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All Soaps: The Budget


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I think that is exactly what they should do, but TPTB are so hooked on the excesses of the 80s that they wont let go.

Think about the original P & G sets, they were kitchens and simple living rooms. GL could have done that back in the original budget cutting days, have a few sets..Bauer kitchen Spaulding Study, Company, Towers, Hospital, a nice warm Beacon Lobby( in addition to hatred of kitchens, do TPTB on the east coast all live in hotels? What is with the hotel fixation...) say the Beacon is a condo instead and have people coming and going talking in the lobby, an interchangeable set which can be a condo living room, (furnishings moved in and out depending on which character is supposed to live there) and suplement that with outdoor shots and renting "real," locations (why they hell didn't they just rent a real boardroom to stand in as a Spaulding Board Room for when they need it? It would beat to hell having Alex and Alan stuck in Wheeler's closet acting like its a Spaulding office as they plot their wicked deeds,) no police station at all belongs on any soap but Edge of Night (does any soap on earth ever do a good cop scene, they are all the same and all ridiculous.) But along with that the soaps need to cut their ridiculous over the top characters..GL was filming in abondoned lots, but we still had a multi billionare family, a retired secret agent, an international jewel thief, and his brother, who just happened to be a remorseless assassin! All living in what looks like a hillbilly backwater town where people dont clean out the junk in their lawn. At various times we were supposed to be in the South of France, in the jungles, and in Afghanastan...all shot in the same Peapack lot that we see everyday. So why would the writers write such scenes when they know the restrictions? Why have secret agents and jewel theifs and even cops, when you don't have the money to film such scenes without it looking ridiculous?

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Yeah I have to disagree with him. I find the show to be bordering on a ghost town almost always. If we were to just compare a scene from Luke's casino these days to a scene from Luke's casino in the 1980s, the difference would be striking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKjy_OrnhS0

the last minutes of this clip are great.

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Amen Mitch. Chasing waterfalls instead of making use of the rivers and lakes. Soaps got so "extra" in the '80s when they could afford to be, and that was fine for what it was but never what truly kept us hanging on. They continue to resist dialing it back for the sake of solid storytelling and audience connect that is the heart of our viewing relationship. Teplin mentioned Iris and her place in St. Croix (I think it was St. Tropez though, right?), that's the time to pull out the simple suggested hotel sets instead of taking it outside to I-know-we're-in-Jersey-New Jersey. I hate what at times has appeared to be an abundance of soap characters living in hotels for months on end btw, seems lazy, just give them a West Elm/Ikea furnished rental. Only excuse is when you're house has burned down. But I like your condo idea, that's a lot like how the loft set worked on The City. It served as Sydney's penthouse, the girls' loft, Angie's clinic, Tess' agency, AND Buck's bar, and all looked unique and great. What Ellen Wheeler really needed was someone with style as her right hand man/woman. Someone with an eye for 'zhuhzing' up those clinical sets, it's like you could hear the fluorescents buzzing, I mean get a pink lightbulb and a paper lantern up in there!

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TV is a visual medium, and to go back to 1950s level of production would be unacceptable to most people. Three flimsy walls and relatively static cameras would just turn off most people I think, and rightly so. I think back then they had shows where Mary and Betty discussed everything in the kitchen because that is all they could afford to do. If Young Dr Kildare or whatever was good, it was good in spite of their primitive production values, not because of them. I think this whole thing is a misplaced nostalgia for something even the producers of those days would disagree with if they could see all the technological advances that are available today.

Just to take a storyline everyone is familiar with, imagine what Marlena being possessed could have been if they had a budget to make it look right. Or just look at classic Dark Shadows vs Dark Shadows 1990.

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Sadly, DAYS is now guilty of this. With all these scenes taking place on the pier, you'd think we'd hear water lapping, bells, foghorns, whatever... the way they used to have it. But nope. Total silence. Just like GL would have outside of Company or on Main Street. I don't understand why they don't think of adding the natural ambient sounds of outside noise like they used to. Any touch of realism would help.

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Some of the special effects of Marlena's possession were actually pretty good... her levitating, morphing into Kristen and back into Marlena... though some of it looked extremely bad (like when Isabella morphed into a demon goblin creature and was engulfed in flames). It sure would've been fun to see Marlena's head spin around tho :)

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I don't think you have to have to go back to 1950s level of production (though I did watch a scene of Chris Hughes talking to none other then Alice Horton herself, Francis Reid playing someone, in his office, and it was a plain and simple office but looked like a "real,"office, and much better then Alan Spauldings office post budget cuts which was smaller then MY real office..so I wouldnt knock all 50 production values.) I was saying that you simply can show people talking in kitchens and living rooms and have a few community sets (hospital, pub, restaraunt, office.) No Mary and June dont have to rehash and rehash over coffee in the kitchen, but how is that different then the repeated scenes of characters saying the same things, only in overheated and overdone ways, ("You are the love my life," They are the loves of each others lives, I cant live without you, you are the love of my life....") And in real life people actually have more conversations in their kitchens and living rooms then they do anywhere else, (certainly not nightclubs or casinos, or whatever.) Look at Desperate Housewives, which is a totally different animal then daytime soaps, but what are their sets, living room, kitchens, occasionally an office or restaraunt, but we have been seeing the same sets for the last, what 7 years, and despite the silliness that takes place, they seem real (well better then real but "TV real." They of course have a bigger budget to be able to create a neighborhood where the characters interact, but they sure all hell dont do it at casinos, or multinational corporate offices bent on world domination, etc.

But you are right, soaps can't do budget special effects without looking cheesy, (one of the reasons I couldnt get into a goofy storyline like the possesion, it looks so damn stupid.0

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I agree. I really think that the older soaps knew how to get emotion out of a bare bones budget. Just compare some of the conversations between "Berta" and Papa Bauer in the living room or kitchen to some of GL's last years, which amounted to Ashlee sitting on a toilet, saying, "OMG I have to text Daisy like yesterday!111!!11" I think that soaps work best when they aren't trying to be hip.

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Soaps need(ed) to learn they never were, no never will be, "hip." In college we loved ATWT and GL because they were what they were. Kids liked Days during the whole "crazy," era, because it wss fun, goofy, silly, exciting, but it was NEVER hip. Even Gh during Luke and Laura wasnt "hip."

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