install you in a little office).

The production meeting consists of the writer/producer, director, and all the different departments that will be involved in shooting the show: set decoration and extras casting and props and locations and wardrobe, etc. There are about twenty people in the meeting. All of these people work in Vancouver and are there in person. Not included in this meeting are cast members and people involved in post-production (editing), which is done in Los Angeles. A high-level producer often listens in on the meeting over speaker phone, but often says nothing.

As writer/producer, you look at props and tour the sets and look at the wardrobe for the episode and all that stuff. It's fun to say, "Let's not use that towel for the towel scene. Let's use that towel." You huddle with the director and have lots of talks with them about the script -- answering their questions and explaining your intent.

If enough of the cast is available, there will also be a table read, in which your script is read through (very quickly in our case) by the cast, so you can hear it out loud.

Notice that every step will probably require you to tinker with your script a bit -- to simplify a sequence or adjust a line or more.

Once shooting starts, the writer/producer sits on set near the director and watches. You get to fix problems and explain things to the actors and make changes to the script on the fly. This can be nerve-wracking, but it can also save a lot of wasted film if you're there to settle a question or correct a misperception. Or mispronunciation.

When I was up there recently, I was producing two episodes in a row. That meant that I was often running across the Vancouver lot from the soundstage to the office to do rewrites or polishes or attend meetings about the next episode during lighting set-up delays on this episode. There's nothing like the adrenaline of that. Fun! (Not sarcastic. It's actually a blast.)

Sometimes you might stay for the whole shoot, other times, especially with an experienced director, you might only stay a few days into the shooting schedule. An episode takes 7 or 8 working days to shoot. If you stay the whole time, of course, you run into the next writer who's already flown up for the production meeting on their episode, which will start shooting the day after yours wraps. And on and on it rolls.

During this time you are not in the writers' room, which remains in Los Angeles, full of whichever writers are available. If there's a crucial discussion, you may be included on speaker phone. Often, you will keep the other writers informed by email about any changes that you're making to your episode during filming that may impact future stories, and they do the same in return: warning you to adjust a line, perhaps, that might be contradicted by something they just came up with for a later story.

The show runner will generally be with the staff, not on the set, unless it's his or her episode or if there's some crisis there that they need to deal with.

When you're in LA, the writers' room feels like the beating heart of the show. But when you're on the stages, the immediacy and energy of filming feels primary. It's certainly easier when a trip to the stages doesn't involve a plane trip, as was the case at Buffy, where the stages were right there, but it is made as easy as possible by the people who book the flights and arrange the rooms and drivers to shuttle you to the set from the hotel every day. And there's something very pure, I find, about being in Vancouver for a shoot -- there are literally no distractions. Often, during shooting, the van picks you up at 7 AM or earlier, and takes you back to the hotel at 8PM at which point you might need to rewrite some scene that shoots later in the week, and then it's off to bed because the van's coming even earlier tomorrow. I always end up totally immersed in the episode, which would be harder to achieve in LA with all the distractions of home. (Some writers, I'm told, spend their small amounts of free time in the lively hotel bar, which is constantly full of movie stars shooting in Vancouver and lodged -- always -- in that hotel, but I value sleep too much to really participate.)

It's not ideal, having to leave the room several times during a season, but it can be made to work very smoothly.

Lunch: Cup O' Noodles


 

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