Let’s “Spring” into some Friday Questions.
scottmc has left a new comment on your post "How to boycott Russia":
When directing an episode for television have you ever used a take that you knew contained a mistake, or goof? (The reason I ask is that I just saw the DICK VAN DYKE SHOW episode 'Bupkis'. Rob opens the phone book looking for a number after having already dialed the number. Both the studio audience and Van Dyke seemed to notice the mistake but nonetheless they used that take.)
I never leave mistakes in consciously, but sometimes in editing you notice things you missed on the stage. Usually these are matching issues — his collar is up in one take and down in the other, the cover is on the tray in one take and not in the other, etc.
You’re left with two choices. Either go with the take where everything matches perfectly even though it may not be the best performance, or go with the best performance and hope the audience doesn’t really notice the mistake.
That’s the camp I’m in. Unless the mistake is glaringly obvious I opt for the best performance.
In an ALMOST PERFECT episode I directed, there was a big pie fight with several pages of dialogue after. We shot it Monday night after camera blocking, then cleaned everything up and re-shot Tuesday night in front of the audience. Needless to say the two takes didn’t match. Watch Matthew Letscher (Rob). The glob on his face doesn’t match from shot to shot. I guarantee you wouldn’t have known that if I didn’t tell you. Here, watch the scene:
404 asks:
Friday question about your writing/thought process: I've noticed that most of your posts end with some sort of call-back zinger, where you reference something mentioned earlier in the piece. I know this is a pretty standard bit of comedy writing, and in general a good way to end a piece no matter the genre.
My question is how do you, Ken Levine, typically go about setting those up?
Callbacks (as they are called) are a great way to button a scene. I rarely have a final callback in mind when I’m writing a post, but as I get towards the end I start to look back at what might be worth calling back.
In fairness, sometimes it works better than others and I’m left with pie on my face.
And finally, from Brian:
Are show titles hard to come up with? Have they fallen out of favor? I recall seeing a title in the opening credits recently. I was reminded of show titles since on a recent airing of Jeopardy, contestants had to name the shows from the titles of the final episodes. The clues included "Farewell, Goodbye and Amen" and "One for the Road”.
Episode titles are a pain-in-the-ass. You need them for production schedules. At one time it wasn’t worth spending a lot of time on them because they’d never be made public. But now episode titles are available as are descriptions of each episode.
In some cases, the titles give away major plot points. It didn’t matter when no one but the production staff saw it, but now it matters a lot.
I always liked what FRIENDS did. Every episode title began with “The one where…” You didn’t have to wrack your brain. You could just say “The one where Phoebe gets hit with a pie” and be done with it.
What is your Friday Question?
from By Ken Levine
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