Y&R/B&B: Brad Bell talks about soaps

[bellcurve]

SOAPSFOREVER, you should fix your quotes so I can see everything you are replying to.

That's because GH didn't really have anything to submit for the Emmys. They weren't even nominated. It was a fluke, a one-off year. And Brad got his well-deserved Emmy for those episodes, based on what everyone else did that year. But let's not kid ourselves. This Betty White stuff was hokey as hell and there's no way it's going to get B&B nominated for Best Series.

And again, I ask, Brad does?

[DeeeDee]

AMC was nominated for The Tornado so it can happen.

[JimTolkien]

Yep, what you said!!! The Bells are on probation - they just don't want to make it appear that way!! Their shows are now on a performance-based payment plan LMAO!!

[YRBB]

It's a weird combination.... I actually like the episodes when I watch them, but once the episode is over, I don't really feel the need to watch the next one. I just watched episodes 6 and 7 a couple of days ago, when the last time I had watched was what..? Before the summer?

[BoldBeauty]

If they want to hold down costs, maybe they shouldn´t hire so many new actors... Half the cast is on back burner as it is, just waiting for a storyline. Instead they bring in new actors. I don´t like that at all. It´s also disrespectful to the back burnered actors.

[alphanguy74]

But you CAN tighten your belts more and NOT have the show look like total sh!t *cough* Guiding Light *cough* I have three words for Brad Bell... LIVE TO TAPE.

[bellcurve]

How would that save money? Live to tape would require extensive rehearsals for the amount of shows they shoot in a week(which is eight in four days), putting them into overtime and inflating the production costs. Not to mention, that would require hiring additional camerapeople(because this Live To Tape BS you're talking about, I assume it would be shot as though it were a live broadcast and you would definitely need more than just one cameracrew).

And essentially, the taping schedule they have these days is as close to "live to tape" as you're gonna get anyway. They block, run through once, then do it for real.

[skiman12082004]

I think they are up to 25 contract actors now. The cast is way too bloated and I totally agree they should use the cast they already have like Lesli Kay, Winsor Harmon, Texas Battle and Kyle Lowder just to name a few.

[alphanguy74]

Until they went to 60 mintues, most all the soaps were done this way, or even some like EON, were done totally live, even into the early 70's. IT IS cheaper, the actors have to work harder, but you save a TON of money in post production. That's why Y&R shot this way for the first 7 years, it's the most cost effective way to do it, for a 30 minute serial, at least. And you don't need any extra camera crew. It's still a 3 camera show, you just have to be good at what you do. But like I said, the writers need to be pared down. Y&R in the 80's was written by 5 people (1 or 2 in the 70's), why do we suddenly need 8 or 9?

[bellcurve]

How do you know?! How many episodes would actors have to shoot in one day? Because I guarantee that shooting one episode a day wouldn't be as economically sound as you think. That's the reason why they have dark days or why they shoot multiple episodes in one day.

And alphanguy, if the show were taped as a LIVE broadcast, you would need more than three camerapeople. When OLTL went live, the show had two camera crews. One on standby, waiiting to shoot the next scene and the other that was already shooting the live scene.

As far as shorter writing staffs, yeah, you can get someone to write three half hours or full hours a week, but there's also the issue with the quality of the work and the quality control. Daytime writers definitely met less corporate interference and dare I say, were more skilled and less egotistical. It's the reality of the business. GH has awful stories, but their day-to-day plotting and their scriptwriting is totally solid and better than any soap. That's why they win every year.

But there really is no convincing you, since you are ever so insistent on believing this asinine theory of yours.

[Sylph]

[alphanguy74]

Just how, pretel, is this asinine.... when the entire daytime industry used this for the better part of 20 years? OLTL had the extra crew because the show was structured differently, and it was 60 minutes at the time. When you shoot Live to tape all the time, you must structure the show for it. I hate to tell you this, but virtually every sitcom in the 70's and most variety shows were also shot Live to tape. If it was cheaper to do it otherwise, they WOULD HAVE. It's easier and more convenient to shoot the way they do now, and if you have the budget to, why not? But if you don't... go back to the old fashioned way, just don't EVER use those stupid hand held cameras, unless you want your show to look like crap. Game shows are STILL shot Live to tape, right now, TODAY.

[Khan]

Granted, DAYS still has a lot of improving to do, but when you rise significantly in the ratings w/o falling back on demons, micro-chips, or Austin/Carrie/Sami Part 38...as DeeeDee would say, "Pretty much".

[boldfan01]

And B&B has dark WEEKS as well. On the average, they tape 4 days a week, 3 weeks a month, generally doing 2 episodes a day. Then there are the occasional specials like the fashion challenges, which are more grueling than the average episode. Plus they take an extended hiatus in the late summer and another around Christmas. I don't know if they could do that with a live to tape schedule.

And with the way the B&B soundstage is set up, you often have sets that are not next to each other, so you'd need that second, and maybe even third, camera crew, depending on how the stories are staged for that day. If you only had one camera crew and your sets aren't adjacent, you'd need time to move the camera around between each of the sets/plots.

[boldfan01]

70 sitcoms, talk shows, variety shows and game shows have something in common that soaps don't: a single set or group of sets that doesn't change. There's a reason ALL IN THE FAMILY was almost always in the Bunker living room/kitchen, or the Mary Tyler Moore show in Mary's apartment building or the news room. In the older days, soaps were like that, too. But with storytelling having changed to embrace many sets, that's not the case anymore. Under the current system, B&B can tape two episodes in a day using largely the same sets, taping all scenes on a particular set at once and only having to move the camera crew once or twice. With live to tape, moving scenes back and forth among two to three sets multiple times, the camera crew has to move each time if they only have a single crew. And if those sets are not next to each other (as they often are not), that's a lot of movement. So isn't their current system better because it's more efficient for the crews?