Sitcom Taping 101

[xjill]

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

Comments

[jim_fan]

Thank you for sharing your view of the taping! I was there too, my first time also. My focus was on seeing Jim in person, and it's a bit disappointing to realize how far away you are from the actors most of the time. Even when they are directly in front of you being introduced, they are about 10 feet below you - the people in front of me blocked my view. The VIPs in the first 3 rows have the best chance of seeing them, but how you get to be a VIP is the trick.

Meanwhile, despite the best efforts of the emcee to keep us entertained, I kept my eyes on Jim as much as possible in between takes. I felt as if I were watching an Olympic athlete warming up! At all times, he was lost in his own little world and not interacting with anyone else or looking towards the audience. He would often grab his script and you could see him mouthing dialogue. He would pace around, talking to himself, turning back and forth in a short circle. He also spent considerable time "making faces" - opening his mouth, changing expressions from frown to "oh" to scrunched up, some pretty weird faces - all presumably to help him keep his mouth flexible and primed for crisp articulation of his dialogue. This made him look totally crazed, as he was engrossed in this as if unaware or unheeding of anyone else seeing him do this. I loved it!

Then as they began the filming of a scene, you could see him physically morph himself into Sheldon. There was a particular stiffening of his arms and upper body, of holding himself together more tightly, that is Sheldon's signature "look". Jim was more relaxed between takes, once even zooming across the set in a much more flowing and graceful way than Sheldon moves.

The other actors seemed less introspective between takes. Kaley, in particular, was most likely to look towards the audience or engage with those around her. Johnny was pretty focused but not making any odd facial expressions nor holding his script. Simon and Kunal seemed relatively relaxed except for Simon doing some pacing back and forth at the very beginning.

So xjill, what was your impression of the actors and their personalities or on-set behavior?

[xjill]

I think that Kaley has been on sitcom sets almost half her life and since Penny is an Everywoman her dialouge makes the most 'sense' as it were - it's how you or I would respond it a situation. Therefore I would THINK it would be somewhat "easier" for her, just due to experience.

Jim just has so much more to memorize and it's nothing that I 'normal' person would say. I do not envy him, that's for sure!