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Y&R: Mal Young Interview


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Much of that interview did feel like filler and some of it seems like MY still has his EP hat on rather than a writer's mindset. 

He states ideas on the characters that seem very vague (generally wanting some type of focus on "core" characters, I guess) yet his idea for how he wants the show to look, running time of episodes, those production aspects...all seem much more specific.

 

I am somewhat intrigued by how he intends to make GC another character. Whenever I hear that, I imagine a lot of exterior location shoots. It's something that daytime used to do, during the Golden Age of soaps and from what I've seen of soaps like Eastenders, it's something that is still done on British soaps.

 

 

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You got to have a good story to accompany it. Just doing it for doing it will be a failure. Look at B&B recent exterior location shoots that have failed lately. One of my favorite location shoots was during the Carolyn Crawford murder mystery in Switzerland. I know @DRW50 loved that remote too. I believe it was him that enjoyed it.

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Of course, that's a given.

 

I remember seeing the first episode of Y&R online a few years ago and that very first scene where that character (I think his name was Brad) was riding in that orange pickup truck and driving through the town, where you saw the actual town. You quickly get a feel for the characters while getting the lay of the land in one fell swoop.

Exterior location shots don't always need to be exotic locations. That first scene gave a pretty clear indication of Genoa City as a character that left quite an impression.

 

It just made me wonder if MY planned to do anything close to that because in today's landscape, I think that would be pretty difficult to shoot those types of scenes in Burbank or L.A.

 

As it was, those car scenes between Jack and Ashley that they tried to do (with blue screen) when they were in Florida looked pretty fake. I hope it won't be like that.

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In terms of making Genoa City a character, yes there might have to be more location shots.

 

How do posters feel about those establishing shots showing the Abbott house,Jabot headquarters etc?

 

I would think you would need more varied and interesting sets ,rather than just GCAC,Crimson Lights and a few peoples houses.And more extras so it doesn't feel like a ghost town.

 

All of that means $$$ and I don't think there is cash to splash around.

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When they first began doing them a few years ago, I thought they looked horrible and low quality CGI. They've since improved them but these types of shots alone do nothing to give a full sense of what the town of Genoa City looks like in its sum total.

 

When I think of shows where the city is like another character, I think of shows like Sex And the City (NYC) and the Wire (Baltimore).  There's no really convincing way to do that without actually going outside and filming.  

I've PA-ed location shoots and it is very challenging, particularly in cities.  If they want to make it seem like GC is a more intimate city, it might be possible to shoot somewhere with more a rural/suburban landscape, the way that many NYC-based soaps used to shoot in nearby Connecticut in the 80s but I imagine trying to convincingly pull off GC as this cosmopolitan, mid-sized city will be very challenging, to say the least.

 

Now that I think of it, PP/TOLN soap, AMC 2.0 did a fairly decent job giving Pine Valley atmosphere by shooting around parts of Stamford, CT a few years ago.

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I absolutely agree that location shooting does so much to give a sense of place, especially in shows set in real cities, like the two your describe. The city becomes literally a lead character.

 

However, in the case of most Daytime soaps, the locations are usually imaginary and therefore sense of place comes from what the show can do to help our imaginations along. One soap which used to do this fairly well imo was Days of our Lives, with Salem a somewhat spooky Midwestern (or possibly New England in the JER days) town complete with a main street and residential area around it.

 

TBH, I never necessarily needed establishing shots of homes or corporate locations on Bill Bell's Y&R, as the amazing low-lighting, the sets, and the music gave me a sense of a wealthy suburban location: homes packed with acres of land and roaring fireplaces to let you know that the winters outside were particularly cold; a country club with fine dining; the local bar/restaurant with live music; and corporate headquarters for Jabot and Newman Enterprises which seemed only accessible by car (and therefore not accessible, unless by invitation only, to the Have-Nots). I had a sense of GC, not as a big bustling city like Chicago, but as a mostly residential community built on the wealth of the few companies that dominated the town. 

 

Of course nowadays Y&R has eschewed a lot of this 'sense of place' for broad strokes. No more warm low-lighting which created intimacy and made everybody glow -- and sometimes gave you the chills. Now the lighting is industrial and flat. Certainly no more flower shots or roaring fireplaces in the wake of budget cuts. No more atmospheric music that gave you insight into unexpressed longing between two characters or murderous tension between rivals -- now we have the generic crap that JFP commissioned and which MY sees no reason to scrap. As a result, the old-school wealth I associated with Genoa City has dissipated.

 

My point is, I'm not sure you need that many outside location shots or a lot of bells & whistles to really immerse you into the world of Y&R and Genoa City. Sometimes all of this comes from a vision expressed on a page and translated by a talented crew.

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I agree that you don't truly need it but since MY has expressed the desire to make GC as if it's another character-- as part of his vision for Y&R, I am intrigued as to how exactly he plans to accomplish this.

 

I can't imagine this being done on the cheap, or even with a modest budget increase. It will take a considerable bump up in $$$ to pull something like this off and make it look good.

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