Sara A. Bibel's Blog

[Soapsuds]

I would like to see Sara given a chance at being HW of ATWT. I see that she knows a show must have history...it must have something going on to hook in the viewers. Writers like Jean Passanante need to be put out to pasture.

[YRBB]

http://thebiz.fancast.com/2008/06/deep_soa...rejud.html#more

Lovely new column, with very interesting info about old Y&R and an appearance by Kay Alden.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Sara blogs about her Emmy night experiece...

http://thebiz.fancast.com/2008/06/deep_soa..._daytime_e.html

[althea-davis]

Read her whole blog and love it. And ITA - Hogan's worst decision was making EJ a rapist *shakes head*

Why can't this woman write ATWT or GH?

[NYC123]

She liked the emmys!

I love Sara! I was glad when she said that Ron was praised when he won the writing award!

[JackPeyton]

it was the most unorganized thing i have ever seen. and about 80% of the stars didnt even go down the red carpet.

.... thats amazing...

i thought that was her i seen pop in!

The Highland. I love that place.

[YRBB]

You met Tracey!

[PAsoapfan]

Sara ROCKS

Absolutely love this woman

[MarkH]

Me too. I find it so interesting that she is transforming the blog from "insider experiences" and "opinion" to "soap reporting" as well.

You watch! This is going to become the #1 must-see blog!

[Soapsuds]

http://thebiz.fancast.com/2008/07/deep_soa..._education.html

Deep Soap: Sex Education

By Sara A. Bibel

Ignorance Is Not Bliss

Conservative activists warn that if you give teenagers access to birth control, it will encourage them to have sex. Thursday's episode of As The World Turns was a dramatization of this idea that Pat Robertson might find over the top. Janet (Julie Pinson) feared her sixteen year-old Liberty (Meredith Hagner) might end up getting pregnant, like she did back in high school. So she took her to the gynecologist to get condoms and birth control pills. That same day, she had sex with her fifteen year-old boyfriend Parker (Mick Hazen), who is soap fashion is both her adopted cousin and her mother's boyfriend's stepson. And I mean literally in bed. They were under the sheets. He was shirtless. She casually handed him a condom. Hazen is an authentic fifteen year-old. Hagner is a very young looking twenty-one year-old. At the risk of sounding like an old fart, eeew.

I will give As The World Turns points for realism. It wasn't a candle-filled scene out of a Harlequin novel. It was impulsive and awkward. Liberty and Parker's foreplay consisted of complaining about their parents. However, the compressed time sequence was ridiculous. At the beginning of the episode, Liberty's father Brad sees her kissing Parker. He freaks out like the Dad in an 80s sit-com. He gives her a clichéd talk about how she's way too young for sex - though he knocked her mother up at the prom. Then Liberty goes to the gynecologist with Janet. A few minutes later, Brad catches her with her grocery bag of birth control and flips out. Liberty leaves and has sex with Parker. That's about two weeks of soap story squeezed into an hour.

It also sends out the message that comprehensive sex education is a bad idea. The implication was that Liberty would have been content with kissing if the condoms hadn't been burning a hole in her grocery bag. Give your daughter a purity ring, or suffer the consequences!

When I was a teen, television, including soaps, treated teen sex as a taboo. Good girls didn't even contemplate it. The classic teen soap heroine was committed to waiting. She would always say no to her boyfriend. He might cheat on her with the bad girl, but he'd feel guilty and return to his virginal love. When Brenda and Dylan slept together on Beverly Hills, 90210 it was controversial. She quickly regretted her decision. Though I was an uptight nerd who was too shy to look a boy in the eye, I found the TV portrayal of teenage girls sexist and unrealistic. I didn't think my classmates who were having sex were sluts. I thought they were lucky because boys liked them. My high school passed out condoms in sex ed class, along with detailed information about STDs. It didn't make me want to have casual sex. It made me realize how serious sex was.

I'm glad that soaps will now allow teen girls to have sex drives - in the context of a love story. But this was not a love story. It was uncomfortable to watch, and felt, to me, like right wing propaganda.

[Soapsuds]

http://thebiz.fancast.com/2008/08/deep_soa...ocation_lo.html

Deep Soap: Location, Location, Location

By Sara A. Bibel

2008 may go down as the year that soaps left the studio. During the golden era of soap operas, shows rarely left the confines of their soundstage. When the shows aired live, it was impossible to go on location. There were too many variables and it would have been impossible to switch from location to taped segments. Once soaps switched to pre-taping in the 1970s, some began experimenting with location shoots. By the 1980s, sending the show to an exotic location had become a ratings sweep tradition. Supercouples married in lavish outdoor ceremonies. Adventure storylines culminated with cinematic action scenes. Shows even traveled to other countries. Days of Our Lives visited England. One Life To Live went to Argentina. The Bold & The Beautiful took advantage of the show's popularity in the country to make several visits there. As ratings and budgets declined, location shoots largely disappeared. CBS has decided to bring them back, in an attempt to re-engineer the genre.

Guiding Light: Canary In The Coal Mine

This year Guiding Light decided to change its entire production model, going from traditional three-cameras to single camera shooting. The soap is attempting to use exteriors and actual locations in the same way that primetime does. The official reason for the change was an attempt to bring the show into the 21st century. The unofficial reason is allegedly the ever-popular budgetary concerns. Thanks to new relatively inexpensive lightweight cameras it can be cheaper to shoot on location than to build and move sets. More controversially, GL is shooting in a part of New Jersey where it is legal to use less expensive non-union camera people. So far, the change has not been well-received. The already low ratings have dropped. The show is figuring out what it's doing in public. In the beginning, the camera often seemed to be focused in the wrong place. The make-up was not altered to match the natural lighting, resulting in some performers looking less than their best.

The change in production completely altered the show's storytelling. When I wrote soaps, I often wished we had more set options. I dreamed of bedrooms, streets, cars and workplaces. Yet the initial few months of Springfield 2.0 found the writing contracting instead of expanding. The plots seemed to disappear into a stream of montages of people walking outdoors as music played. Romances started and finished within the space of a month. Characters disappeared for weeks at a time. It was as if in the show's determination to look more like a primetime show it forgot how to tell a daytime story. In the past couple weeks, the show has improved. The camera work is better. The revelation that Remy, not Bill (Daniel Cosgrove) was the father of Ava's (Michelle Ray Smith) baby and her subsequent descent into post-partum depression was very well done. But it seems like this story has the potential to be wrapped up and forgotten within the next few weeks. I hope that GL's impending switch to having two headwriting teams will finally help the show get its groove back.

As The World Turns: The Snyder Farm Is Pretty… And?

As The World Turns has reconfigured its soundstage with smaller, permanent versions of all its indoor sets – eliminating costly set moves. It's shooting outdoors on a regular basis. The location scenes look better than GL's. It's nice to see the outdoor areas of the famous Snyder farm. Yet, the scenes themselves have been a "so what?" If two characters have a conversation outside instead of inside, it doesn't inherently make the scene more interesting. It can do the opposite. Soaps have a unique visual style. Because the small, often unimpressive sets don't allow for much physical movement, daytime directors have always emphasized the close-up. The tight shots of actors are part of the intimacy of the genre. They are visual cues that you are watching a soap. It's the perfect companion to the stylish dialogue and intense emotions. The location scenes, naturally, use wider shots to showcase the exteriors. When there is a reason for the scenes to be on location, it works. As bad as One Life To Live's recent waterfall scenes were, they needed to be outside. They were about people going over a waterfall in a raft. On the other hand, standard two person conversations just seem off in an outdoor setting. The intimacy is lost without the tight shots of the actors.

The Bold & The Beautiful Lives Up To Its Name

The Bold & The Beautiful has had the most success with its location scenes. The show has an obvious advantage: it tapes where it's set. While ATWT and GL are attempting to make the tri-state area look like the Midwest, B&B can take full advantage of familiar Los Angeles sites. B&B is known for its high production values. Their outdoor scenes look lush. The camerawork is flawless. The show has wisely created an outdoor gym set with a lay out similar to a standard soap set. Scenes shot there look like a traditional soap. They just benefit from natural lighting. Friday's montage of Marcus (Texas Battle) and Steffi (Jacqueline Wood) playing in the Pacific Ocean looked great. It was cheesy, but it sold the fantasy of the Southern California lifestyle.

CBS's location mania is part of the latest attempt to attract viewers. Proponents point out that soaps are still shot the same way they were in the 1970s, while the rest of television has changed. Daytime seems old-fashioned. Audiences are looking for something different. They have a point. Over the past five-years the multi-camera sit-com has virtually disappeared for similar reasons. It's been replaced with single-camera comedies that allow for more sets, outdoor shoots and more sophisticated camera work. The writing changed, too. The Office and 30 Rock have a completely different rhythm from 2 1/2 Men. As much as I love old-school soaps, perhaps it's time for them to evolve, too. That means soap writers face the difficult task of figuring out what the rhythm of a single-camera soap opera is.

[EricMontreal22]

Interesting blog--I was surprised she didn't mention AMC which the past few weeks has shot at their new outdoor Yacht Club it seems every other day...

[sheilaforever]

Need to express it one more time: love her blog, not just based on her latest file but in general.

And I love that MarkH is always asking her the pivotal questions which often leads some very nice insights.

[MarkH]

I did? And she replied? I guess I should read more carefully :-).

ETA: I think SOD and SOW and SID are dead...partly because of the superiority of places like SON, partly because of these power-bloggers who are sprouting.

But I think the magazines COULD flourish if they understand how hard-core many remaining soap fans are. Which means there should be writer, producer, director, casting profiles, interviews.

Our love for Sara shows the HUNGER for behind-the-scenes insights. (And our love for Tom Casiello, for Michael Fairman, and so forth). This is an audience niche that the magazines don't get.

For every STUPID filler-roundup ("maps of the cities on which the shows take place"; "review of memorable weddings on all eight surviving shows"; etc.), devote that space to IN DEPTH actor interviews and interviews with the creative people.

Don't waste your time on "news" (literally...that's what SOW now believes it is doing! That is not news...Obama vs. McCain is news...global warming is news....not 'what will happen next' on GL). Don't waste your time on fashion-and-makeup nonsense that MIGHT get you an extra Maybelline ad. Nobody wants that crap from your newsprint :-). (It looks much better in other glossy mags).

Spend a week with Brandon Beemer...profile how he gets himself to look the way he does, and the sacrifices he makes for that. How does he justify that? How does he find the discipline for that? Ask him what he perceives his growth needs as an actor are. How will he fill that gap?

Sit down for a week with Kim Zimmer. Ask her why she is so angry and resentful. Is it really about the show, or are her own issues coming in...the fact that she is no longer the beautiful, young center of the show? Ask her, REALLY, now that her son Jake is older, if she could NOW be comfortable with him playing Gay Luke in Oakdale. Then give me a 5-10 page article (Vanity Fair style, please!)

Sit down for an extend period with, say, Amanda Beall. Find out WHY she writes the dialog she does. How does she feel about that? How does she feel about criticism. How did she come to this career trajectory?

Now...here is the good thing. THE MAGAZINES don't do this. But Ryan's ITZ (and a few other such online outlets) start to approximate it with their radio shows. I love that. My pet peeve (as a hearing impaired, time-limited person): I like it in print . (I also think the impact of these shows would be HUGE if they were transcribed...so HUGE the stars might actually get nervous and less candid, which would be bad).

[P.J.]

I don't get the criticism of ATWT's shoots, which I think add a lot to the show. B&B's, otoh, seem to be really random and look bad to boot, imo. What "advantage" does B&B have by shooting on their rooftop? That's the only "outdoors" scenes I've seen since the revamp.