Jane Espenson visits the set of an unknown daytime drama!

[Sylph]

Soapy Scenes


Oh, such an adventure today, Gentle Readers! I got to go on a tour of the sets and entire operation of a daytime drama. You might think that the world of television writing is sort of homogeneous all the way through — like a potato. But it's not. The worlds of comedy and drama have undergone some cross-pollinating in recent years, and if you work on a prime-time comedy, it's possible you might even find yourself interacting with writers from the late-night world of Conan, Dave or Colbert, but soaps — they are unknown territory.

The effect is something like divergent evolution, as if soaps were put on an island in the early days of television, where they've continued to develop along their own lines, uninfluenced by the rest of the TV world. Their job titles and terminology and methods are similar to the rest of the business, but just different enough to cause delightful confusion.

The production aspects are insane— the show I visited doesn't shoot, as you might assume, an hour's world of material each and ev'ry blessed day. No. They do FIVE shows in FOUR days. So it's more than one standard episode every working day. With no hiatus, of course. Year 'round, I'm sayin'. Holy cats. A single actor might be in seven, nine, eleven scenes in one day. I was told of one case in which and actor, trying to clear their schedule so they could take a week of... that one actor shot over twenty scenes in one day.

The sound stages look very much like sitcom stages, only without audience seating. The rooms have no fourth walls, and there are four cameras shooting into the sets, getting all the angles at once. Most scenes are shot in one take — taking as little as minutes to complete. The sets themselves are moved overnight as the ones needed for the next episode are moved in to replace the previous day's configuration. This show uses four directors — one directs all the eps shot on Mondays, another all the eps shot on Tuesdays... I'm telling you, it's wild.

Oh, and the director blocks all the scenes well in advance of shooting and all the sets are pre-lit to fit that blocking during the night before shooting. In other words, the actors don't get any input on where they stand. What's your motivation for crossing the room? Well, that's where the light is, bub. Oh, and the director sits in a control booth, watching monitors there, not on the set.

Now let's try to imagine the challenges for the writing staff! If everything goes smoothly, all you have to do is produce a full script every single day, year 'round. And they have only a few more writers than a standard prime time hour drama. So they cannot, obviously, run a standard story-break room. The system that evolved was for years, at least at this show, a sort of three-tiered system — a few top writers craft the overall story arcs. Mid-level writers work with them to turn those arcs into things that look a lot like traditional episode outlines, and an array of writers below that (who do not even have to be local to Los Angeles), take those outlines and quickly generate the dialogue while adhering slavishly to the outlines because any adjustment they might make would affect all the other moving parts of this speeding train.

Recently it seems that the middle of that particular snack cake may be disappearing — the higher-ups are creating things with a more outline-y flavor and the lower-downs are being given more autonomy to do a bit of structuring on their own. By this I mean that they're told in which act a given scene goes, but not in which order. Of course, if it's ultimately decided they got the order wrong, the scenes just be reordered in editing. Again, I must say that I'm fascinated. When the finished scripts come back to the top writers, they do rewrites in a process that they were calling "editing," which sounds very odd to my ears, as much of this did. It was like finding a foreign country within our own shores.

Now, soap writing has often been disparaged, but once you view the necessities of the process, it's frakking amazing what they're able to accomplish. By the way, one of the results of the process is that there is even more of a premium on chameleonship in this writing than there is in prime time writing. If a script reflects the individual voice of a particular writer it can be somewhat distracting (or wonderful, depending on the show and your point of view on these things) in a prime time show, but in a show that airs every day and that has beloved characters with decades of history behind their voices, a reliable consistent authorial sense is absolutely required. That great new spin you put on that scene is going to be the spin that tears the machine apart.

Okay, now imagine what happens when the process doesn't run smoothly — what if an actor has an emergency and can't show up, for example? Or what if an episode turns out too long and a B-story has to be cut — how does that affect the next day's script? What if an actor doesn't like a story line and requests a change? Imagine that one-script a day train coming at you!

So what should you do if this work appeals to you? After all, it is one of the few Hollywood jobs that doesn't require you to live in Hollywood. And it does seem to provide an unusual example of job security — almost everyone I met seemed to have been there a decade or more, some much more. Well, unfortunately, daytime drama does not appear to be a growth industry. And the downside of all that job security is that there are never any openings. So it's hard to recommend that anyone pursue this as their do-or-die gonna-make-it-in-shobiz option. But I have to say that there is something very appealing in this high-pressure high-output write it now-now-now world. I can imagine myself wanting to try it just to test my mettle — but can you write... faster?

ADDENDUM: If you follow the link on this page (over on the right—>) to the ABC/Disney writing fellowship, you will see that one of the programs that is offered there is actually specifically for daytime (soap) writing. So if this is for you, that would be the place to start!

From Jane's blog

[JackPeyton]

what show tapes only 4 days a week? I would assume B&B.

[Sylph]

I have no idea, but it might be. (I mean — I don't know who shoots how much a week. )

[JackPeyton]

I use to,back when i use to really care. now? not so much.

okay, what soap uses a set of directors for each day of the week?

[Sylph]

Again, it might be B&B: D. Kelly, C. J. Popp, D. Shaugnessy and M. Stitch.

[JackPeyton]

I think it is B&B.

The mentions of not having to be LA based to do this job pretty much say shes talking about a L.A. soap. Then the 4 days a week and the team of directors...

[EricMontreal22]

Jane's a huge talent and most of her stuff lately that I'm aware of has been doing a pretty good run on the Buffy Season 8 official comic book.

I still remember before she was kicked off The O.C. she did one of the first and best episodes--I wasn't a big OC Fan after mid way thru season 1 but it was an early one and had everyone interactign so well in a party based episode... Anyway, she could be perfect at a soap although with her love of humour I'm not sure B&B would be her thing...

[JackPeyton]

The *ONLY* good part of the OC was the first 6 episodes, and the final season.

[EricMontreal22]

Well I think her episode was one of the first 6 I enjoyed it until that little guy came to town who was psycho and everyone loved and didn't believe the main character about. (You can tell I remember the show well...)

[Sylph]

Rex M. Best doesn't live in LA, Mulcahey is in CA but I don't think he lives in LA. Janice is from Chicago, I think... So — from all around the country.

I'm sorry they didn't develop Kirsten's character, and Sandy was too good (but it somehow worked).

The problems arose Stephanie Savage started to run the show. And then J. J. Philbin joined... It lost Schwartz' vision.

[JackPeyton]

She also had a lot to do with one of my fave 'Angel' episodes - Rm w/a Vu. I thinks he even does the commentary on it.

[EricMontreal22]

Well yes her work on Buffy AND Angel (and in their official comics) is beyond reproach--though she seems maybe to be a bit more solid with her non Buffyverse offerings than another fave Buffy writer of mine, Marti Nixon, or Angel co creator David Greenwalt.

Doesn't OLTL have a weird filming schedule? I guess more than four days a week but I know they were (are?) one of the first soaps to film things each week in a primetime type way and not "live to tape"--ie they might do a week of scenes for so and so's character one day then the next another day

Or am I completely making this up... hrm

[JackPeyton]

Season 2 od the OC is by far one of the worst seasons of a tv show ever.

idk who got involved or if any changes were made for season 4 but it was awesome, IMHO, and it didnt have everything to do with marissa being gone.

[brimike]

WOW!

What a post to wake up to! Thank you so much, Sylph... I'm a huge Espenson fan, going back to the Buffyverse and then later with BSG. This was awesome to read.

She has a link to the ABC program, and she's talking about the less-breakdown-more-script mentality, so I wonder if it's GH? I know most of the East Coast shows shoot five-in-four, but I don't know about the West Coast. I do know a bunch of the GH writers got to know the BSG writers on the picket line, so maybe that's the show?

[EricMontreal22]

While I didn't watch the OC much after that part of season 1, and this is getting off topic it is interesting--I think SChwartz has talent as a writer/creator but I can't think of too many other examples (Twin Peaks?) of a show becoming SUCH a hit and media phenomena and then dieing so relatively quickly and completely.