How has budget cuts hurt your soap?

[P.J.]

The firing of seasoned vets and hiring (and in some cases complete reliance on) newbies to carry stories immediately on their own. It used to be new characters got a year to be introduced---and they were usually somehow tied to a vet and/or core family to ease their way in. Nowadays, someone *coughVanHansisJakeSilbermanncough* get hired one day, and the next they're thrown to the sharks with no buildup or time to acclimate to the industry. And we all suffer as they learn the ropes and try to create a likeable character.

I get glatwt's point. Yes, the writing suffered---but it's harder to dig out of a hole when you can only use characters E, F and G once every two weeks.

[All My Shadows]

I don't understand how bad writing is separate from budget cuts. If bad writing leads to low ratings, then that leads to budget cuts. The last couple of soaps have all been canceled because they weren't making enough money. Why they weren't making money is debatable, but they all fell victim to budget issues.

Budget doesn't automatically equal sets and stuff like that, either.

Nowadays? When were automatic recasts ever given a year's introduction?

[R Sinclair]

I think this particular scene was done as more of a directional choice rather than a budgetary restriction. When a scene or scenes such as the ones involving Carly and Shawn in the 11/11 episode of GH, directors tend to forego the extras to keep the scene intimate and strictly between those two characters. Having Shawn open up and be vulnerable in a diner full of patrons wouldn't work.

[Chris B]

I thought Guiding Light was one of the worst looking soaps ever prior to Peapack. I was very excited about that change because they desperately needed new (and more) sets. I still say the problem with that was launching it and promoting it before it was ready and picking a town that didn't represent Springfield well. Once they got things under control it wasn't terrible, but still could've worked with better people in charge. Prior to that the show looked EXTREMELY cheap and the sets were so poorly designed. The waredrobe was terrible and the choice of sets was poor as well. Something had to be done, I just hate they did such a bad job of executing it. If you look at Hollyoaks or Eastenders or Emmerdale especially (which films almost exactly like GL), the Peapack model is the way of the future IF you know how to execute it.

[DRW50]

It's not separate, but in several cases, I saw worse writing on a soap when it had a larger budget. For instance, as...uneven as the last year of ATWT was or GL was, some of the material was stronger than most of what they had churned out in 1996 or (in ATWT's case) 1997.

[Mitch]

Totally agree that Peapack and the standing sets could have worked on GL if someone knew how to execute it and made wise choices. The budget wasnt Wheelers fault she was handed it as GL was limping along for years with the budget after Rauch, and especially Conboy, blew it. All she needed was a couple of nice community sets, like Company, the Towers, Cedars, (I would have kept the Beacon lobby and explained that it was a condo development now and it would make perfect sense for the characters to bump into each other in the lobby of their building) yet Wheeler developed that dumb looking Main Street set and kept the police station, (cause you know, Gus and Harley work there so you gotta have them on 24/7) and a nice Beacon living room which they could have switched around and had different furnishing to show it was say, Lillians now and not Olivia's. And a couple of home sets which everyone would stop by and visit (i.e. the Bauers, Josh and Reva's house) nothing elaborate just homey looking comfortable sets. The biggest mistake was to put all her eggs in one basket with Gus and Harley and the Coopers while cutting the JVD, the town patriach, who had three young kids who could have driven new story for years. She also chose to film in junked up back yards, (uh, can you hire a high school kid to take the rusted [!@#$%^&*] out of the yard???) alleys and fields when Peapack is a very nice upper middle class town which could have filled in for SF. As it was it looked like she was filming in Hooterville gone to hell.

And yes, Peapack could have saved GL and could have been the future for the rest of the shows, they got entirely too big and ridiculous, these small towns that were developed in the 50s, 60, and 70s were now expected to be centers of industry, with huge skylines, and international espionage, and movies filming..stupid. The whole point of the towns were that they were small insular communities which had several intertwined families bouncing off each other. You dont need masked balls for that (though it would have been nice for more then three people to show up for weddings and funerals.)

Bottom line, Peapack could have worked, if an idiot wasnt in charge.

[SFK]

I say budget smudget, when you have great taste and a brilliant creative team, you can make paper clips and tinsel shine like the top of the Chrysler building. If you can't afford extras, you avoid situations where their absence is glaring. If you can't afford a rich family's drawing room and foyer, break the matriarch's foot and have hilarious and touching scenes where she holds court laid up in her bedroom. If you have the *brilliant* idea to turn your office into the town's nail salon, for god sake, make a frickin attempt or drop the idea altogether and go for something else. Be creative, be inexpensive, but don't look cheap.

[Khan]

Pretty much.

[Ryan Chamberlain]

Both of mine (AMC and OLTL) got s**tcanned.

[glatwt]

one thing about peapack was that it was never night time! i may be nitpicking but that always bothered me. i remember wishing how it was jean dadario burke taking gl to the new production model since she had that experience with the city and i loved that show and it had awesome exterior shots! man how much better peapack could have been!!!

[DaytimeFan]

Is the Pope a Catholic? Of course budget cuts have slaughtered every soap in the genre.

The GL production model COULD have been something, it COULD have attempted to be like the UK soaps, but it just was in the wrong hands. The rest of the soaps are on a life support model. It is what it is. And it's pretty shitty all around.

[Gray Bunny]

I think AMC and OLTL (moreso OLTL) did a great job at making their shows look rich, authentic, and moody. OLTL does an excellent job with lighting.

As I've said in countless other threads, DAYS is the new GL (circa 2005-2008, the Beacon/Main Street years) in that the show looks like cardboard. If they used darker lighting, better uses of shadow and light, it would take away the cheapness that the sets look like. They've done it before, why not do it again? Especially now that it's in high definition!

I can get over using the same sets over & over again, and a lack of extras in the background (though DAYS does still use enough extras at the Town Square and at The Brady Pub), but the lighting needs to improve so that the cheapness of the sets aren't so glaring, literally. Also, a big BIG way to make these cheap-looking settings seem more life-like is to bring back ambient sounds! They use the sound of background chatter sometimes when there's supposed to be a crowd at the Town Square, but there needs to be more. When they're outside, there needs to be that ambient outdoor noise; whistling wind in the winter, birds in the summer, crickets at night, etc. When they're on the pier, we used to hear the water lapping, the foghorn, the bell, etc. To have these characters outside and it's dead silent (and sometimes their voices echo like they're in a large empty room, i.e. set) just kills any attempt at trying to be realistic.

Any outsider checking out DAYS, Y&R, B&B, OLTL, or GH for the first time would definitely single out DAYS as being the cheapest looking.

[KMan101]

As much as I love DAYS, ITA with that. It does look cheap as hell. The lighting was getting better, but I think it's brighter again. And yes, the ambient sounds are greatly missed. I notice it when I'm really watching a scene. It would add a LOT.

[Mitch]

How much does ambient sound cost anyway, plus some music (though for Wheeler her bright idea was to have a "house band," which I think was her cousin or something, play the most annoying, jarring, stupid music ever...think Alan lighting a stogie and the background song "I'm a Gangster," playing.) I wonder why the Soup or some other show didnt do "What happened on GL this week!" like scenes of Reva and JON wedding with just a hot dog cart set up, in a park!

[Khan]

Let's be honest: what GL did, and what DAYS is doing, amounts to '80's soap opera on a '70's or even '60's soap opera budget. Scale back the mother, and we wouldn't have any problems. Again, though, I'm just saying.