Sitcom Taping 101
Last August in celebration of 10 years in L.A. I made a list of "10 Thing I've Never Done." I'm happy to report that a year later I have completed 6 of the 10, one of them being to attend a sitcom taping. This Tuesday night I was happy to score a ticket to see "The Big Bang Theory," which unlike many other shows, are not easy tickets to come by. Even having a "ticket" means you have a good chance of getting in, but are not guaranteed a seat. A ticket gives you the joy of an idea of a seat IF you get to the studio on time a.k.a. two hours early.
So, of course, I am not exaggerating to say when I Ieft work early I encountered was the WORST L.A. traffic I have been in in a long while. It took me an hour just to get to Beverly Hills, which is usually a 20 minute trip on a bad day. I finally decided to go over the mountains and was pretty successful once I hit Mulholland. This being said, they cut off the line about four people behind me - yikes!
It was nice that I had a rather short time in the audience holding pen in the parking garage where they check your IDs and stamp your hand with an invisible black light stamp to prove you're not a Movie Studio Lot Terrorist...or something. After passing muster the cattle heard onto the lot begins, including two metal detectors. One I get. But why two?
I was definitely more experienced that most of the audience in that I had been on the WB lot {many times} and soundstages before. I've even sat in a sitcom sound stage but they were not filming at the time. Therefore, it's hard for me to remember what I thought the first time I saw a set for a show I watched, other than thinking it was small. In the case of TBBT, the standing sets are Penny's Apartment, the hallway and Leonard & Sheldon's Apartment. This is set up exactly the way it is on the show, left to right like a dollhouse.
Everything else is a movable and easily transferrable set. The other ones needed for the season premiere were: Wolowitz's bedroom, a Sheldon-approved resturant (not the Cheesecake Factory), Penny's car interior and a hospital waiting room.
One of my favorite things about movie and tv sets are all the details that we the audience never see, but are there for the actors. You could see a bit more of these from the audience but not as many as if you were on the set itself. The best part of the Big Bang Theory set to me is the stairs and elevator landing which are one set, center stage. Things they change out for the walk up scenes are:
1) the "out of order" sign on the elevator
2) the floor numbers on the side of the elevator
3) the placement of the caution tape
4) the apartment door numbers
5) the decorations (or lack thereof) on the outside of the doors, such as the plant on the 2nd floor
Once you are seated in your icy cold audience gallery, you will soon learn to love and hate the one man present at every taping of anything ever: the warm-up guy. The warm-up guy will: tell many jokes, perform magic, instruct people to dance on cue, hand out candy, hand out more candy, direct the DJ to play some tunes, make us clap, make us laugh, hand out pizza, introduce the cast, introduce all 8 million producers, begin family therapy on site, hand out candy again, etc.
One of the best bits he did was have those in the audience from other countries come up and sing a song from their native country. These ended up including New Zealand, China, Canada, Switzerland and Australia. The guy from China worked at the China Space Administration and was sitting pretty near the guy who earlier had identified himself as working at NASA - pretty cool.
There are tons and tons of people on the set during taping and the only one I ever definitively figured out was the director. I REALLY wish they would do is just once have the staff of the show wear t-shirts or something saying their job i.e. "set designer", "grip", "dolly operator" etc. I for one would have found that fascinating. They shoot everything in script order just like you see it on the show and most times they do at least two takes. The most interesting bits were when they completely changed the script or obviously told the actor to act/react in a different way. I'll be very curious to see which take they choose of a couple of the scenes they did about five takes of.
All in all the taping was pretty short, we were done by 9:30, which was only three hours. I've heard tell of tapings that last for 5+ hours. I must gives props to the actors, who are acting in front of a live audience, which is a different skill than working on a closed set. I also have new, improved shiny respect for Jim Parsons because Sheldon truly has about four times as much dialogue as everyone else and it's not easy dialogue at that. Whenever they were adjusting cameras or shifting lighting, etc. he had his script out and was reciting it either out loud or presumably in his head. Simon confirmed to me that he is the best natural physical comedian of the bunch because almost half his scenes were based almost solely on facial expressions and reactions.
When you think about it, it is rather wild that a mere 100 people are representing the millions upon millions of people that watch the show, so it was very cool to be a part of the audience. Let me know if you have questions I didn't answer.
So, of course, I am not exaggerating to say when I Ieft work early I encountered was the WORST L.A. traffic I have been in in a long while. It took me an hour just to get to Beverly Hills, which is usually a 20 minute trip on a bad day. I finally decided to go over the mountains and was pretty successful once I hit Mulholland. This being said, they cut off the line about four people behind me - yikes!
It was nice that I had a rather short time in the audience holding pen in the parking garage where they check your IDs and stamp your hand with an invisible black light stamp to prove you're not a Movie Studio Lot Terrorist...or something. After passing muster the cattle heard onto the lot begins, including two metal detectors. One I get. But why two?
I was definitely more experienced that most of the audience in that I had been on the WB lot {many times} and soundstages before. I've even sat in a sitcom sound stage but they were not filming at the time. Therefore, it's hard for me to remember what I thought the first time I saw a set for a show I watched, other than thinking it was small. In the case of TBBT, the standing sets are Penny's Apartment, the hallway and Leonard & Sheldon's Apartment. This is set up exactly the way it is on the show, left to right like a dollhouse.
Everything else is a movable and easily transferrable set. The other ones needed for the season premiere were: Wolowitz's bedroom, a Sheldon-approved resturant (not the Cheesecake Factory), Penny's car interior and a hospital waiting room.
One of my favorite things about movie and tv sets are all the details that we the audience never see, but are there for the actors. You could see a bit more of these from the audience but not as many as if you were on the set itself. The best part of the Big Bang Theory set to me is the stairs and elevator landing which are one set, center stage. Things they change out for the walk up scenes are:
1) the "out of order" sign on the elevator
2) the floor numbers on the side of the elevator
3) the placement of the caution tape
4) the apartment door numbers
5) the decorations (or lack thereof) on the outside of the doors, such as the plant on the 2nd floor
Once you are seated in your icy cold audience gallery, you will soon learn to love and hate the one man present at every taping of anything ever: the warm-up guy. The warm-up guy will: tell many jokes, perform magic, instruct people to dance on cue, hand out candy, hand out more candy, direct the DJ to play some tunes, make us clap, make us laugh, hand out pizza, introduce the cast, introduce all 8 million producers, begin family therapy on site, hand out candy again, etc.
One of the best bits he did was have those in the audience from other countries come up and sing a song from their native country. These ended up including New Zealand, China, Canada, Switzerland and Australia. The guy from China worked at the China Space Administration and was sitting pretty near the guy who earlier had identified himself as working at NASA - pretty cool.
There are tons and tons of people on the set during taping and the only one I ever definitively figured out was the director. I REALLY wish they would do is just once have the staff of the show wear t-shirts or something saying their job i.e. "set designer", "grip", "dolly operator" etc. I for one would have found that fascinating. They shoot everything in script order just like you see it on the show and most times they do at least two takes. The most interesting bits were when they completely changed the script or obviously told the actor to act/react in a different way. I'll be very curious to see which take they choose of a couple of the scenes they did about five takes of.
All in all the taping was pretty short, we were done by 9:30, which was only three hours. I've heard tell of tapings that last for 5+ hours. I must gives props to the actors, who are acting in front of a live audience, which is a different skill than working on a closed set. I also have new, improved shiny respect for Jim Parsons because Sheldon truly has about four times as much dialogue as everyone else and it's not easy dialogue at that. Whenever they were adjusting cameras or shifting lighting, etc. he had his script out and was reciting it either out loud or presumably in his head. Simon confirmed to me that he is the best natural physical comedian of the bunch because almost half his scenes were based almost solely on facial expressions and reactions.
When you think about it, it is rather wild that a mere 100 people are representing the millions upon millions of people that watch the show, so it was very cool to be a part of the audience. Let me know if you have questions I didn't answer.