Y&R vs. GL

[degrayer]

On The Young and The Restless this week Victor and Sabrina are in a museum in LA and are shooting outside. Guilding Light was been shooting the show in the new way since February and Y&R looks a lot better than GL. What do u think?

[Chris B]

I think Y&R is still using normal cameras so it isn't quite the same as GL. AMC and ATWT use the same cameras as GL, but manage to pull off professional outdoor shoots that mesh well with the indoor scenes. The lack of success in the GL change has been due to the horrible Executive Producer--Ellen Wheeler. The horrible directing, music and lack of focus with the sets is her fault. She shouldn't have created so many sets if half end up looking like crap. A bedroom shouldn't be the size of a closet. The office sets don't have to be as bland as they currently are. She simply is an idiot. She should go back to acting.

[UKBoi]

I like some of Wheeler's sets. Some. The courthouse is great, as is the Spaulding mansion, Cassie's house, Harley's house and Company. Main Street and the hospital are both okay but could be bigger and would look more realistic if there were extras and relevant background noise. However, I do not buy the fact that Reva and Jeffrey's house is a tiny office when we know Cross Creek used to be a spacious, luxurious cabin, I dont like the nail salon set, or the way the police station and jail join up with the courthouse. I just wish Wheeler would not treat viewers as so stupid that we cant tell what sets are blatantly production offices. I do commend her for making use of the out-of-use production gallery as the WSPR set, but on the other side of the spectrum I do not for a second understand how she thinks that church set is at all realistic, and what the point in it is when we've seen them film in a real church on a few occasions.

I also like how she said this new production model would enable us to see the characters in their homes, yet Cyrus breaks into Vanessa's room at The Beacon and then Vanessa warns him that her daughter will be home any minute (implying that Vanessa, Dinah, and Mallet(?)) all live in a hotel suite together.

Some of the lighting could use work in the indoor scenes, and I really dont like that Wheeler takes is to be so stupid that we cannot tell what sets are baltantly production offices (i.e. the motel room where Alan stayed, the nail salon, Cross Creek) and what ones are purpose built. If anything, they should use the offices to be ACTUAL offices, like why build a police station set when they could make use of an office and the corridor outside of it, ditto a jail cell.

I do think that GL is slowly improving in this new production model, but they need to work on some better sets.

[Sweet_VeeVee24]

I personally like the shooting for Y&R a bit more than I do for GL... I'm glad that with the new shooting of scenes for Y&R we don't kick right into music mode.

[AddictedToSoaps]

Y&R obviously.

[UKBoi]

To be fair, though, Y&R probably has at least double the budget GL has. I did think that the scenes with Victor and Sabrina in the museum came across as a little dated, but I dont know if that's maybe just because of the actual museum and the way it was so white with such bright art, which didnt fit with the rest of the episode considering the dark way in which Y&R is lit.

[DaytimeFan]

Y&R's budget is $1.25 million a week...which is not the highest in daytime, DAYS used to have that honor until recently, I believe GH now has claim to the title.

Y&R's shooting is superior on all kinds of levels. For one thing there wasn't EXTREME CLOSEUPS....those make GL look like a cheap porno. Lighting is better, more natural, smoother camera work. Everything.

That being said, I don't want Y&R to go the GL route, Y&R's sets are the best in daytime, have been for years and it has the most primetime look of any soap, the production values are just the best (followed closely by B&.

The best outdoor shooting, in my view, was when DAYS had 'Salem Place'...it was natural, made sense with the show and added this excellent sense of realism that I haven't seen duplicated better anywhere else. Sadly, when the budget got slashed Salem Place was the first to go.

[UKBoi]

I would never have guessed GH had the highest budget, you definately couldnt tell by looking at it as it has some of the worst production values in daytime...everything is just so beige and half of the sets look like something from a community theatre project, not to mention sometimes the sound quality is terrible (when you hear the clunking of peoples feet etc).

I'll agree with you there, the extreme closeups and ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM is what really detracts from GL's new production model...well that, the lighting and the sound quality.

I really miss Salem Place, it was such a nice set and very realistic, it added a lot of character to the town of Salem and I liked how it wasnt just a basic three walled, square set, it had lots of different streets and locations within it...I used to love it at Christmas and when the characters would be there at night and it was all lit up. I dont see why, with budget cuts, they had to get rid of it considering it was on their own studio backlot...at the very least they could have moved the set indoors, as I liked it being a public space where characters would run into each other without any contrived reasons. All days really has now is a bar and an upscale restaurant, so you dont get that kind of interaction anymore.

[TheDSA]

The picture quality of GL's outside shots is pretty good. Too bad the cameramen don't know what the hell they're doing.

[sheilaforever]

Well, to be fair Y&R is superior just for the fact that they don't use these shake-and-bake handheld cameras. I believe that the actor's spouses are doing camera work for GL and therefore always zoom in on their hubbys... LOL!

Reagrdless of this: Y&R did one single location shoot which took me totally off-guard. GL does them very often. This should be a fact positive enough.

[PJA]

Y&R's outdoor shots didn't look right to me. I actually think GL's outside shots look good. It's the closeups and the shakiness (which has decreased) that I have a problem with. And also they do too many outside shots. In real life, people don't randomly run into people they know outside.