Beaming Beeman

LATEST NEWS

2009-06-18T18:22:00.000-07:00

Dearest Readers,

After my last post about leaving HEROES, my attention was drawn to the comments section of this blog. I want to thank everyone for their kind words and well wishes to me. I was truly touched. I also want to thank Otto Berkeley who writes reviews for herosite.net for his kind words. I’ve always found his reviews of the HEROES episodes to be very thoughtful and accurate. I’ve had a long relationship with Craig from kryptonsite.com and herosite.net and he’s been a great supporter as well.

Anyway – I would like to update everyone as to what I have been up to. I have, in fact, landed on my feet, as it were. Next year I will be producer-director on the new CW series MELROSE PLACE. Given the super-hero, stunts/fx background on my last two shows, this may not be the place people expected me to end up – but I will tell you it is a place I am very happy to have ended up.

The series has been created by Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer, who are my friends from SMALLVILLE. Because of their involvement, I knew the show was going to be well-written and unexpected. A few weeks ago, when the idea of moving onto this show came up, I went to their office and watched a rough cut of the pilot. After it was over I turned to them and said, “You guys nailed this thing.” The pilot, which was directed by Davis Guggenheim, is intense, sexy, dark, edgy and shimmering. The cast is all-around excellent. My full expectation is that this series is going to be a breakout hit next season. I’ve been right about this on two-for-two series and I’ll be happy to go three-for-three.

I am also excited for the chance to “change up” the kind of work I’ve been doing. For whatever reason I have been lucky to have had a lengthy career. It’s had many ups and downs and I’ve gotten to work on lots of different kinds of material. Slowly, over time, I’ve come to realize, from a personal career-management standpoint, that it’s important to shift what you’ve been up to every once in a while so as not to get pinned down as the guy who just does that one thing. I am very happy to get to shift onto this new series which is well written, well cast and has the full backing of a very excited CBS/Paramount studios and the CW network.

Anyway, I’ve jumped onto this new job, which has been like jumping onto a moving train. I’ve been at work on it for the last few weeks… Putting together a crew and a rotation of directors, getting to know the cast and getting ready to start producing and directing this exciting new series. It’s all been extremely fast-paced and intense, and I haven’t had time, up until now, to post about my whereabouts. As of today we hired the last two key positions (hairdresser and costume supervisor - whew!) and I finally was able to come up for air.

Truthfully, at this time, I’m not sure if I’ll be doing the same thing with this blog I did on HEROES (i.e. posting behind the scenes photos and information on an episode by episode basis.) I might be, but that’s all still in the works.

Nevertheless, I didn’t want my last-ever post to be the rather somber farewell I wrote for the end of my run on HEROES. Take it from me, I am happy and healthy and all is well. If any of you fans of HEROES and SMALLVILLE are willing to follow me to a different kind of show, I promise you will be well rewarded with a visually exciting and emotionally compelling series.

BEEMAN'S BLOG - SEASON THREE - EPISODE 25 - "AN INVISIBLE THREAD"

2009-04-25T16:33:00.000-07:00

BEEMAN’S BLOG
SEASON 3 – EPISODE 25
“An Invisible Thread”

Dearest readers, this is a sad moment for me, as it will be, not only my final blog for Season 3, but also my final blog for HEROES.

You see, I will not be returning to HEROES for Season 4. Ultimately this was a financially motivated decision made by NBC. They no longer want to have a Producer/Director position on the show. But it coincides well with my own innate wanderlust, and so, while sad to leave so many friends and comrades, I am excited for the future.

Having said that, while this will be my final blog respective to HEROES, it is not necessarily my final Beeman’s Blog ever. Over the years I have been careful to keep this blog separate from NBC.com or any other entity that specifically ties it to HEROES. It certainly seems reasonable that I will continue to write on about whatever my next adventures are. It is a bit too early to say, but I have a strong feeling I will be involved in very exciting projects in the very near future. I hope that the many of you who have followed me up to now will continue to follow with me as I move forward. I have been amazed that the blog frequently gets thirty or forty thousand hits a week. If I have been able to give any enjoyment or insight to you fans then that is certainly enough to me. As I hope you know, I am well aware that our fans are everything and I am very happy to have been able to serve you. Moving forward, well… I will keep you posted.

So, having dispensed with that, it seems appropriate today, not to write a typical behind-the-scenes about what occurred on this final episode. From my point of view as director and producer it went quite smoothly. It was a Tim Kring script, which are always easy to make manifest. I am pleased with the overall results, and I hope you will be as well.

It seems more appropriate today to address a farewell to the many people I have worked with these last three years. (Take a breath – this could go on for awhile!)

I feel like starting with the actors. Of all the jobs I do on this show, working one on one and in groups with the actors is the most deeply rewarding and important job I do. I’ve mentioned, frequently what a great cast this is. That is partly because they are all very nice people. But also, they are all talented, and they each enjoy the relationship with the director, digging for the unexpected and the surprising.

I’d like to start with Zachary Quinto. Because I didn’t do the pilot I didn’t have influence over hiring the rest of the series regulars. But I was there, directing Zach at his first audition. It was an incredible, showstopping, performance. It was immediately evident that his range was phenomenal and I knew then and there we had something special. Zach is a true artist and I feel a deep affection for him. He is also a great person and a very giving actor to his fellow actors, to the crew and to the show. What’s especially amazing is that, as great as he is, I know how much he can still develop into the power of his craft. Beyond a doubt, I know that he will go on to greatness - because not only does he have the talent to achieve this he has the will, and I have immense respect for this quality within him.

To the rest, I’d like to say farewell to Hayden Panettiere. Hayden you are a savant. You do everything effortlessly and are deeply intelligent. I respect you immensely.

To Jack Coleman, you are a true professional in the very best sense of the word. Your work seems effortless and simple, and yet I know how complex the character is. Whenever I have had an opportunity to push with you into the deeper aspects of your character, the rewards were always rich.

To Ashley Crow, you were phenomenal in the pilot, presenting an odd quirky character. As the series developed, slowly, you were given the opportunity to expand this character and show a depth of character, a strength that is born in love of family. My personal opinion is that all of this resides naturally in you and reflects your own values. (In fact, whenever I had the opportunity to direct “The Bennets” Hayden, Ashley and Jack together, it was a delightful experience. “First Line on the Ice” I called them - using a hockey expression. Those scenes were always so fun and easy and fast to bring to fruition.)

To Milo Ventimiglia, you are a person of great integrity and a filmmaker in your own right. You have always been deeply respectful of the crew and the process and I respect that in you. I have really, truly enjoyed working with you.

To Adrian Pasdar, you are a true leader, and a funny nice guy who cares immensely about the details of his performance. You challenged me and forced me to direct with more depth. It is an honor to have directed you.

To Ali Larter, we had a very special and bonding experience on the sixth episode of the first season, as we both worked through a complex performance. You are characterized by great enthusiasm and desire to strive for the highest performance you can achieve and I very much admire you for this.

To Sendhil Ramamurthy, you are one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. Your enthusiasm for being on the show has never waned. And you have always gone the extra mile whenever I asked you to do something above and beyond the expected. I am very grateful to you for this.

To Greg Grunberg, you are as funny and as naturally likable in person as you are on-screen. I have also been very impressed by your eagerness to push into darker areas of your character whenever the opportunity presented itself. Tonight’s episode is a good example of this. It has been a joy to work with you.

Masi Oka, you are one of the smartest actors I have ever worked with. It was incredibly fun learning the minute amount of Japanese I did from you. Your positive attitude was never in doubt throughout. You have been a great ambassador for the show, in so many ways, Thank you.

James Kyson Lee, sometimes I wonder if the work you do is fully appreciated. Straight-man comedy is not easy to pull off, but you make it all look so easy. As a film-maker I know that you are always 100% reliable to deliver whatever is asked of you. I have gotten to know you personally a bit and you are a delight to hand with. Thanks for everything.

To Cristine Rose, I have to say I have never had more fun directing an actor than I have you. I feel we have done excellent work together. I know the scene we did recently where you were eating oysters in the restraunt was a truly fun collaboration. Similarly the one in tonight’s episode where you discover Nathan’s body was, for me, perfectly emblematic of the collaboration between director and actor. You love to take chances and I love that you have trusted me. Thank you.

To the other cast, who have left the show (at least temporarily???) Santiago Cabrera, Tawny Cypress, Noah Gray-Cabey, Leonard Roberts, Dania Ramirez, Brea Grant and Kristen Bell… It was truly special to collaborate with you all. I am so filled with warm feelings at having worked with every member of this cast that words can’t describe it.

But there are also so many people I have worked with behind the scenes on this show. If you’ve followed my blog at all then you know that this is, on SO many levels and incredibly complex and challenging show – and also a deeply rewarding one. I have had the incredible fortune of being involved intimately with every department.

Firstly, to Ruth Ammon, HEROES Production designer. You are among the most talented individuals I have ever worked with. The sets you build have been uniformly marvelous. Your taste is impeccable. Your sense of color and design flawless. You have taught me the concept of building history and character into sets. You have been more challenged than perhaps any other member of the crew… You have built huge, incredible sets in so little time – and when I walk on them, they are perfectly designed to be shot, both artistically and technically. I thank you and your whole crew. I don’t have time to name them individually, but they have done world class work faster and better than I have ever seen.

To Nate Goodman, our Director of Photography, I have had perhaps the closest collaboration with you. Your intuitiveness, your endless enthusiasm and willingness to take real and significant chances is a marvel. You are starting your career as a D.P. at such a high level of talent that I know the future will be quite bright for you.

To Charlie Lieberman, our other D.P. What can I say? Your lightening is sumptuously gorgeous. The way you make the light caress the face is so beautiful. You entered an already running machine and stepped aboard effortlessly. The work we did on tonight’s episode and on the last one we did together, episode #19, is some of the most beautiful photography I’ve been involved with. (And I really care about photography.)

I think it’s also important to mention John Aronson, the Director of Photography who shot the whole of season one. John set the look and established our standards. His influence continues to be felt.

I’d like to thank the entirety of the camera, grip and electric crews. We have a core group that does the bulk of the episodes and a huge, vastly rotating group that does our second units. That the show has a cohesive look despite the myriad crews that work on it is a testament to everyone’s hard work and to the integrity of vision of our DPs and producers. I would like to single out just a few names of those I’ve worked most closely with…. Peter Mercurio, our camera operator, Chuck Crivier our key grip. Carlos Gallardo our dolly grip and Jeff Levy our gaffer… And to all of the many many rest who create the images the fans enjoy week in and week out... Thank you all for your hard work and good attitude. It has been a pleasure to work with you.

I would like to thank Gary D’Amico and his special effects crew. Gary you blows stuff up real good, and does every other kind of mechanical effect imaginable. The range of special effects you have done on this show is all encompassing. As far as I can remember, nothing you and your crew has done has ever not worked. Great job!

Also, Tim Gilbert, our stunt coordinator. In TV time is short to do very elaborate stunts. Tim you have had a great attitude through all types of conditions. And again, congrats on your SAG award this year!

I would like to thank Lori Madrigal and Wendi Allison our makeup artists. I have mentioned them a few times before on the blog. You guys have the greatest attitude and keep every member of our large cast continuously happy in your trailer which is the rockenest on the planet.

The same enthusiastic thanks goes to LeeAnn Brittenham and Angie Gurule our hair people!

To our Prop department, especially prop master Ross Anderson, and his key crew James Clark, Reba Rosenthal, Scott Henry and the rest of the crew that have worked all of our numerous units. All of your work has never been anything but top notch. Every prop was right or was quickly made right if there was ever a problem. I would also like to single out James (who twitters as @jamesprops) James your dedication to the show and it’s numerous details has not gone unnoticed by me. Thank you all for your enthusiasm.

To Stargate Visual Effects and our team Eric Grenaudier, Mark Spatny, and also to our Season One VFX producer Mark Kolpack – This show has been a great and fun challenge… So many things get written into the scripts that we have to figure out how to do in just a few weeks. It has been fun collaborating with you guys creatively even when we have to creatively figure out how to do something huge without a huge amount of money. One of the most effective VFX-based scenes I’ve done remains the Season one episode 3 scene in which Hiro first froze time in Tokyo Japan. Since then we have exploded New york, Exploded Tokyo, Frozen and shattered Ali Larter as well as (tonight) made Ali Larter materialize out of water. We have recently Morphed Sylar into virtually every cast member we have, shattered a plane and then digitally re-created it on the ground, we have flown Peter, flown Nathan and so much more. Thank you guys for your hard work and diligence!

To our prosthetic guys from Optic Nerve - Glen Hetrick & Mark Viniello, you guys did amazing work. My favorite was the open brain cap you made for Hayden in season three's opener. I stood six inches from that appliance and I still couldn't figure it out. Glen, you as the mutated man Suresh worked on was also a hoot from episode 9-11 this year. Guys, thank you!

To Cathy Gibson, our UPM, it has been great getting to know you as we worked in the trenches together this year. Figuring out the pure mechanics and manpower of this show is a beast and you tamed the beast with elegance. As director Jeannot Szwarc dubbed you, "You are a snub nosed 35 inside a velvet purse!"

To Brenda Pulos and to Alex Reid, and who left earlier in the year, thanks for everything. To Pearl Lucero and our entire amazing Office Production Staff, thanks guys!

To Valerie Norman and Merry Donner, our two amazingly talented script supervisors. Thank you. Val, you and I have been especially close and we have shared a lot emotionally and metaphysically. I thank you for your freindship.

And to our AD Department - Sam Mahony, Robert Scott and Anne Berger and Diane Calhoun, as well as to our numerous simul-unit ADs and also those who have left, my friend Pat Duffy and Milos Milicevic . Due to SO many reasons this show is THE hardest show to A.D. I have ever seen. All of you did it with class in your own inimatable way.

To Ken Fuller and the sound crew - thank you for excellent work done quickly and quietly. In general there is cleaner sound with less ADR on this show than on any I've been on.

Our Casting Guys RULE - Jason La Padura, Natalie Hart & Keri Owens!!! This team found this amazing original cast and continues to find the actors that fit seemlessly into our high standards week after week!

To our costumes team, for making our cast look awesome - Debra McGuire, Nancy Gould and your entire team of people.. Thanks!

For finding us places to shoot, week in and week out thanks also goes to our Locations Department -- Steve Hasson, Dianne Friedgen and Jason Savage. This is another department that has to jump through hoops every week just to get us on the air.

To Brian Stegall and our transportation team that keeps our company moving thanks for everything. You do a great job in a seamless way!

I'd like to give a special thanks to our stand in team... Otto Krausse who is without question my oldest friend and my brother-from-another-mother, Mitch Blaylock, Elizabeth Obrien and Heather Stunkle as well as the numerous stand in's on simul-unit... You guys work hard witha great attitude. (Stand-in is something I should have done a blog about - basically they "stand-in" for the actors during the long lighting set-ups between takes. It's basically super-important but tedious work that requires paying a lot of attention for very little thanks - and this is a great and happy team!)

To Foz , who I brought over from SMALLVILLE and ended up being Jim Chory’s assistant – thanks for being a great guy! Thank you for your kind words towards me. You are a great guy!

To Lori Motyer, our post production producer and to our editors Scott Boyd, Jon Koslowsky, Don Aron to Lois Blumenthal, and to all of our assistant editors and post production assistants…. You guys are the best. The show is so well crafted in post production it’s not funny. Lois, I feel especially proud of you, because we worked together on your first episode after you moved up from assistant! Great job everyone. I will miss my time down in the dungeon with all of you.

To Wendy and Lisa our composers, I would like to extend a special thanks. The music that you create for the show is haunting and magical, and you are truly the shows greatest fans! Allan and I would always know how a show was because when we showed it to you guys you had the most authentic reaction ever. Also, the speed with which you turn over your amazing scores blows my mind. Thanks.

To all of our writers, Thank you. Adam Armus, Kay Foster, you're character work is unsurpassed. I still feel “HOMECOMING” was one of my best episodes. To Joe Pokaski, and Aron Coleite, your level of talent at your youthful ages is intimidating. To Bryan Fuller, you know I think you are a genius. To Rob Fresco and Mark Verheiden – I have greatly enjoyed our time together. To our younger writers, Chuck Kim, Chris Zatta and Oliver Griigsby, thank you. To all of you - The work you all did singly and collectively was so complex and dense that it’s awe inspiring! I am very glad for the time I had with each of you.

I'd also like to say a special thanks to my friends Jeph Loeb and Jessie Alexander, who have also left the show. Thanks for all you contributed and much success in your continued endeavors... This is a given, but I say it anyway.

To Jim Chory, our line producer, thanks for being a great instructor. I have tried to learn from your mind which is able to juggle such complexities that it’s amazing, You have been a great teacher. Thanks.

To Dennis Hammer, thank you for your friendship and your support. You have been the rudder in the ocean that is HEROES.

To Allan Arkush. Thank you for the dignity and kindness that you showed me. I was the new kid on the Kring block when I came aboard and I greatly appreciate the open-heartedness you showed me upon my arrival.

To Tim Kring, thanks for hiring me. It was great to finally really get together and work after all those years ago at USC film school. You created a truly inspired work. Congratulations and continued success.

Finally to my assistant Erin who has helped me in every endeavor with the greatest, happiest attitude ever – thank you!

I’m sure I’ve forgotten many, please accept my apologies. There’s a lot of you!

I hope that wasn't too lengthy or too sappy for you, my faithful readers... HEROES has for me been a very all-encompassing experience… It required so much of me on so many levels. I know there will never be another experience quite like this one again! One of the best experiences that specified what was amazing, especially, about season one, was sitting in a movie theater a few minutes before the show started (I think I was there to see MICHAEL CLAYTON?) and I began eavesdropping on two random strangers behind me. As I listened it became clear they were talking about HEROES and the Season One DVD set that had just come out. They started to go on and on about how awesome the show was. This was heady for me because it was completely authentic and unsolicited… They went into great depth about every aspect of the show, expressing not just fan-enthusiasm but also a deep intelligence and understanding about stuff we were up to that I thought was very subtle. That was an exciting experience for me but also one that taught me clearly how intelligent and perceptive our fans are.

Thank you all! Goodbye everyone!

OH YEAH... AND DON’T FOREGT THE PICTURES!!!!!!:

ZACH MEDITATES WHILE THE CAST LOOKS ON AND ADRIAN PREPARES TO LIGHT HIM ON FIRE!

HAYDEN'S GOT A GUN!

TWO GENERATIONS OF STAR TREK

PRODUCTION DESIGNER RUTH AMMON AND I WATCH THE MONITOR

MASI SNEAKS UP ON ME

OUR STAND-INS - UNSUNG HEROES OF THE SET, OTTO, MITCH, ELIZABETH & HEATHER

ME AND ADRIAN - HAPPY DAYS ON SET

MASI AND SENDHIL - I WILL MISS YOU!

REHEARSAL ON SET

HEH HEH HEH - WHEN I YELL "ACTION" JAB HIM WITH THAT BIG ASS NEEDLE

HAYDEN ON SET

ZELJIKO SAYS "WHAT'RE YOU LOOKING AT?"

JKL SAYS "WHAT'RE YOU LOOKING AT?"

HAYDEN SAYS "WHAT'RE YOU LOOKING AT?"

ZACH SAYS "WHAT'RE YOU LOOKING AT?"

DANG! THAT'S A BIG NEEDLE

CRIS ROSE AND MR. COOL

ADRIAN AND MILO BETWEEN TAKES

VIEW FROM THE MONITOR

ZACH USUALLY LOOKS PRETTY COOL ANYWAY, BUT THEN PUT HIM BEHIND SOME FIRE AND WHOO-WEE!

A NICER GROUP OF ACTORS YOU COULD NEVER HOPE TO FIND

CRISTINE AND HAYDEN ON LOCATION AT L.A. CITY HALL

WHAT?!??!?!

MASI, OUR JAPANESE TRANSLATOR SACHIKO AND I

A BRUTAL PAPER CUT

DID I DO THAT?

2009-04-20T14:26:00.000-07:00

BEEMAN’S BLOG – SEASON 3 – EPISODE 24
“I AM SYLAR”
I AM SERIOUS – SPOILERS CONTAINED HERIN – YOU WERE WARNED!

A short blog tonight – sorry. But a reasonable number of pictures – so, hey, that should satisfy!

Tonight’s episode was written Adam Armus and Kay Foster and was directed by Allan Arkush. It features another tour de’ force performance by Zach Quinto and the return of Ellen Greene. Ellen is great. The best. She and Zach really enjoy working together. It also features Sylar interacting with Micah for the first time – another intriguing interconnection.

Anyway – I hope you like the episode. Season three comes to a close next week. I directed next week's episode. A longer blog is promised.

PIXTURES:

ALLAN ARKUSH AND GOOD BUDDY MASI OKA

ALLAN ARKUSH DISPLAYS HIS "ABS OF STEELE" TO EQUALLY STEELY-ABBED JKL

ŽELJKO - ONE BADASS MO'FO'

BEHIND THE MONITOR

A STRANGE REVERSAL

A.D. ANNE BURGER - CODE NAME: "THE DAYMAKER!"

D.P. NATE GOODMAN TENDS TO FROZEN JKL

DEATH BECOMES CLINT HOWARD

ELLEN GREENE PATIENTLY WAITS TO MORPH

FROM LAST WEEK - A (DYSFUNCTIONAL) FAMILY PORTRAIT

JKL - FROZEN AGAIN!

SHOT IN THE BACK AND YOU'RE TO BLAME - BABY YOU GIVE MORPHIN A BAD NAME!

C'MON YOU CAN'T GET COOLER THAN THESE TWO DUDES OF FILM

EXCEPT FOR MAYBE THESE TWO!!!

ZACH WATCHES FROM OFF STAGE

CRISTINE AND ŽELJKO - THEY'VE KNOWN EACH OTHER SINCE THEY WERE TEENAGERS - REALLY!

A PREVIEW IMAGE FROM NEXT WEEK'S EPISODE - WHAT CAN IT MEAN?!?

BEEMAN'S BLOG - SEASON THREE - EPISODE 23 - "1961"

2009-04-11T13:44:00.000-07:00

BEEMAN’S BLOG
SEASON 3 EPISODE 23
“1961”

WARNING: IT’LL BE ON THOUSAND NINE-HUNDRED AND SIXTY-ONE YEARS BEFORE YOU CAN FORGIVE YOURSELF FOR READING SPOILERS CONTAINED WITHIN THIS BLOG THAT YOU ARE EMOTIONALLY UNPREPARED FOR!

Aron Coleite wrote tonight’s episode.

It was directed by Adam Kane.

As you may remember, Adam Kane was the director of photography on the HEROES pilot. This is the fourth episode he’s directed for us. He left in the middle of season two to be the director-producer on PUSHING DASIES and has since done several other projects. We missed him and are glad he’s back.

I want to focus today on two things… First, I want to focus on the enormous job accomplished by the art department on this episode, under the direction of Ruth Ammon. And, secondly, the good fortune we had in obtaining our young cast for this episode.

But before I can illuminate those two points, I must, for a moment, discuss the script. Aron Coleite’s, script was in some ways, very simple. It is actually a very contained story delving into the happenings in one location in two separate time periods. It is a quite compelling story and, I’m quite certain, long time fans will be quite compelled to learn about Angela’s history and of the formation of the Company.

Of course, from another point of view, it is one of the most complex projects we’ve done. The whole story takes place, almost completely in the internment camp called Coyote Sands. That internment camp is seen in the past of 1961, when it is brand new. It is also seen in the present day, when it is old and dilapidated. It also presented us with the very challenging task of giving over about a third of our episode to an all new teenage cast, which is tough enough, but to make it harder they would be playing characters that are already very well established.

Luckily we had an early heads up about this project. The writer’s room warned us it was coming – and Dennis Hammer sent out an alerting email in December, when we were still shooting episode #19. The locations department and the art department were instructed to at least think about the project and propose ideas, and our casting directors were instructed to begin thinking about who could play Young Angela, Angela’s sister, Linderman, Charles Deveaux, etc.

The script originally set the camp in White Sands New Mexico. Of course that was unfeasible on our scale, and Aron understood that. But we took that as an instruction to find a beautiful remote location with a unique look. Initially, we had the location department scout desert locations – but anything that looked good enough was an overnight stay away, and that was also untenable.

We also knew that once we had our spot, we’d have to go and actually construct the majority of the buildings. Any building that our cast interacted with or passed in front of we built. Any building that was purely in the background, would be created by our CGI team at Stargate,

Even though Coyote Sands plays a much larger part of episode 23 than it did in episode 22, we had to scout and select the location right at the very beginning of the prep of episode 22 (with director Jeannot Swzarc.) Adam Kane was in New York directing an episode of KINGS. We called him and briefed him on the script and told him, that, unfortunately, we would be selecting and moving forward on his key location before he got back from New York. He understood. I tried to have his back, as it were. The most important element for a large exterior project like this is the light. For both beauty and speed of shooting I tried to select a spot that faced southward, where the sun would backlight the set the majority of the day. We picked a location called Polsa Rosa, which is in the Antelope Valley about 50 miles North of Los Angeles. This is a large property, which is well kept up and is used frequently for filming. We’ve shot there for Mexico before. The location is not as remote as it seems on film. But the spot we selected was about three miles off the main highway, and a couple of, miles down a single-lane dirt road.

We brought photographs of the spot back to the team, and everyone agreed it was beautiful and that it would be our “Coyote Sands” camp.

Ruth studied Manzanar, and other Japanese Internment camps, from the World War II era. Fortunately, military architecture, by its nature, tends to be simple and designed to be easily replicated. She took a topographical map and laid out her design for the camp. She also used blueprints and foam models to lay out the design of the individual cabins.

Her original plan was to build about 8 full exterior cabins on location, and a larger building to be “Building 26” (where young Chandra Suresh runs experiments on the specials.) Because there were scenes where the cast traveled from interior to exterior one of the cabins was to have a partially finished interior.

The cabins also had to be seen in the past, newly constructed, and in the present dilapidated. We knew we’d have to build a turnaround time for this within the body of the episode. (i.e. we would have to shoot the cabins dilapidated first, then leave back to stages for a few days while the art department turned the cabins back around. Ruth’s original plan was also to build two full interior cabins. One old and dilapidated, and one new.

But of course, each piece of construction also carries a price - as it would for you if you were, say, remodeling your kitchen. Every wall, floor, surface and stairway has to be designed, cut, hammered together, assembled, surfaced and then decorated. On stage these costs are high enough – but on a remote location the price really soars. Each section of the cabin’s was going to have to be pre-cut and pre-fabricated by our carpenters in Hollywood, and then transported to the remote location an hour away. On location, Ruth laid out the plot of the camp with string. Postholes were dug and support beams were dropped into the ground. Once the pre-fabbed lumber was delivered there it had to be, re-assembled. Then it would have to be painted and surfaced on location and, despite our lead-time– from the time Ruth got the financial go-ahead – to the time we were shooting was just a matter of about two weeks.

But then budget realities kicked in… HEROES and all NBC shows are under super-tight financial constraints right now. This much construction was off the charts financially. So meetings and meetings and meetings took place with re-designs and re-designs and re-designs…. Ultimately, the size of the cabins became scaled back by 30%...eight cabins became 5. Building 26 became a same-sized cabin, and it even came to pass that Adam Kane had to be very specific about what angles he would shoot on location. We made it so that – if we weren’t going to see the back or side of a cabin we didn’t build it. On stage - Two cabins on stage became one, which had to be re-dressed both ways. (Similar restrictions and cuts were made in action and visual effects by the way – originally there was much more use of powers.) But anyway – we finally had an acceptable construction budget.

Then came the rain, the snow and the mud:

Of course Los Angeles is famous for it’s good weather – but the poor construction crew, which was already working seven days a week to get this project up fell under a deluge of rain – the likes of which we hadn’t seen in Los Angeles in years. They were working ten-hour days in sleeting rain, and the ground under their feet became a swamp of mud. The rain went on for days and days, and then the weather shifted in the high desert, and the rain became snow!

After it was all over, I overheard one of our lead carpenters saying to one of his men, “After season three, Hell holds no fear for the HEROES construction crew!”

I also need to mention the work done by Alexa Nikolas who plays Young Angela and Laura Marano, who plays her sister, Alice.

As I mentioned before, the idea of double casting a large portion of our cast, while fun on the page, struck me as potentially very dangerous. When casting the pilot, there were weeks and weeks available to toss ideas around, audition and re-audition actors and have “chemistry reads.” Here, even though our casting department had a lot of lead-time to think about it - we only had a week or two of actual auditions. (Remember we were still making episode 20 and 21 and 22 during this time frame – which were not small episodes.)

Anyway, our casting directors, Natalie Hart, Jason La Padura and Keri Owens did a great job finding kids for us. To my surprise, there were actually multiple choices available for most roles.
But I think we especially lucked out with Alexa Nikolas

I was somewhat familiar with her work because my kids used to watch the show she was on ZOEY 101. She is just a bright, intelligent and energetic young woman. Her audition was complex and also emotionally deep. There are a number of traps available to the unwary actor in this role. Angela, at that age, was not as firm or resolved as she is today (in fact that journey is one that Alexa had to make throughout the episode.) Angela is, at the very least – complex. Many actors played her either, too tough, or too emotional or they just read the words without a real sense of character. Anyway, Alexa navigated these treacherous waters quite well.

Cristine Rose wasn’t involved in the casting. But she was quite interested in supporting Alexa. There were two rehearsals, which Cristine came to and observed. Alexa and Adam and Joe and Cristine and I all had a nice conversation before and after these rehearsals about the character and about the scenes. I know Cristine and Alexa spent some time together and Cristine was on set observing quite a bit. There may have been a little nudge here or a little nudge there from some of us – but truthfully Alexa seemed to have the role firmly grasped and she made the work look easy. My experience with her is similar to my experience with many actors I’ve worked with who began acting at very early ages… Even very complex and emotional work seems to come to them very naturally and easily and seemingly with little effort. I’m always amazed by this (rare) phenomenon. Hayden Panettiere is certainly like this, and so was Allison Mack, who I worked with as Chloe on SMALLVILLE.

Okay enough about all that – why are you really here? We all know… THE PICTURES:

ADAM KANE (WITH D.P. CHARLIE LIEBERMAN) LINES UP A SHOT

ADAM KANE LINES UP ANOTHER SHOT

RUTH AMMON AND A MODEL OF THE SET

THE PRODUCTION MEETING (ADAM KANE, EXEC PRODUCER DENNIS HAMMER AND MYSELF)ALL WONDER "HOW COULD THIS BE HAPPENING????

TWO SISTERS

TAKING PHOTOS IN THE HIGH DESERT

ANOTHER DAY ON SET

MILO AT THE DINER IN THE DESERT

ME AT THE DINER IN THE DESERT

ME AND MILO AT THE DINER IN THE DESERT

HAYDEN AT THE DINER IN THE DESERT

EVERYBODY (BUT ME) CHILLIN' AT THE DINER IN THE DESERT

HAYDEN AND ADRIAN TOSS A PIGSKIN BETWEEN TAKES

MILO VENTIMIGLIA BETWEEN TAKES

ADRIAN PASDAR ON SET

CRISTINE ROSE WAITS TO GO ON

VFX WHIZ ERIC GRENADIERE TAKES PHOTOS OF "THE SILVER BALL" (THIS OBJECT IS PHOTOGRAPHED BY THE VFX TEAM TO KNOW WHAT REFLECTIONS SHOULD OCCU R IN DIGITALLY CREATED OBJECTS!)

BEEMAN'S BLOG -SEASON 3 - EPISODE 22 - "TURN AND FACE THE STRANGE"

2009-04-04T14:26:00.000-07:00

BEEMAN’S BLOG
SEASON 3 – EPISODE 22
“TURN AND FACE THE STRANGE”
WARNING: TURN AROUND NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT TO FACE ANY STRANGE SPOILERS

Tonight’s episode was co-written by Rob Fresco and Mark Verheiden
Jeannot Szwarc directed the episode

I don’t know if it was an experiment of the writer’s room or just a way to get a script out twice as fast, but Rob Fresco and Mark Verhieden – who aren’t normally a team – were paired up on this one. As a casually observer the experiment seemed to turn out well… Their working relationship was casual and cordial and they had fun. For me it was interesting, because, in prep, some days we would have one and some days we would have the other. Each of them divided up the work by storyline… I might get the details wrong here – I’m working purely from memory, but I believe… Mark wrote the Suresh story, the Matt story and the Sylar/Danko scenes and the final scene Coyote Sands. Rob wrote the Hero/Ando story, the HRG/Sandra story, and the story of Danko’s girlfriend.

Jeannot, I know, is very proud of this episode. It’s his seventh or eighth episode for us… But I think it’s his favorite. I know he’s particularly pleased with the emotional dynamics in the story of HRG, Sylar and Sandra.

From my point of view, the post-production process was very simple on this one. The only real problem that the first cut was about eight minutes long. Key reductions were made in Suresh scenes – there was a second scene with Suresh and the landlord that was lifted out – and there was also considerably more dialogue between Matt and Danko’s girlfriend, where we learned a lot about her life story. Both of these scenes were lifted for time and to enhance the overall pace. There were a few other simple trims and re-cuts – but largely the internal strucure of this show remained intact from the first cut that Jeannot and editor Lois Blumenthal delivered.

Which reminds me - I think our cast did a stellar job, as always, but I think Greg Grundberg really stepped up on this one. His story was a hard one to play, because he is, essentially out for revenge – which tends to be unsympathetic. Greg’s stock in trade is his accessible “nice guy” quality. And here, in my opinion, he really dug down for some more tortured qualities, without losing his inherent sympathy. This is a tough assignment.

I also think that the Hiro and Ando story is hilarious. When I first watched the directors cut, in the editing room with editor Lois Blumenthal, it came to the scene where Hiro and Ando were making faces at Baby Matt to cheer him up – I busted a gut laughing… I couldn’t stop. The way the boys had played it and the way Lois had jump-cut their expressions made me laugh and laugh in a way that hurt my tummy a little. On set this moment was very free-form – Jeannot was behind the monitors calling out for the boys to switch up their faces every few moments – as this went on they started making goofier and goofier faces. Finally, James Kyson Lee made a certain face and Jeannot leaped out of his chair “that’s it!” I think, at this point, life imitated art a little – as James realized he was now stuck repeating this ridiculous expression over and over – and he began to regret it. It’s still pretty funny though.

Oh – and once more a tip of the hat to the twins that play Baby Matt – Brendon and Quinn Reed. These are the best film babies I’ve ever seen. They are only 9 months old and they cry on cue, laugh on cue, look where they’re supposed to and are extremely expressive in every way. The whole crew couldn’t get over how the really seemed to “act.” The babies got extremely attached to Masi, by the way. They seemed fascinated with him and would watch him wherever he went. At the end of the episode, when Greg Grundberg came in and Matt discovered he had a son – there was a small problem, because the babies weren’t as bonded with Greg. In one shot, Greg was holding Baby Matt and talking to him, and the baby was looking all around the set for Masi. Finally Jeanott asked Masi to stand, off-camera, directly behind Greg. So, in the last scenes when the baby appears to be staring lovingly at Matt, it’s really staring lovingly at Masi who’s just off-stage.

There’s a new phenomenon at play on set – which is that, because of Sylmar’s new morphing ability, lots of different actors are getting to play Sylar – and it’s fun to see their interpretation of it. One of my favorites is Željko Ivanek.

Željko is a very interesting actor who I’ve only started to figure out. He’s very quiet and serious, and at first I took him to be shy. At times we can have a very goofy, crazy set – particularly when myself, Milo, Adrian or Grundberg are around. Željko stood a little outside of the group on his first few episodes, which I guess is natural. But then two things started to happen. One, the character began to be written with more depth. At first he was just a very mono-directed “bad guy.” Beginning with episode #20 we began to understand him more and, I’m assuming, Željko did too. So I began to see the depth of his acting ability and his facility for nuance. Also, I assume, he began to get comfortable with our group. In the shaving scene with Greg Yaitanes I saw him begin to joke and kid around. Anyway, back to the point – when Željko played Sylar – I think he captured the quality of humor and enjoyment that Zach Quinto always brings to the part. See, Slyar LOVES messing with people and living an inch from being caught. The scene in the bathroom where Danko meets Sylar/Danko is a lot of fun. It is also admirable in that much of the first part of the scene is done in one shot. The camera pans Danko in and reveals the other Danko – then moves in as Danko approaches himself. This was obviously tricky because each half of the scene has to be shot separately. Also we don’t have time or money for “motion control” rigs – in which computerized gear-head can match camera pans and tilts and even push in’s between separate takes. So Željko had to do it himself and act to himself that wasn’t there and look to a spot in the air that isn’t there. It’s hard to do all that. And I think he really provides us with two separate characters and performances.

Ashley Crow also got to play Sylar, but her part was a little easier – because in the scene with HRG- Sylar is trying to act like Sandra. The fun transition comes outside as Ashley walks into the alley then pauses and shape-shifts into Sylar. Both Zach and Ashley were on set together that day and they helped each other through that scene.

Another fun scene is the one where Jack Coleman as HRG “pretends” to be Sylar to Danko. If the editing room we laughed about this because we decided that Jack was channeling Bryan Fuller for that part of the scene. I’m not sure if he did or not, and I hope Bryan doesn’t take offense – but that’s what we decided was happening in the cutting room – and it made me smile.

For some reason, more than other directors – the crazy HEROES scheduling process seems to bone poor Jeannot. Partly it’s his fault, because he is a very popular TV director and he’s very booked up on shows like GREYS ANATOMY, BONES, COLD CASE, SMALLVILLE, WITHOUT A TRACE, etc. etc… So his schedule is tight and our schedule is, at best, loose. In the case of this episode – one of the scenes Jeannot didn’t get to direct was the one where Matt is first re-introduced to his son, in the playground. Because this scene took place on a one-time-only location – it became kind of an orphan. We found the space at a school a few blocks away (I’d shot a scene there once before when Matt came to pick up Molly after school in season 2). The scene was to take about 4 hours to shoot and was scheduled, originally, to shoot side-by-side with the bus station scenes in episode #20… But rain delayed those scenes and they got re-distributed. Allan Arkush ended up directing this scene – it actually was on one of our last days of filming along with a bunch of inserts that were needed to wrap up the final episodes. We dropped the scene into the show at the very last second.

The two final scenes of the episode, which are really a prelude to episode #23 (where Angela gathers the family and HRG at a mysterious place), had to be delayed in order to be shot in tandem with episode #23. I’m sure I’ll talk about this extensively next week – but this episode takes place almost entirely at this concentration camp of sorts, called Coyote Sands. It is set partly in the past and partly in the present, and in that episode we will learn a lot about Angela and what drives her to be the way she is…. It was a massive construction project for Production designer Ruth Ammon and the art department, done on location about 40 miles outside of L.A. Anyway – because those scene had to be delayed for weeks until that episode was ready to shoot, I took on the chore of directing them.

Jeannot had given me one key instruction for the first scene – he had a shot in mind where we would be on a very, very long lens camera, and dust would reveal mysterious shapes – we would rack focus slowly and slowly reveal Angela and Peter arriving. I did that, and followed his basic plan for the scene (I might have added more "push-ins" than Jeannot would have - I just love push-ins and I can't help myself.) We got lucky with the light that day. It had just rained and snowed and there was a quality of light that is very uncommon in Los Angeles – crisp but soft. It felt more like a scene one would shoot in Montana or New Mexico than in L.A. I worked hard to chase the backlight and staged the scene to the late afternoon sun. There is a two-shot of Hayden and Milo, done late in the day just as the sun was about to drop behind the mountains. They are both front-lit by a very soft amber sunlight, as are the snow-covered hills behind them I had the special effects guys blow dust in the distance... Oh man, I think that is a beautiful shot.

I also did the night scene where they dig up skeletons. Jeannot had described to me a way of shooting the scene all in one shot. Now I love oner's... And I had been to the location several times when we first found it - but then hadn't been up there again since construction was complete. When I got there, I was trying to imagine the shot Jeannot was describing and I couldn't... Normally, when directing scenes for others, I try to be really loyal to their vision - but this time I just didn't see it. I had the tool of the techno-crane there and I knew the scene had to be mysterious and eerie and foreboding. Other than that I just winged it getting the shots that felt right to me at the time. Because I didn't really prep this episode, I might have missed the proper emotion between Claire and HRG as she sees him arrive. I was going with the mystery of it all and trying to create a foreboding vibe. In my memory, these two characters hadn't seen each other since episode #19, and there was still tension and unresolved feelings. Later, though, other producers felt that Claire should have been happier to see her father. I'm not sure - you decide.

Enough! Lots of pictures today:

PICTURES PICTURES PICTURES:

EVER-POPULAR MAKEUP GAL, WENDI ALISON (MANY OF THESE PIX ARE HERS) AND DIRECTOR JEANNOT SZCWARC

DIRECTOR JEANNOT SZCWARC, WRITER MARK VERHEIDEN AND D.P. NATE GOODMAN WATCH A REHEARSAL

ON SET REHEARSAL

BETWEEN TAKES ON SET

ON-SET OPERATOR PETER MERCURIO HAND-HOLDS THE CAMERA DURING A TAKE

JEANNOT DIRECTS THE CAST

ŽELJKO AND ZACH GET READY TO RUMBLE!

CHINESE MEDICINE INDICATES A CLEAR TONGUE EQUALS GOOD HEALTH - SENDHIL PASSES THE TEST!

POOR DEAD SYLAR

ASHLEY CROW CELEBRATES CRISTINE'S BIRTHDAY

SENDHIL FEELS JAUNTY IN HIS NEW CAP!

PARKMAN - THE BIG AND LITTLE VERSIONS

COMPOSERS WENDY AND LISA RUSH TO A MUSIC SPOTTING!

JACK COLEMAN AND ZACH QUINTO - THERE'S A LOT AT "STAKE" IN THIS SCENE

JACK 'N ASHLEY BETWEEN TAKES

HAYDEN AND MILO ON SET (A STILL THAT MATCHES ONE OF MY FAVORITE SHOTS FROM THE EPISODE!)

DENTAL HYGINE IN THE HIGH DESERT

CRISTINE ROSE - QUEEN OF ALL SHE SURVEYS

A.D. ROBERT SCOTT ENCOURAGES ME TO QUIT TAKING PICTURES AND GET BACK TO WORK

BEEMAN'S BLOG -SEASON 3 - EPISODE 21 - "INTO ASYLUM"

2009-03-29T14:37:00.000-07:00

BEEMAN’S BLOG
SEASON 3- EPISODE 21
“INTO ASYLUM”

WARNING: YOU COULD END UP IN AN ASYLUM IF YOU AREN’T PREPARED FOR THE SPOILESR CONTAINED HERIN!!!

Tonight’s episode was written by Joe Pokaski. It was directed by our long-time line producer, first time HEROES director, Jim Chory.

As I mentioned last week, production of this episode underwent a unique and somewhat stressful situation. Because Bryan Fuller’s script for last week’s episode #20 was, initially, too complex and expensive – it was determined by the powers that be that episode #20 would be delayed and that this episode - #21 – which was leaner and more easily produce-able - would be moved up.

This type of switch-up is not unprecedented, but like all TV shows, we have a very tight and very specific prep period on HEROES… About eight days total to find all the locations, set all the new cast, and decide how all the special effects, action and other aspects of the scenes are going to be produced. Now Episode #20 had already been being prepping for two days when this decision was made… This posed a problem for Joe Pokaski, because at the time this decision was made, there was a strong outline for this episode, but there was no script. So prep began on this episode with an outline only… Joe started to write as fast as he can, but if I remember correctly – they prepped on a Thursday and Friday with the outline only and Joe trying to pound out the script between meetings… Joe had to write the whole script over the first weekend, and we producers got it at about 1AM on Sunday night. Monday was day 5 of 8 days of prep.

I must commend Joe, because given these conditions; the first draft was in excellent shape. Everyone was pretty nervous behind the scenes, because, even though the outline was strong, there is not always a one-to-one correlation between outline and script. If the first draft didn’t sing – there would be almost no time to correct it.

I was struck by the emotional strength of the scenes. The structure has a greater simplicity than most of our stories. Essentially it is three two-character stories – Angela/Peter, Nathan/Claire and Sylar/Danko (with a little HRG thrown in) there were many more two-character pure-dialogue based scenes than we ever usually get. This can either work – if the writing is strong – or can fall flat and get boring if it’s not. Obviously, you will be your own judge of whether the episode works or not – but it worked for me.

Given the crazy-short prep, it was lucky Jim Chory was at the helm. Jim has been the line producer since the beginning of HEROES. I never mention him on the blog because he’s paranoid or something and always threatens to sue me if I even mention him…. But I told him, that since my blog is primarily about direction, that when he directs I can’t help but mention him…. Anyway, Jim is an organizational mastermind. He is the force behind the scenes figuring out how to put together the crazy schedules, balancing manpower and cast and even cast requests for time off and publicity, etc. etc…. So if ever there was someone to figure how to prep an episode in only three days – it was he.

Jim is not new to directing. He has directed episodes of AMERICAN DREAMS and THE DISTRICT, two shows he worked on before…. And he has an immense amount of experience prepping EVERY director on this show and those. But he hadn’t done a HEROES before. I think he thought the rest of us producers were nervous, but we really weren’t. We assumed he’d do a great job. Maybe he was nervous, wanting to do great, but I’m not sure. Anyway, I think Jim did a great job. He’s a maniac on set. He is completely organized and knows every shot and every angle he wants. He pushes like crazy and was getting an incredible number of setups a day. A setup is what we call every distinct shot. If you use two cameras at a time you can get two setups. If you use three you can get three. For myself, I tend to do longer shots and get less coverage (i.e. setups) in a day. A lot of days, using two cameras only a few times, I’ll get twenty-two to thirty setups a day. Allan Arkush likes having more choices of sizes and shots in the cutting room so he gets closer to forty. That’s a lot…. (Now remember on a typical day we will be doing three or four scenes that add up to six, or so, pages – so twenty to forty shots is all you get to tell all those stories) Anyway – Jim was getting some crazy number of setups a day – like seventy!!! It was insane. It was good, because when we got into the cutting room – if I ever said, something like, “Oh man, I wish we had a closeup of Nathan once he walks over to this side of the room” the editor (Scott Boyd) would say, “We got it!” No matter what angle I could think of Scott would say “We got it.”

Besides getting a bazillion and a half shots per day, Jim also really concentrated on performance and made a point of intensively directing the actors. This was a good idea and, in my opinion, resulted in some excellent scenes. My overall favorite storyline is between Sylar and Danko – there are a lot of really meaty scenes in that story and a lot of great twists and turns.

Interestingly, Tijuana, Mexico was filmed in Venice California – on many of the same streets used by Orson Wells when he filmed Venice for Tijuana in TOUCH OF EVIL. If you’ve never seen this movie do so – it is, for me, a seminal movie. In film school I studied and copied this movie’s style – and the long takes, the low angle wide-angle masters in which actors recompose themselves in shots are still techniques I frequently go to when staging scenes. Allan Arkush recently gave me as a present a new director's cut of this film recently released from Criterion. It is based on a 58 page memo Wells wrote upon seeing the studio re-cut of his film, the film has been restored to his original vision and has been released posthumously You should see it.

Now, while on the one hand, moving the production of this episode up a week resulted in stress during production – it also resulted in less stress in postproduction. Because last week’s episode had been delayed in shooting – it had to be rushed through post production… As I remember, we had only 9 days to lock the picture and the visual effects of Ali Larter Freezing, etc. had to be turned over very quickly. Here the opposite was the case, especially since there were substantially less visual effects than in most episodes. There was a nice long time to edit this one, and every producer who wanted to, really got to have their turn with the film.

There were also a number of scenes omitted or drastically reduced. There was a subplot in which Noah Bennet took Micah under his wing (I’ve included a couple of photos of these scenes)… There was a follow up fight in Tijuana, where Claire and Nathan got assaulted by the college students they’d been drinking with. This was funny, because, in order to defeat them, drunken Nathan flew. There was also substantially more to the church scenes with Angela and Peter, including a scene where Peter flew to avoid the agents. These were all great, but the first editors cut was over ten minutes too long and so – in the end – they had to go.

OKAY ONTO “LOS PICTUROS”:

ADRIAN GIVES HAYDEN WHAT'S WHAT IN MEXICO

ALI LARTER IN “HOT HOT HEAT”

CHURCH

FLIGHT

HAYDEN AND ADRIAN IN “MEXICO”

HIRO AND BABY MATT (from last week but TOO cute!!!)

HIRO AND BABY MATT 2

HRG AND MICAH IN AN OMITTED SCENE

CREW WORKS ON OMITTED MICAH SCENE (they didn't know it was omitted at the time or they might have objected)

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY NATE GOOODMAN A PICTURE OF DIGNITY

HRG CONFESSES TO LIKING THIS EPISODE

JIM CHORY DIRECTS THE CAST

MOTHER ANGELA

MAS CACAHUATE’S POR FAVOR

BEEMAN'S BLOG: SEASON 3, EPISODE 20 - "COLD SNAP"

2009-03-18T13:38:00.001-07:00

SEASON 3 - EPISODE 20
"COLD SNAP"

WARNING SEVERE SPOILER CONDITIONS EXIST HERIN - PROCEED WITH CAUTION

Tonight’s episode was written by Bryan Fuller, and marks his return to HEROES for the first time since season one. Greg Yaitanes directed it. It is the third episode this season he directed.

This episode was an unusual one experientially for me. It appears as episode #3.20 in our ongoing storyline – but it was actually shot in the twenty-first slot. Let me explain. At first this episode was going to be shot, on schedule, right after episode #19. I, of course, was in the middle of directing episode #19 – which was filmed right until our Christmas hiatus in mid-December. This one (as you can probably imagine from seeing it) was expensive and complex and hard to wrangle down… And so, because of these things, it was decided, mid-stream, to move up the shooting order of the more-manageable episode #21 and to move back this one. Therefore this episode was shot in the 21st episode slot – which bought it more time to be financially reconceived. This also meant, happily for me, that I got to be more involved in it. Whenever I am directing it is very hard to have too much to do with the episode that directly follows me. (That’s why we tend to schedule Allan Arkush into the slots that follow mine.)

Anyway – the prep of this episode was delayed until the New Year, and I was glad – because, I thought it was a very beautiful and well-realized script, and I wanted to be part of it. Tracy’s story and particularly the titular “cold snap” scene were, obviously, very exciting – and I knew right away that it was the kind of scene that Mr. Yaitanes always rips it up on… But the storyline that really jumped off the page for me, on first reading, was the one between Matt and Daphne, which culminates in Daphne’s realization off her death - in Paris. There was something so sad and haunting about that sequence. It also was a very unique and clever way to kill a character off. The other story I was quite fond of was Angela's. I like seeing her shown at her wits end and out of lifelines.

These icy parking garage and the flight through Paris are clearly very big scenes (and I think the audience will want for nothing, scope-wise, on this one)... but the art-versus commerce process on this one was particularly tough. There were other scenes of large scope that had to be scaled down.

Specifically, the Hiro-Ando frozen-time scene was more elaborate. It originally took place in an interior and an exterior of Janice's house, then travelled through LA and ended up in a book store/coffee shop. In the end, the scenes at Janice Parkman’s house were confined to interiors only and the action as scaled back a bit. The coffee shop/book story journey became a bus station we built in our back lot. Nevertheless, these scenes, I think, are very satisfying and funny. Ando in the wheelbarrow – to my mind – is hilarious and the twins playing Baby Matt Parkman are genius! More on that later…

I think the action with Peter and Angela and the agents was originally more complex too – but the details of this escape me now.

We had to scale back the action that was filmed as well. Besides the visual effects, the sequence in the parking garage was expensive, because the products used and the manpower needed by our FX-Meister Gary Damico to realize this scene, were very expensive. The products used were a vacuum-formed plastic that had to be designed and molded to the cars and the walls of the parking garage – a flocking product (the same thing that is used on your Christmas Trees) was then added everywhere. Finally, Ice was laid on the ground wherever actors walked. I went into the garage the day before filming began - there were ten guys in that parking garage using heat guns and glue guns for a full day – molding ice into cars and the garage and the walls.

The scene was additionally complex because it had to be divided into two distinct parts – first the water part, when Micah lets loose the sprinklers. Then our crew had to stop filming – allowing a full day to build in the ice and then we returned two days later to the garage to complete the icy half of the sequence.

It was a complicated sequence conceptually, but this is exactly the kind of thing Greg Yaitanes is good at. He laid out and thoroughly storyboarded the entire scene and we walked the set with FX crew art department and producers numerous times – literally laying out exactly what would and wouldn’t be seen – and building ice only exactly where it was needed.

Greg had the whole scene well in mind and particularly the shot that appears to move continuously around the garage ramping from slo-mo to sped-up motion. In my mind, it all turned out quite well.

PUSHING DASIES fans may suspect that Bryan Fuller’s relationship with Swoosie Kurtz got her into this role – and we’re glad it did. She was a true delight to work with. There was one day of rehearsal between she and Christine Rose. The two actors really seemed to enjoy working together. The dialogue in this scene is so simple and so wonderful that it really facilitated the performers relationship, on and off camera, to evolve quickly. It was fun for me to get a glimpse into Angela’s “real” life before The Company took it over. And her dignity in desperation in was great to see.

Back to those babies - Using babies on set is always a highly problematic thing in the first place. By law, their hours are very limited. I think a baby of that age can only be on set for a total of four hours – and can only work in front of the camera for one hour total. This is why productions always want to use twins. We saw three sets of twins for this project. We chose the little guys we did, partly because they were small for their age – but also because they had actually done a fair bit of work already. Believe it or not, these 10-month-old kids have already done recurring work on a soap opera and a number of commercials… Well, we really lucked out! First of all, both of them had the best temperaments. They never cried. They never looked at the camera – and, miraculously, they did all kinds of behavioral things exactly as scripted! This never happens! Usually, when filming babies – one can count on nothing except for the need to get a lot of gooey-cute close ups whenever the kids happen to be in a good mood.

Watch the scene where Hiro rolls Ando into the bus station. There’s a long continuous shot when Hiro takes a bottle from a frozen woman, he hands it to the baby who takes it from him and immediately drinks it… ON CUE! It’s a small thing – and probably goes unnoticed because it seems so-obviously what’s supposed to happen – but behind the monitors a cheer went up when Greg Y yelled, “cut!” OMG WHAT A BABY!!!

Last thing – Production Designer Ruth Ammon and the art department deserve special commendations this week for two complex projects that were done quickly and quite well. Turning sets into new sets. The first is that they took our old Deveaux rooftop set and transformed it into Daphne’s dreamy Parisian rooftop. First of all, the old set had been taken down and hadbeen “folded and held,” as we say. Secondly, we had to find the space on stage to even fit it. The space the rooftop set had formerly occupied was now taken up with Building 26. One of the more mundane, but very important jobs, Ruth and her crew have to do is to figure out the geometric math of how to put sets up in our large, but limited stage space. This involves a math skills. Ruth uses a big blueprint of the stage and overlays 2-D models of the sets to make sure they fit. Often she will have to make changes to the edges and shapes of a set to make sure they work in the space.

Artistically, there were a number of conversions that Ruth made, to hide the façade of the old rooftop. But the most impressive was the steel structure and light arrangement that we first find Daphne sitting on.

This art department conversion was good, but it’s not completely undetectable. The more impressive job was taking the Bennet house and converting into Janice Parkman’s apartment. Bottom line – we were out of stage space and the writers knew, by now, that we would not be returning to the Bennet house for the rest of the season. Tim came up with the idea of converting the space. But Ruth and Bryan both strongly wanted the design of Janice’s to be a mid-century modern. I’m not sure how Ruth did it, because I know she had not-much money and no time. I am sure no-one would look at Janice Parkman’s and say – “Oh yeah…. That’s just the Bennet house turned over.”

A last note: All eyes were dewy as we said goodbye to Brea Grant. She has been great – and is a favorite of the cast and crew. I think she brought a lot to her role of speedster, both in terms of humor, pathos and raw spunky energy. I will miss her and I’m sure I’m not alone.

OK – I’ve got a lot of pictures this week fans…. SO HERE WE GO!

BEGIND-THE-SCENES (OR EVEN IN-THE-SCENES) PICTURES COMMENCE NOW:

BRYAN FULLER AND GREG YAITANES PRESENT DAVID H. LAWRENCE

BRYAN FULLER MONKEYS AROUND WITH THE SCRIPT

YAITANES PREPARES TO OPERATE ON THE SCENE

ICY ALI #1

ICY ALI #2

BEEMAN SAYS "I SHOULDA BROUGHT MY SNUGGY"

BEHIND THE SCENES #1

BEHIND THE SCENES #2

BREA IN PARIS (I.E. A REDRESS OF OUR DEVEAUX ROOFTOP SET

BRYAN FULLER WELCOMES THE RETURN OF LISA LACKEY

BRYAN FULLER, ALI LARTER AND GREG YAITANES - HANGIN' IN THE ICE CAVE

DP CHARLIE LEIBERMAN LEST US KNOW WHAT'S WHAT

FLY MOM FLY UP UP TO THE SKY

GREG G AND BREA IN PARIS

GREG Y SUPPORTS HIS ACTORS

GREG YAITANES PLAYS "PINCH SOME HEADS" WHILE ALI AND THE CREW LOOK ON

OUR CAMERA OPERATOR PETER MERCURIO - OPERATOR IS THE SEXIEST JOB ON SET!

I SPY GREG YAITANES AND FX MASTER GARY DAMICO

MASI AND ME

JAMES KYSON LEE STRIKES A POSE

MASI PLAYS WITH THE WILDLIFE

PUPPET MASTER UNDER A HEAT LAMP

SENDHIL AND SHOT-UP-BREA

TIM KRIING LED THE APPLAUSE ON BREA GRANT'S LAST DAY

ARKUSH AND I BID OUR 'LIL SPEEDSTER TO GO NOT GENTLY INTO THAT DARK NIGHT!

ACTRESS MARA LaFONTAINE AND I AND THE CREEPY RUBBER "STAND IN" BABY

BEEMAN’S BLOG - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 19

2009-03-09T11:10:00.000-07:00

"SHADES OF GRAY"

WARNING – SPOILERS ARE CONTAINED WITHIN!

Tonight’s episode was written by Oliver Grigsby and was directed by me, your humble blogger – Greg Beeman

Okay – so, before we get started with the regular blog – please check out go to the following link:

http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/novels/novels_library.shtml

This week, besides directing, I wrote and illustrated the weekly HEROES COMIC which appears online at NBC.com after our episode airs tonight on the West Coast - so about 1am for you East Coasters. Here’s a couple of example pages, it's Chapter 128 and titled "Puppet With No Strings."

(p.s. You can see the pages bigger online)

Right before Christmas, when I was just starting to prep the episode, the guys in charge of the comic book world came to me and asked if I would write and draw one of the 6 page comics that appear online every week. I guess they had read on my blog how my lifelong dream since childhood was to be a comic book artist. But, other than a few sketches I’ve whipped out and handed to Tim Sale to guide him for Isaac’s paintings – and maybe a handful of storyboards – no one here has ever really seen my art. I don’t know why they assumed I could really draw. In fact, this assignment made me more nervous than anything I’ve done in a long time. Sure, directing multi-million dollar episodes week in and week out may seem daunting to some. But I’ve been doing that for a long time. Drawing a comic is something I’ve never really done!

But, I try to never say “no” to challenges that come my way. So I said “YES!” The only stipulation I was given was to try to create a story that connected to the episode I was directing. Other than that there were no instructions. Low supervision and low expectation - Now that’s my kind of job!

I decided to tell the story of what happened to Eric Doyle, the puppet master, between the last time we saw him in episode 13 (laying semi-conscious on the floor of Primatech) and here at the end of episode 18/top of episode 19 (when he appears in Claire’s house and asks for help.)

I also wanted to include Rachel Mills (played by the actress Taylor Cole) who had appeared in the webisodes and now is appearing in the episodes. In the last webisode Angela Petrelli had encouraged her to do good with her powers… and so I decided to show her trying to do that.

Truthfully, writing the comic was fast. I thought about it and slept on it for a few days and whipped it out in a few hours. But drawing it?!?! Holy crap… that was slow. I did most of it over my 2 week Christmas break. First I did the pencils and then I did the inks. I worked on it for hours a day. And though quite enjoyable, it was slow!

I never had any formal art training – but between ages 4 and 18 I did nothing but draw for hours and hours and hours a day. As a teen I mostly copied comic book artists. My principle influence was an artist named Barry Windsor Smith – who drew CONAN #1 - #24. This was the comic that inspired me more than anything else in my life. In fact, I would say, CONAN #1-#24 and STAR WARS (and later THE MATRIX) have been by far the biggest creative influences on my life. I also avidly studied and copied artist Jack Kirby, who, when I first started buying comics, was doing THE NEW GODS, THE DEMON and KAMANDI at DC. Kirby’s comics were the first ones I ever bought back-issues on. I bought as many of the old FANTASTIC FOUR and THOR series as I could afford and I copied his perspective and forms and figures. Barry Smith’s work was complex and dense and Kirby’s were simple and strong – and I consciously wanted to balance both. Other artists I studied and copied were Bernie Wrightson, Neal Adams, Jim Steranko, and, to a lesser degree, Mike Ploog and Paul Gulacy. I’ve never met any of these men but they have all been massive influences for me.

But, after I started film school at USC at age 18, I really slowed down drawing. When I first graduated school, I worked as a storyboard artist for a couple of years – but by the time I was 23 or 24 I was working steadily as a director and I hardly ever draw after that.

So, as I started drawing this comic I really hadn’t drawn this much in 20 years. I thought I could do it, but I wasn’t sure. As I drew, though, all the skills and knowledge I’d developed so long ago (as well as all the bad habits) seemed to come right back. It was very interesting. Also, my ability to focus, was still there. As a kid I frequently remember starting a drawing and then, as I was finishing it, I’d look up and realize that 5 or 6 hours had gone by without my noticing. That happened again here.

Also, before I finish, I would like to give a shout-out to Edgar Delgado, who did the coloring on the book. I never met him - but I think he did an awesome job and greatly improved my drawings!

I guess you guys will judge if I did OK. Some panels I’m incredibly happy with and some panels I feel I just couldn’t get right. I also feel I tried to cram too much story and too many panels on a page and if I had to do it again (which I hope I do!) I will thin it out. But, overall I feel – at least – I did not embarrass myself.

Again – HERE’S THE LINK:

(REMEMBER IT'S CHAPTER 128!!!)

http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/novels/novels_library.shtml

Now, on to the episode:

Oliver Grigsby is a young man who works on HEROES as the Writers Assistant. This is his first, produced, hour of TV. He is twenty-seven years old. Some day I guess I should write an “Oliver Grigsby, Living The Dream” blog. I could go over his life story about how a young man, through hard work and generally good personality can get his first break on a show like this…. But, since Ollie ended up with me directing (and I always have a lot to say on the blog when I direct) and on an otherwise busy week, he ended up out of luck on this one.

I was, basically, happy with the script from the beginning. The Sylar/Mr. Gray story was strong and has changed very little since the first draft. From my point of view, it was all about landing the right actor for the role and then it would take care of itself. The story between Danko and Nathan also felt good to me. I knew it would take directorial effort to energize the story visually – i.e. I needed to add energy to the Nathan/Danko story so that it didn’t fall flat – but the story was fundamentally strong. The third story Claire/Doyle-the-Puppetmaster, although showing awesome promise, was the furthest from where it needed to be is the one that changed the most throughout prep. Don’t get me wrong - I was very excited about the storyline – I love Doyle’s character and I really enjoy working with David Lawrence, the actor who plays him. I also like the emotional complexities of Claire trying to find a way to fight the good fight, but without really knowing how to. But, in the first draft, though, the story was kind of complex. The story had Claire take Doyle to the comic store with her and he hid there. Agents came and Claire helped Doyle escape. There was also a scene where Doyle used his power against one of the agents, which made Claire doubt his intentions towards redemption. I knew this version was too big to accomplish within our schedule. Then there were studio/network notes that modified this story for awhile – it became much more a Sandra/Claire story for a couple of drafts. But to me, as much as I love Sandra, it got the story off-topic. Finally, between myself and Tim Kring and Oliver and some of the other writers – we re-focused the story back onto Claire saving Doyle – but in a simpler way… Which is what you’re seeing tonight.

Stylistically, I chose to be very aggressive visually with everything to do with Nathan/Matt/Danko’s story. I tried to “Michael Bay” it up… Which to me means, swoop the camera around, go handheld, get as many cool angles with as much camera movement as possible – and then cut it up like crazy in the editing room – all in an effort to add energy and tension. You decide if it works. I think it does. I also think Adrian and Zeljko have great chemistry. (Hats off to Ali Larter too, who only had two scenes - but I like them both a lot!)

I was simpler with Claire’s story, using simple camera movement and big close-ups in the first scene with Doyle and with the comic book store – I went hand held and big crane moves with the scene of Claire talking to HRG and saving Doyle from the agents – but still calmer than the Nathan story.

With Mr. Gray and Sylar I was simplest of all. I just tried to compose nice shots and let the acting and the story carry the weight. Also, in this part of the show – fate intervened. We were out of stage space to build sets. Our line producer suggested that maybe we could build Mr. Gray’s cabin as an exterior set in our parking lot. On paper, this sounded like a great idea. I knew we couldn’t really go to a trailer out in the woods – and I’d planned to do one visual effect shot – in which, when Sylar’s truck pulls up to the cabin – we would add a matte painting of mountains and woods in the background. In that shot, when we filmed it, there are actually palm trees and Los Angeles buildings in the background – but the guys at Stargate did a great job of making it look like the woods.

But… on the two days we filmed those scenes… It poured rain! Not only had we built the set outside... We'd built it out of aluminum siding and tarpaulin. Also the parking lot was on the lowest part of our stages. That meant that we worked for two solid days with the noise of a pounding rain and with a river of water two inches deep, running underfoot almost the whole time. Also, since we were, effectively, outdoors in downtown L.A., whenever the rain wasn’t pounding, there were ice cream trucks, and helicopters and even, once, a major police bust about two blocks away – and all for an INTERIOR scene!!! Aaaaghhh!!!

I’ve learned over the years that it’s futile to fight against the inevitable. So I bore down and kept a positive attitude. The most important thing was to try to keep the actors focused and not get too negative. The whole time we were shooting they both knew they’d have to re-record much of their dialogue to replace the unusable sound of rain and sirens and helicopters and gunshots….

This episode provided me with another great opportunity. I got to work with my good friend John Glover again. As you probably know, John played Lionel Luthor on SMALLVILLE, and I worked with him with great gusto for five years on that show. I’d been a fan of John’s for years before that. He had done a movie called 52 PICK-UP directed by John Frankenheimer. If you haven’t seen it you should. He played the baddest bad guy I had ever seen. That performance made a strong impression on me. Then, years later, we ended up living in the same neighborhood and I used to see him at the supermarket from time to time. I always wanted to go up and tell him how much I admired him – but I felt too dorky and shy and so I never did.

So when I finally got to work with him on SMALLVILLE I was thrilled. I told him the story about the supermarket and he says I should have said something…. But I’m not sure. My admiration for him only grew as I became familiar with his work ethic and his attention to detail. John does a lot of Broadway and he has the kind of discipline and respect for the craft (as a craft) that seems to only exist in theatre actors. At first, on SMALLVILLE, I was actually afraid to give him any performance direction because I thought he was so great. But as I did I realized he loves and craves direction. He loves to be pushed and challenged and so we developed a great working relationship which, over the years, became a friendship.

It was fun doing scenes with he and Zach, because, to me, they are cut from the same cloth. Both are incredibly serious and professional about their craft, but also easygoing and nice to be around. They also, both, have an innate understanding of how to "go for it." They can each play moments "bigger than life" and, through sheer charisma, get away with it where lesser actors would fail embarrassingly. It was a treat to have them both on the same stage at the same time!

A couple of years later I did try the supermarket thing. I don’t know how I knew what Bryan Fuller looked liked, but I did, and I knew his work from DEAD LIKE ME and WONDER FALLS. So I saw Bryan Fuller in my neighborhood supermarket and I got up my guts and told him how much I admired him. This was years before we ended up working together on HEROES. Of course, at the time, I had both my kids with me and they were little and they were hanging on me and screaming – and Bryan looked at me like I was a weirdo stalker – so I just slunk off. I’m not sure about the whole supermarket fandom thing?!

Okay – today there’s loads and loads of PICTURES!!!!!

YOUR DIRECTOR/BLOGGER/ARTIST

SYLAR AND LIONEL...EH, I MEAN MR. GRAY

"WOW! STAR TREK'S GONNA MAKE HOW MANY MILLIONS?????"

ADRIAN AND GREG G. PUMP EACH OTHER UP BEFORE FILMING

ADRIAN'S MESSAGE

ANGELA IN NYC (AKA OUR BACK LOT)

BABY MATT IS CUTE - BUT, PERHAPS, STINKY

DAVID IS THE SUBJECT OF MY COMIC AT http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/novels/novels_library.shtml
EPISODE #128
(I HAD TO STUDY MANY PICTURES OF HIM TO DRAW HIM WELL)

GREG GRUNBERG READY TO BLOW!

HEY! NO PAPARAZZI

HOW MANY CREW MEMBERS DOES IT TAKE TO FILM ONE MATRIARCH IN A LIMO???

I'M NOBODY'S PUPPET!

INTERROGATION IS A HOT AND SWEATY BUSINESS

LATE NIGHTS GO BETTER WITH A REFRESHING COFFEE BEVERAGE

LIL LADY WITH A BIG GUN

MASI AND MARA LaFONTAINE (THE BABYSITTER)

MASI AT HOME (BELIEVE IT OR NOT THIS IS A RE-DRESS OF THE BENNET HOUSE)

PAPARAZZI FAVORITE - MS. PANETTIERE

TAYLOR COLE GETS THE DROP ON DAVID. H. LAWRENCE

THE LADIES OF HAIR AND MAKEUP

ZACH AND HIS PET TURKEY

BEEMAN’S BLOG - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 18

2009-03-02T13:16:00.000-08:00

"EXPOSED"

Tonight’s episode was written by Adam Armus and Kay Foster Adam's Credits Kay's Credits

It was directed by veteran Eric Laneuville Eric's Credits

Hello trusted fans... I'm sorry for the short post tonight. I'm directing the season finale and that's taking up quite a bit of time... Also, because Allan Arkush has been on set directing the second-to-last episode, I've been in post-production a little more than usual. I love this - but it's taken time away from lengthy blogs... Don't worry I'll find more time next week for episode 19 which I also directed.

Meanwhile I've tried to present an assortment of fun photos - some from set I took - but many from tonight's blog are by Wendi Avignone - our super-talented makeup artist. You may recognize some from the super-bowl spot.

Until next week.....

PICTURES OF THE FESTIVITIES:

COACH AND OWNER

'LIL SYLAR

ALI IN THE WILDERNESS

ATTENDING TO ADRIAN

ERIC LANEUVILLE ON SET

FIRST TEAM

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN....MR. GRUNBERG

MR. LANEUVILLE

ON SET

PUPPET MASTER VISITS CLAIRE

THE BEAUTY SANS THE BEAST

TWO COOL GUYS

BEEMAN'S BLOG - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 17

2009-02-23T10:32:00.000-08:00

HEROES: “COLD WARS”

WARNING: IT’LL BE A COLD WAR INSIDE YOUR HEART IF YOU IGNORE THE FACT THAT SPOILERS ARE CONTAINED WITHIN

Tonight’s episode was written by Chris Zatta, Joe Pokaski and Aron Eli Coleite. It was directed by Seith Mann – a newcomer to HEROES. Seith's Credits

Every year, one of the challenges is to try to book directors in to direct the various episodes of HEROES. We know, starting out, that Allan Arkush and I will end up doing 8 to 10 of the 25 episodes. Beyond that, we hope to fill up another 10 or 12 with people who have already successfully done several episodes for us. (i.e. Jeannot Szwarc, Greg Yaitanes, Dan Attias, Sergio Mimica-Gezzan.) But – as a TV producer, one has to be constantly discovering and trying out new people all the time. New directors come to our attention in a number of ways. Sometimes it’s as simple as – Allan Arkush or Dennis Hammer or one of the writers or I will be home watching TV and a particularly good episode of some show will come on – and we’ll keep a mental note of who directed it. I also make a point of talking to my other friends who direct or produce and ask them who they like. NBC and Universal also are always recommending people to us who have done well on other shows. There are also a large number of agencies in Los Angeles who represent directors – and agents are always calling and pitching their clients to us. As soon as a season is done, a lot of my time gets devoted to watching DVDs of episodes to familiarize myself with the many directors out there.

But, the booking-directors-for-episodic-TV game becomes a big jigsaw puzzle, and is one of my greatest frustrations in the pre-season. See, we have our 25 episodes, and we have the dates that we plan to make them on. All of the other directors are booking numerous other shows, each with their own schedules. To make matters more complicated, our schedule will usually shift one or two times, a week here or a week there. Also, all the other shows will shift a week or two as well. So, here I am with the list of directors we want to book. All the agents at the various agencies around town are trying to make their clients dates work so that their clients can direct as many episodes as possible within the annual TV season – and it becomes a big rugby scrum of trying to push and pull dates around.

Phenomenally – it’s also difficult to predict who will work out on our show (or any show.) HEROES is complex to direct – technically, creatively, schedule-wise, as well as interpersonally. Some people are excellent directors, but their personality and process may just not fit in with ours. Literally, every show out there is very different – both in terms of what is on screen and with what goes on behind the scenes. People who have worked out very well for me on one show, might not translate well to the new one.

I was a journeyman director for many years, going from show to show – and it’s a peculiar discipline. You, essentially, have to go into somebody else’s sandbox and play with their toys. Obviously, one critical aspect is having the ability to figure out what the creative needs of the show are to make a good episode. But that alone is not enough – one must also be able to adapt one’s style and personality to suit the quirks of the behind-the-scenes personalities. On some shows there is very dominant and sometimes difficult actor, or group of actors. Sometimes there is a very strong willed show runner/creator. Sometimes it is the opposite – perhaps the creator is vague or even passive aggressive. Sometimes there is more than one person in charge – which is fine, unless their personalities and goals are in conflict. Sometimes the actors are inexperienced and need strong guidance. Sometimes the paramount goal is to make a great episode damn the costs (but no one will ever directly say that.) Sometimes it’s more important to be on budget and one’s creative contributions are fine – as long as they don’t get in the way of hitting the number (But no one will ever directly say that either.) It’s a funny business that requires a certain chameleon-like quality to succeed.

All of which is a long way round the bend to get to the fact, that Seith Mann, who is a relatively new director (at this point he has 18 produced credits), really did a nice job of fitting into our system. His name came to us from NBC who had had a good experience with him on FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. Allan and I watched two of his episodes– FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS and JERICHO. I was impressed with them, because not only were they both very good examples of those shows – they each had a distinctively different visual style and directorial approach – meaning that Seith could adapt to the necessary conditions of the show. This is more rare than it might seem. Many times you hire someone, knowing and accepting that, while they may be very good at performance direction and that they’ll get the basic dramatic beats and put the camera where it needs to be to record the drama – they may not be able to adapt to your visual style. Others might be very visual, but they cannot direct the cast adequately or they may just not have a fundamental awareness of “what’s important” – I.e., where the camera needs to be to capture the moment. Of course I also made a few phone calls to producers who had worked with Seith before – he checked out very well and so he came aboard!

We actually brought Seith in to interview in June of last year. At this point, in season 3, we’d learned all the pitfalls others had fallen into. We were pretty blunt about the fact that HEROES is a tough and challenging show and not for the faint of heart. We producers are pretty up front and self-acknowledging about our own quirks and requirements. To boil it down, simplistically, between Tim and Dennis Hammer’s demand for performance and emotion, my demand for visual style, Allan Arkush’s desire to have adequate coverage to create options in the cutting room, NBC’s demand to stay on budget and the amount of action and visual effects plus the large cast who (while really a very good bunch) have their own needs and idiosyncrasies – it is not an easy show. Seith did not run out of the room – so we decided to book him.

But then came the schedule rugby scrum – we wanted to put him in earlier in the season – but he was booked up on ENTOURAGE and a couple of other shows. Our schedules couldn’t come into synchronicity until this episode - #17. So here it is.

Seith came in facing another big challenge. Back in June we were shooting as many days as needed to complete episodes. But by December a much stricter budget mandate had come down from NBC/Universal. Ever since episode #15 we had to do our episodes in ten days and hit a specific budget number – no “if “ “ands” or “buts.” This script – which had been divided up in the writer’s room between three of our best scribes - was designed to be lean and mean… By design, a large portion of the story took place within one hotel room as Matt, Suresh and Peter grill Noah Bennett (aka HRG.) The rest took place in Building 26, a storage locker and Danko’s apartment (all of which are on our sound stages.) The only days out on location where two at the motel complex and one for the scenes on the park bench between Angela Petrelli and HRG and also the scene in Suresh’s cab which were all shot in downtown L.A. Now - this is all well and good in that it facilitates making our schedule – but for a director it creates a new challenge – How does one keep to the high standards of performance and visual design established by HEROES in the new, more interior, paradigm?

I was working on Seith really hard. I kept proposing that he focus on the long lens, hand held look we had been using in episodes 14 and 16. To me this is a way to go fast and still keep a visual design – plus it had worked for us recently. Seith was always polite – but I could, kind of, tell he was blowing me off throughout prep. In the end I was glad. I never mind someone resisting what I suggest – as long as they end up being right. In the end I realize that Seith had really studied HEROES on a long-term level and was more interested in doing the wide angle/low angle/moving camera look we’d been doing from mid-way through season one than anything developed more recently.

It wasn’t clear to me until I saw the first cut that Seith really had a strong visual design and emotional plan for the episode. In my opinion, despite its containment – it has a strong sense of rising tension. When he could; he really moved the camera well. I was especially impressed with the shot he uses to open the story - where the camera (on a techno crane) glides around the motel – really laying out the geography of the place (which was necessary to establish early as it becomes important for the audience to understand this later.) Even the scenes in the hotel room had enough variety of angles and intensity of performance to ratchet them up successfully as the show goes on. There was also (the critical) attention to performance. There are a number of great scenes and specifically, there is a really strong scene between Jack Coleman and Zeljko Ivanek in Danko’s apartment. The cast really liked Seith and made a point of coming to me and the other producers throughout the episode to say so.

Two interesting facts: When the locations department took us to the motel (which is way up in the San Fernando valley) I liked it right away. It had a very strong, yet contained layout. I said out loud, “It works great. But I feel like I’ve seen this place before.” The location managers kind of shrugged and looked confused. They didn’t mention that it’s THE EXACT SAME motel where MY NAME IS EARL shoots. I guess they know that filmmakers are notorious for not wanting to shoot at places that have already been shot a lot – especially on the same network! But the place was perfect for our needs and so – despite the deception – what the heck!

Last interesting fact: The original version of this script was a much more elaborate story in which – instead of just reviewing HRG’s memories – Matt was inducing hallucinations into his mind. Some of the scenes where similar – such as HRG and Sandra enjoying marital bliss – but then it got weird moving into eerie forests and Isaac’s loft, where Sylar revealed himself as HRG’s dark alter ego. Truthfully it was a very exciting ride. But two things caused it two mutate to what it is now – first it would, clearly, have been more expensive and difficult to produce. Secondly, the network was afraid that it would be overly confusing what with the worlds-within-worlds and ever shifting characters. It was potentially confusing, I admit, but it was also quite dynamic and original. Maybe there’s a world where we could try a story like that again sometime.

All right, loyal fans – I am spent from typing. I am also currently prepping to direct our season finale and must do, at least some, homework tonight. So – until next week ---

THE PICTURES:

SEITH MANN DIRECTS ON SET

THREE TOUGH GUYS DISCUSS TOUGHNESS

THREE MORE TOUGH GUYS TOUGHING OUT A COLD COLD NIGHT IN DECEMBER

ME ON SET

A STEDI-CAM ENTERS THE FRAY

JACK AND ADRIAN

LIFE BEHIND THE MONITOR

SEITH MANN MANS THE MONITOR

LIFE ON SET

SEITH WONDERS “WHAT KIND OF CAMERA IS THAT?” (JACK COMTEMPLATES HIS NEXT MOVE.)

SENDHIL – READY FOR ACTION!

SENDHIL AND HIS STUNT MAN PREP FOR PAIN

BEEMAN’S BLOG - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 16

2009-02-17T10:55:00.000-08:00

“BUILDING 26”

WARNING: SPOILERS EXIST HERIN!

First of all an apology for getting this blog up late. Presidents’ day and some family stuff prevented it coming on-line on time.

Tonight’s episode was written by Rob Fresco and was directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan. Mr. Fresco has been on the HEROES staff all year. This is his second episode. His first was VILLAINS. Rob Fresco's credits This is Sergio’s second full episode for us. He also directed this season’s ONE OF US, ONE OF THEM, as well as what was to be last season’s episode 12, which was begun but never completed and never aired due to the writer’s strike. Sergio Mimica-Gezzan's credits

This marks the third installment in the FUGITIVES arc. As we began prep with Sergio, we familiarized him with some of the stylistic additions we’ve emphasized since episode 14. We are using much more of the handheld, voyeuristic camera style. This is not the style of every storyline, but I pointed out to him, it seemed logical that it follows anything to do with the story of The Hunters and the eponymous BUILDING 26. We also talked at length about the ongoing emotional status of our characters and how, in this volume, the pressure is always on our characters. The emotions are always on simmer and occasionally go to boil!

I think Sergio melded into this style quite well. He was quite familiar with it, having done BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and other feature work with similar looks. The most complex scene he had, and also the most discussed, was the shootout at the diner. We found a little place in San Fernando. It had a naturally interesting layout that afforded numerous advantageous camera angles. In the story, from the time that the Hunters enter and shoot the place up, to the time Sylar escapes, Sergio was only allotted about 8 hours to film the whole thing. These 8 hours were spread out over two days because we were also filming at the time of year when there’s very little daylight and, on both days we were there, when it got dark we had to move to another location (like the inside of the Hunters van.) I think this sequence is a nice compact action scene. Sergio also brought a new color to the sandbox (to mix metaphors) by using a 90-degree shutter on the cameras in the scene after Sylar shatters through the windows and he and Luke run to the car. This technique gives a crisp – non-blurry – look to every frame. I figure he borrowed the idea from when he was an assistant director in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.

Sylar and Luke is a storyline we’re pursuing for several episodes. Luke is played by Dan Byrd. Dan came in and gave a good read, but when he was brought back to go through lines with Zach - the rapport between the two was really noticeable. They played off each other and responded so well, Dan was the kid for the part. Interestingly, Dan is probably recognized from the sitcom ALIENS IN AMERICA – in which he played someone the complete opposite of his serial killer wanna-be in HEROES. Like Hayden, Dan grew up in the business and can bounce between these two extremes. Writers continue to enjoy exploring this dynamic of Sylar and, essentially a young-wanna-be-Sylar. Zach liked it too. On set there was an easy affability between the two. As always, Sergio worked on pace and performance – but the scenes were well written and seemed to flow very easily between the two. Zach Quinto has always been a lovely and very focused guy on set. But my personal observation was that he seemed even more relaxed on this one and that he enjoyed the scene he played with Dan.

One of the other jobs on this one was to design and build the actual “Building 26.” One of the problems we’ve had on an ongoing basis on HEROES is that, unlike most every other TV show in the world, we don’t really have “standing sets.” A standing set is simply a set that’s always standing on stage that you can shoot for every episode. Yes, we have Suresh’s apartment and The Bennet House, and we still have Isaac’s Loft up… But none of these are sets that are easy to write to every week. And, with the “FUGITIVES” concept – of our heroes on the run, this becomes even harder. So Tim Kring’s concept was to create, at least, one standing set that can work every week to the end of the season. As a film maker you have no idea how valuable this is – to have at least a few scenes that you don’t have to scout and design gives one a bit of breathing room in the hectic prep schedule.

But what was this building to be? A heated debate went on between the various creative forces behind the scenes. The concept of Building 26 ultimately became that it should be a very anonymous space that this organization moved into quickly and could move out of quickly. Almost like a boiler room where shady phone solicitations could be made from. Arguments were made that the Production design should not even include windows – Building 26 should be purposefully bland. Ruth Ammon (our production designer) and I have joked with each other and called this the “no aesthetic-aesthetic.” Truthfully, because I am a person who approaches things from a visual standpoint, this design goes against my nature. While I absolutely agreed with the concept behind the building – and new that a high tech h.q. would be wrong – in my experience, in order to create dynamic compositions, one needs the elements of angles, and foreground, and light (amongst numerous other things.) I really worried that the squared off corners, low set of desks squared off in the center of the room, and lack of light sources – would hinder our ongoing look. But that was the way it went. Ruth combated this by creating windowed offices at the perimeters of the set, which we could shoot through, and she brought in lots of practical light sources on the desks and mixed and matched them in a way that I think was interesting. A concession was made, because it fit the concept, that we could have tubes of computer wiring and electrical wiring coming down from the ceiling, being twist-tied together as the lines dispersed to the various desks. This provided, at least some, natural foreground.

Sergio and I walked the set along with, director of photography, Nate Goodman – and we discussed where the most dynamic angles could be achieved. Ultimately hand held, long lenses, moving foreground into every frame became the key. We also discussed the idea of having people moving back and forth in front of the lens – creating “wipes.” This is a technique that adds energy, especially when the wipes are used as cut points between shots.

One assignment that was fun to do revolved around the Claire story. The ongoing idea is that Claire hates that she’s been given a “free pass” from the Hunters – and that she wants to do something to help the other specials who are in danger. In this episode, for the first time, and with the help of the mysterious “Rebel,” Claire takes action. One standing set we did have was a comic book store left over from episodes 10 and 11, and the writers came up with the idea of bringing Claire to that to continue her adventures. But, along the way, there were a number of exterior locations – meant to be in the beautiful (but fictitious) Costa Verde California – home of the Bennet family. I really like whenever we get to film California for California on HEROES. We scouted a number of beach communities and landed on Playa del Rey. I really liked this place because it has a funky-freshness that we don’t get to use much. I really impressed upon Sergio – “see the palm trees – see the sand - see the ocean!” We film in Los Angeles, but we are always pretending it’s Washington, or New York or Tokyo. Our first assistant director, Sam Mahony, also seemed to like this selection – as it is where he lives and it meant that he could roll out of bed and go to work that day.

Again, Sergio had a large amount of work to do in a short amount of time. Everything set in Costa Verde (excluding the comic store interiors) had to be done in a day. It meant we had to pick locations that were all (literally) within a block of each other – but still had that California look that I kept pestering him about. This work was all done on the first day of filming, Sergio was very organized and I was proud of him for getting through it so well.

I really like Justin Baldoni who played Alex – the Comic Book Guy. Justin Baldoni's credits He is a big, strong, handsome, guy – but he has a good sense of timing and comedy. Believe it or not, because I have kids, I was familiar with his work on the Disney Channel’s SUITE LIFE OF ZACH AND CODY, where he played a very goofy role. The idea to put glasses on him was the finishing touch - it created a Clark Kent quality to the character. Again, Hayden seemed to have a good time playing her scenes with Justin…. And I am, personally, quite happy with her work and the work we did in this storyline.

There’s so much more I’d like to talk about – Adrian Pasdar and Zeljko Ivanek’s evolving relationship, Ali Larter and the heat lamp sequence – (She was a trooper on this one by the way – the shackles we put her in weighed about 30 pounds.) How we did the Freezing guy effect. Etc. Etc. But my time runs short and the pictures call:

THE PICTURES::

BREA AND JKL - IS HER CHARACTER DEAD???

MASI AND AMRAPALI AMBEGAOKAR ON SET

MS. HAYDEN PANETTIERE

NATHAN KEEPIN' COOL IN THE HOT ROOM

SERGIO DIRECTS THE CAST

SERGIO, TIM KRING AND D.P. NATE GOODMAN

TIM IN INDIA (ON OUR BACK LOT)

TONIGHT'S DIRECTOR SERGIO MIMICA-GEZZAN

ZACH AND DAN BYRD

ZACH BEHAVES BIZARRLY ON SET

MSSRS. QUINTO, GOODMAN AND MIMICA-GEZZAN

ZACH QUINTO SAYS "DON'T HATE ME BECAUSE I'M BEAUTIFUL"

BEEMAN'S BLOG - SEASON THREE - EPISODE 15

2009-02-09T10:12:00.000-08:00

“TRUST AND BLOOD”

WARNING: THERE IS A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER OF SPOILERS BEING CONTAINED WITHIN…

Hello and welcome back HEROES-fans. Tonight we bring you another chapter in the fourth volume of the ongoing saga called HEROES. Tonight’s episode was written by Mark Verheiden and was directed by one of our executive producers and frequent directors Allan Arkush.

Mark Verheiden is new to HEROES but probably not to you. He and I worked together on the first three seasons of SMALLVILLE. He is an all-around nice guy and a pleasure to work with.

One of the things I enjoy doing with this blog is using it to introduce you to some aspects of the filmmaking process that you may be unfamiliar with. A critical but often little-thought-about step in the process is that of color timing. Color timing (and I don’t know why it’s called “timing”) is the process in which, after the film has been edited and the visual effects are completed, the show is rectified in terms of its color and overall look. In color timing (also called color correction) every shot in the episode is adjusted and unified so that it (a) goes with all the other shots around it and (b) looks just right.

Every one of us executive producer types overlaps each other in many job categories. For instance Dennis Hammer, besides working hard on prepping the show, the story and the budget, loves to deal with advertising, promotion and all of those kinds of things. Allan Arkush, besides his many other duties, loves to deal with postproduction and especially music. And I love all things to do with the visual design of the show – so I spend a lot of my time with the production designer the directors of photography, and I enjoy overseeing the color timing of each episode.

The color timer on the series is named Scott Ostrowsky. He has been aboard since the pilot. Tonight I interview him.

GREG BEEMAN: Good afternoon Scott and thanks for doing this interview. So – what is your job on HEROES?

SCOTT OSTROWSKY: I balance the color. Basically I take the film that has been shot by the DP’s (Director of Photography) and the director and I add a look. I add or subtract color, contrast, lights and darks and so on. Visually I work with the DP’s to achieve the look of the film they are after and I match the look of each shot and scene from shot-to-shot and from episode to episode.

GB: So, if I was to observe you at work. What would that look like?

SO: I’m in a big, darkly lit room, usually with a CRT (cathode ray tube i.e. traditional TV) and maybe a projection screen TV and plasma screen TV. Basically, I’m watching all of the various ways that the show will be delivered to the viewers at home. All of these are set up to very specific specs. And using these screens, I go through a G.U.I. (or ‘goo-ey”) which is a computer screen which I use to navigate through every shot in each episode one-by-one. I use a keyboard, a mouse, a WACOM palate and pen and I have a large panel with track balls, which I use to control the different blacks, mid-ranges, gammas and gains and colors. I also have various vector scopes and rgb (red-green-blue) scopes, which tell me what all the different colors and hues are doing from an electronic standpoint at any moment. It’s a very encompassing system and I use it all to make the show look balanced and beautiful.

GB: How long does it take to complete an episode?

SO: I do it in stages. I make a preliminary pass on my own, and then another pass when I go through it with the director of photography and then usually one with the producer. Lori Motyer, the postproduction producer supervises it all. I do a final touch-up pass once all the visual effects and so on are in. It takes a week to ten days to complete. About 16 hours of work.

GB: Then how does the show end up?

SO: It is on a hard drive the whole time I’m working on it. Then, once I’m finished it’s copied onto a Sony HD Cam SR tape in 1080 dp. That’s where the show lives when it’s all finished.

GB: So how did you get into this line of work?

SO: In college I was studying philosophy believe it or not. I thought I was going to end up a lawyer. But I also played music and always had. I was paying my way through college playing guitar with some very well known musicians, like Lou Rawls. I was attending Los Angeles Community College and someone I knew, who knew I was into music, suggested I see a film being scored. That was amazing. Just great. And through that I made a contact and I ended up working as an editor at Select-TV on an old COMEX machine. This was in 1986. Anyway, I was editing and producing international pieces for that company and it was the very beginning of electronic color timing. Before that everything was color timed on film using a very limited dye system. The only control was red, green, blue, yellow, magenta and cyan and dark and light. The colorist at the station was a kid who knew almost as little as I did. So I worked with him and I had a natural affinity for it. I got a job doing that and for awhile I was working a day shift as an editor and a night shift doing color. One thing led to another and here I am today.

GB: So what are some of the kinds of things you can do on the system you work on?

SO: You can key on to certain colors boost them or diminish them. You can also create windows around areas within the frame, which can travel - for instance the faces – and make them brighter or darker or more colorful or less colorful. We can push the colors very strongly. Or dimish the colors all the way to black and white. We can add grain. We can bloom or overexpose the whites. Pretty much we can do anything we want to with the image as long as the original film negative has been properly exposed so that we have the information on it that we need.

GB: What are all the colors and hues you have control over?

SO: Well, first of all black, white - which is called gain - and greys, which is called gamma. But within each of these I have control over the dark blacks, the mid-range blacks and the high blacks – and the same for white and grey.

With color I have the main colors, red, green, blue, yellow, magenta and cyan. But I can also combine and control every combination of these colors.

I can also control “hue”, which is a way of describing the degree to which a color sits on any object within the frame. I can diminish the hue and make the color very faint or I can increase it and make it very strong. I can make a color “deep,” “bright” or “devalued.”

I can also control the luminance of every color – which means how bright or dim that color is.

Then, by using windows and power windows (which can move throughout the shot) I can isolate certain sections of the shot and alter these colors and hues any way I want within a certain section of the shot only.

GB: And, since you are working on the show shot by shot, how many shots or edits are there to deal with in a given episode of HEROES?

SO: To give you a place of comparison, when I was on CROSSING JORDAN – it would average six hundred to seven hundred cuts perepisode. HEROES, in season one had about nine hundred shots on average. Last week’s episode, episode 14, had one thousand and fifty eight shots – a new record!

GB: So, besides volume, what makes HEROES different than most shows?

SO: First of all, HEROES has a different writing style. It’s a story-based series where everything ties in from episode #1 right up to the present. It’s also a very visual show. You, the producers, and also the directors and most specifically the directors of photography shoot the show in a unique and specific way in order to tell the ongoing stories. It has a lot of different looks. For instance, in the beginning New York is always cool, Texas is always gold, California is always warm and colorful, in this weeks episode there is a device in which Nathan is on the phone that frames the whole story. The goal of that one part was to make it edgy and uncomfortable, in those scenes we pulled out color, added grain, added contrast and made the whites and highlights bloom and halite.

HEROES is also global it takes place in India and Japan and Haiti and Russia and each of those places has a look. Next week there is a big sequence in India with very bright colors in the sets and wardrobe. There the goal was to maximize and saturate the color but still to not oversaturate the flesh-tones of the faces.

Most shows on TV have one look which they want continuity with. On HEROES the look is always changing and evolving. But there are also ongoing stories that have to have a continuity of look – some of which go back to the first episode.

This is why it’s so much fun to work on.

GB: It seems that some aspects of your job are creative and some are technical. I guess that’s how it is with my job too, or anyone’s job on the show.

SO: You’re right. The creative is to establish a look. The technical is to keep that look consistent from shot to shot and show-to-show. First I watch the scene and see how you or Allan or whoever the director of the week was shot it. Then I study how the DP’s lit it. Sometimes they give me notes of what they are going for. If not, I try to interpret what is right emotionally. If it’s a pre-established look I’ll go back to when it was established. If not I’ll start right then and there. I always start with the widest shot, or the master and establish the key look. Then I go into all the shots and make them match that.

GB: Now we have two different director of photography’s on our show. We need two to just keep up with the schedule. But does that create any challenges for you?

SO: Challenges? No. I love collaborating with both Nate and Charlie. They both do great work for the show and both are working toward the established “look” of the show. But, yes they do expose their film differently – so I have to adjust to each of their styles.

What can be challenging is, if within one episode say Nate shot most of it, but Charlie ends up shooting a day or two of second unit – then their styles get intermixed and that is an adjustment I have to make.

GB: One catchphrase I’ve come up with is that Nate lights the spaces and Charlie lights the faces. It seems to me that Charlie really concentrates on the faces of the actors and he lets the sets fall off around them. Everything draws the eye to the key figure in the frame. Nate comes from a much more naturalistic point of view. He creates, in his mind, a logical pattern for how the light would enter and play within a space and he lets the sectors move through that space, letting the light play as it would upon them.

SO: That sounds about right. Charlie does a lot of mood lighting. He lights with certain kinds of fill lights and certain kinds of key lights. Nate does something different. He has a lot of foreground light. But they both have great styles and in the end it all ends up being pretty much the same as the HEROES look. I try to make it work within the established look and balance it all out.

GB: And how did you come to the HEROES team after all?

SO: Really through Lori Motyer (the Producer who’s in charge of post production). She and I had worked on a couple of pilots together and a feature called CROCODILE DUNDEE IN LOS ANGELES, she brought me aboard CROSSING JORDAN and I’ve been with that team, ever since.

GB: Well I can tell that you really enjoy your work.

SO: I do. I really do.

GB: Thanks for the interview. Any last words?

SO: No. Just that I do really enjoy the show and working with Lori and you and the DP’s and the whole team. Everyone is great. It is really creative and I feel I have the freedom to get creative and to really be part of HEROES. And I really do feel like I’m part of it. So thank you.

That’s it for our interview with Scott. And now….

LE PICTURES:

ON SET WITH MR. ARKUSH AND MR VERHEIDEN

OUR DIGNIFIED DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY NATE GOODMAN

MSSRS ARKUSH AND PASDAR

ALLAN ARKUSH HAS A PASSION FOR NOODLES

FAN FAVORITE MARK VERHEIDEN

OUR COLOR TIMER SCOTT OSTROWSKY

SCOTT AT WORK

SCOTT PUTS A WINDOW AROUND HAYDEN

HAYDEN AND JACK – WAITING TO GO IN

BREA GRANT TALES A PICTURE OF ME TAKING A PICTURE OF HER (IT’S PROBABLY ON HER BLOG SOMEWHERE?)

NATE GOODMAN IN TOYKYO

ZACH Q ON SET

ALI AND I

ALLAN AND SCRIPT SUPERVISOR VAL NORMAN

HAYDEN TO ZELJKO – WHAT’S A TEN LETTER WORD FOR BAD-ASS ASSASSIN?

BEEMAN’S BLOG - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 14

2009-02-02T12:40:00.000-08:00

“A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER”

WELCOME BACK AFTER A LONG HIATUS – AND REMEMBER SPOILERS ARE CONTAINED WITHIN

Tonight’s episode was written by Tim Kring and was directed by Greg Yaitanes.

Hello loyal fans and welcome back after 6 long weeks off the air. As we’ve discussed before – the network plans these mid-winter breaks long in advance. First of all, less people watch TV in December and January, and the break is necessary in order to allow us to catch up. Every HEROES episode takes more or less 10 working days to produce, plus a minimum of 4 to 6 weeks to post-produce. Some shows, like “24” and “LOST” have chosen to delay airing until after January in order to run all of their episodes in sequence. We (and NBC) have chosen to premiere in the traditional late-September spot – run thirteen episodes in a row (which, believe me, is hard enough) – and then have a second (almost) continuous run of 12 more until late-April.

Tim Kring has chosen to deal with these inevitable mid-season interruptions by dividing the show up into separate Volumes. Episodes 1 thru 13 of this season were, as we know, entitled “VILLIANS” and this volume will be called “FUGITIVES.” As you may remember, the final scene of episode 13, technically, began this volume. In it, Nathan went to the President of the USA and told him about the “Specials” and asked for a special force, he felt was needed, in order to round them up.

Tim was looking to re-direct the show in several ways with this new story arc. First, the goal was to re-set our HEROES in a way that is more human and earthbound. He sets the episode 6 weeks into the future since the last time we saw them. Each of them has returned to a version of their "normal" life - even though we may not know how they got there. This mystery is part of the fun. Tim also wanted to separate them from each other. He wanted to diminish their powers, especially as regards our two most powerful characters Hiro and Peter. And he then wanted to rip them away from their newfound normalcy and put them into continuous jeopardy by having them pursued and hunted by a new threat which uses tactics that are more aggressive and less forgiving than those imposed by the former “Company.”

Greg Yaitanes, now doing his fourth episode for us, was tapped to direct this one. (Interestingly, Allan Arkush was originally scheduled to do episode 14 and Yaitanes was going to do ep 15. But Yaitanes had complications with his very booked-up schedule. Allan, manfully, took one for the team, and swapped episodes with Greg.)

Tim very much wanted to find a new/additional look for this episode to signify the new direction he was taking the show in. There were many meetings about this – but the obvious choice was to use a combination of hand held camera, long lenses, obscured foregrounds, jump cuts and no stage-line (more about stage line in a moment.) This kind of look has been used in movies like THE BOURNE IDENTITY and FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. It is also something we had been doing from the beginning, but always as a spice and not as the main course. This look suits this storyline because it creates a visceral, documentary-like vibe. The jump cuts and line crosses create tension. And the long lenses through lots of foreground create a sense of voyeurism and observation. All of these elements really suited this story and this look will be used extensively (but not exclusively) in this volume.

Now, gentle readers, on to "stage-line." The stage-line is a rather complex concept that I'll be able to describe here only in the briefest way. (If you're really interested buy any basic book on directing for film or TV.) When filming a scene there is an imaginary line created between any two actors in that scene. Imagine a scene viewed in overhead, say, between Ali Larter and Adrian Pasdar. The stage-line connects them down the center of their bodies. If, in the "master angle," (or widest shot) Adrian is looking left to Ali and Ali is looking right to Adrian - then, as the director proceeds with the scene - he or she must make sure that EVERY shot has Ali looking right and Adrian looking left. If in, say, a closeup this line is crossed then Ali might end up looking to the right of frame and Adrian would also end up looking to the right. This would create, in the viewer, an undesired dis-orientation for a few moments. It would "feel" wrong. Now the stage-line concept gets much more complex than this, because there are stage lines between every character in a scene and as the characters move the stage lines move. Trust me, the stage line concept is an ABC of film-making. I have been on many sets that have ground to a stop as the director, the script supervisor and the director of photography discuss whether a stage-line mistake has been made. If a director gets way behind in his or her schedule - one of the easiest tricks is to lock the actors down, and keep the stage lines simple. The math just adds up to less shots overall.

Anyway - in the style chosen for this episode - the stage line is PURPOSEFULLY crossed all the time. The characters are always jumping the line and looking the wrong direction - and the designed intention of this is to create tension in the viewer. As with all rules, one needs to understand the proper implementation of the rule before one can feel secure breaking it. And it needs to be broken aggressively - not piecemeal. I think Yaitanes and Nate Goodman did an excellent job in this regard..

The mis-conception is that this style is faster to shoot or easier to design. It IS actually faster and easier to do a sloppy version of this style. But to do it right takes coordination and planning - because this style also requires a lot more shots and angles than usual. The key is that, even though more shots and cuts are required – we still have to make sure to be in the right place emotionally at the right time. So strategic close-ups have to be filmed also. And – of course – the beautiful lighting that HEROES has become known for also can’t be sacrificed.

Greg and (our Director of Photography) Nate Goodman really talked through the shots they wanted to get in detail. Two cameras were used almost all the time. And on the shooting days, Greg maintained a discipline of doing only one or two takes of almost every angle. For him, it was more important to “move on” and get another shot than to make perfect the one shot he was working on at the time. Of course, during the course of the scene, he was crafting and perfecting performance and pace as always – but he was also cognizant that this style is largely dependant on discovering the structure of the scenes in the cutting room.

Speaking of editors, Lois Blumenthal, who recently moved up from assistant editor, is cutting her second episode with this one. I think she did a great job, and this was reinforced by the voluminous e-mails that flew around between all of us producers after seeing the “directors cut” (which is the first cut we see) including one’s that said “great” “fantastic” and “All we have to do is get it to time and ‘ship it!!’”)

Of course, one of the biggest projects in the episode was the sequence where all the heroes are captured and loaded onto a military transport plane, which later has a hole blown open in it resulting in all manner of chaos.

There are two parts to this sequence. The exterior sequence, where the plane takes off, and the interior of the plane where all the action takes place. We used two types of planes for this sequence. A C-123 for the exterior plane taking off on location, and a C-130 for the cockpit work we shot here in our parking lot. Now obtaining and shooting a whole type C-123 plane is easier said than done. Our line producer, Jim Chory, looked far and wide and found one finally from a private vendor based out of Arizona.

At first we were going to film the exterior scenes at the Ontario airport. This location was looked at by our scouts and thoroughly scouted by Greg Yaitanes and our crew several times. Then, as things tend to go, a couple of days before filming, that airport fell out. Ontario is very busy and getting the clearance to land this big beast of a military plane and control the runway for an entire day and night became impossible. With just two days to go before filming had to commence we were without a location for our major set piece. There was a scramble and we found a second possibility. This was the Chino Hills Airport in Chino, California. This was a much smaller place and also much farther away. It was over a two-hour drive for our cast and crew. It took an entire day of prep and an all nighter to film the scenes and this was all done on Halloween!! There must have been some Halloween celebrations going on in the area, because, if you look carefully in the background of one shot (one where the hooded specials are being led out of the hanger to the plane) you can see fireworks. Now Chino is a fine town, and I don’t disparage it… But, besides working all night on All Hallows Eve, the cast in crew was very happy to be breathing in the deep smell of cow dung, which permeated the air all night. It was a good time!

The interior of the plane was also a major set. The first path we went down was to consider shooting the interior of the plane practically. But this became untenable for many reasons. One, it meant renting the expensive plane for several more days. Two, in order to light it meant we would have had to crane it into a controllable warehouse space. Three, the walls would have all been solid and the space is only ten feet wide – so it would have been almost impossible to get any angles over our characters. Four – there was no way, in the real plane, to do the sequence where the plane wall freezes and breaks out…

So… we decide to build it. But this had it’s own set of problems for our production designer Ruth Ammon and her art department team. First of all an airplane is a set that involves numerous compound curves. These are easier to deal with when constructing out of metal (as a real plane would)… But for speed and cost we had to build out of wood. The design of this involved a lot of design complications as well as carpentry complications. Also, from a painting point of view, we had to paint wood to look like metal – which is trickier than it sounds. Walls had to be designed to be “wild” (meaning they come in and out easily) and we had to design one wall to be frozen and broken so that it could swap out easily with the pre-frozen wall. AND… The whole thing had to be built in seven days.

One note – the cockpit of the plane (where Claire discovers HRG as the co-pilot) was not built. It was a C-130 that we rented and set up in our parking lot. These shots were done first, over a week before the rest of the plane sequence.

This is, in my humble opinion, a really fun sequence. It is an unusual sequence for us in that it is quite lengthy with almost all of our principle characters in one place. It is an elaborate sequence that required a lot of design and planning all at our usual very fast pace. It was also a sequence that seemed to be a lot of fun for our cast. They don’t usually all get to work together. Usually they are all off on their own stories, overlapping each other’s story arcs just once in a while. But for a whole night, they all got to hang out. Our cast really does like each other, and it was a very fun and happy vibe on set that day.

One last thing – I’d like to tip my hat to Tim Gilbert, our stunt coordinator – who, along with his team, recently won the SAG award for Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Television Series. Tim has been with us since season two and he and his team do a great job. They make the many complex things we do look easy. This sequence is a good example of why.

OK, that’s it for now. On to the pictures. Thank you fans for sticking with us. And I will speak to you again NEXT WEEK!!!!!

THE PICTURES:

GREG Y ON SET

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY NATE GOODMAN

THE GANGS ALL HERE

STRAPPIN’ IN

ALI LARTER PREPARES FOR LIFTOFF

GREG GRUNBERG FEARS MOTION SICKNESS

HAYDEN AND GREG G BETWEEN TAKES

MASI AND FIRST A.D. ROBERT SCOTT

MILO HELPS OUT HIS FELLLOW PASSENGERS

SENDHIL ON SET

GREG YAITANES STUDIES THE MONITOR

MASI ON SET

ASSITANT DIRECTOR ROBERT SCOTT SUGGEST BETTER USE OF MY TIME THEN STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SET TAKING PICTURES

BEEMAN’S BLOG - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 13

2008-12-15T08:56:00.000-08:00

“DUAL”

WARNING: THIS BLOG IS SPOIL-TASTIC
IF SPOILERS CAUSE YOU RASHES, BOILS OR OTHER MALADYS PLEASE AVOID THIS BLOG

This, the thirteenth episode of the third book of the third season airing on the nineteenth day in the twelfth month of the year two-thousand aught eight was written by Jeph Loeb and directed by your humble blogger – me.

It is also the final episode of the Volume that’s been entitled “VILLAINS.” After tonight HEROES goes off the air for several weeks, and when we come back we begin a new Volume with a new direction and (in some ways) a different style entitled “FUGITIVES.”

I want to thank Charlie Lieberman the Director of Photography, who recently was accepted to the ASC. It was actually my first time doing a whole episode with Charlie. I think the lighting is beautiful throughout. I want to thank Don Aron, the editor. It was also, actually, my first time doing an episode with him. He is a great editor and he put together the pieces of film I shot better than I could have imagined. And, of course, I want to thank the writer - Jeph Loeb.

I won’t lie to you. This was a tough episode for me. I think it is because I was tired. If you remember, I had dropped in to direct episode #10 at the last minute. I had always been scheduled to do #13, and I recognized it’s importance because it’s the last episode before a long run off the air. But circumstances being what they are, #10 ended up with many delayed days of shooting and partial days of shooting – so that I was prepping #13 while still shooting the last few days of #10. Now I can’t impress upon you how exhausting doing an episode of HEROES is. Regular TV shows are hard enough – but HEROES is extra hard. Between prep and shoot it’s like a 20-day sprint with no time to think, sleep or slow down. So to do two in a row – well, I was tired when I started this one.

For some reason, I was inconsolable throughout production of this episode. This has happened to me from time to time, but not for a long while. I wasn’t happy with any scene or any part of it during the whole process. I made poor Jeph Loeb go over the script with me again and again talking through every part of every scene – trying to make things work for me. To his credit, Jeph was very patient and accommodating. We worked through all my issues slowly, bit-by-bit.

We finished shooting this one in late October. It wasn’t until I saw the editor’s first cut of the show, about a week after that, that I started getting OK with the episode. Donn Aron is a great editor and he finds ways into the material that are exciting and fresh. We worked hard throughout post and kept smoothing things out and re-arranging things.

We locked picture eventually, and life went on. Late last week (and by now, I was in the middle of directing episode #19) I finally saw the whole show put together with all the music, visual effects and color corrections. By then I had put it out of my mind and moved on to other things. When I saw it last week I was really happy. I feel it moves like a locomotive and is very exciting with many excellent scenes. I also am pleased with my work. The angles and shots and pacing and performance direction all had achieved what I was trying to do all those angst-ridden weeks ago. Of course you will decide for yourself what you think of this one – but, for myself, I am OK with the work I’ve done.

Right off the bat is a scene I’m pleased with. It’s the opening scene with Peter and Nathan over the body of their dead father. This was a very well written scene that was simple, and quietly explored the relationship between the brothers... I began with a shot straight down on Arthur Petrelli. This was where I planned to put the main title. In it I had the camera move across the blood onto a close-up of dead Arthur. I love the set which (Production Designer) Ruth Ammon built for Arthur’s office. It has this amazing ceiling which facilitates either putting “X”s or Christian crosses in the frame. Between an “X” and a Christian Cross you have two major metaphoric images that will help enhance any number of shots. The second shot of the scene is an incredibly low angle of Peter holding the gun that killed his father. And behind Peter I framed in an “X” because I figured Peter has double-crossed his family and is at a cross-roads he can’t return from. This was shot on a prism-lens, which is a lens that shoots into a mirror for straight-up angles. I started the shot on the gun and widened to reveal Peter. The next shot was also shot on a prism, but we had to raise up Robert Forster on boxes to line it up right. I kept focus forward on Arthur’s body as the door opened in the background and Nathan enters. I let the focus stay off of Adrian for an uncomfortably long time, even through his first line “Peter, what have you done?” Towards the middle of the scene is a moment when Nathan approaches Peter, wanting the gun. At that moment I shifted the style from the placid still shots to a hand-held camera. This amps up the tension in that moment.

I like the way both actors played this scene. Milo chose to play a pent up guilt. In my mind his character was experiencing a whirlwind of conflicting emotions because, even though his intention had been to go there to kill his father, Sylar had actually killed him - and so he had a sense of failure. He also felt guilt and regret over his father’s death and the regrets of the relationship overall. But, mostly, I think he was numb because so much had happened so fast. Nathan on the other hand is calm and in control. He had planned to betray Arthur anyway and his death would be an asset. Nathan, I believe, is mostly trying to not agitate Peter, who controls the gun – but also is attempting to re-establish the dominance he always maintains over his little brother.

I'm also pleased with Stargates visual effects on this one. Nathan and Peter flying away from Primatech, all of Meredith's flaming hands, Ando's new power and Daphne's supersonic superspeed all turned out as well or better than I'd hoped. I think the shot of Claire and HRG running down the hall away from the fireball is a lot of fun. For this shot there are three elements. Parts one and two were done in the Primatech hallway. We lit the hall and rehearsed Jack and Hayden running towards camera. Then we filmed the empty hall. Then we filmed Jack and Hayden running in front of a big green screen that we set up in the hall. A couple of weeks later we shot the final element - which was a big giant fireball roaring at camera. Fire has a unique shape and movement pattern and to do it right, we had to create a giant plywood box built in the correct proportions to the hallway. This box was about 40 feet long and ten feet wide. It was painted black on the inside and there were framing pieces built on the interior to match the doorframes that are in the hall. We then got a camera that ran at 200 frames a second (super slow motion!) The box was built at an angle of about 20 degrees, because fire naturally rises - which means the camera was on an elevated platform 15 or 20 feet in the air. We then rolled camera and the effects crew blasted a huge fireball right at the lens. The result was a fireball that roiled right at lens taking the shape of the hall and wrapping around the doorframes. All three of these elements were then composited together in post production. The final result, I think... is cool!

But I was also trying to mix up the style as much as possible. And there were days I needed to go fast, to balance out the days with elaborate production needs. One example is the scene where Ando first gets his new power. This scene is done in two simple shots. The first is a tight close up where Ando gets a cup of water thrown in his face. The rest of the scene, which is about a minute long, is all done in one long take. The shot was done on a wide lens and the camera tracked back as Ando worked his way forward. James Kyson Lee (known as "JKL" to his friends) Brea and Greg Grunberg all had to "play the frame," i.e. work their performances in to the existing shot with no cuts or coverage to help smooth things out. I was particularly happy with one moment when I had Greg and Brea lean way in to see if he had powers and then I played JKL looking left and right at them in annoyance and then moving away to practice his power in more "privacy." See if you like it!

In general, as we all know, Zach Quinto rules. But I think he just killed it in this episode and I gratefully told him so once I saw how the whole piece was coming together in the cutting room. His performance, to me, is the unifying element of this story. It’s the glue that holds the episode together. I love getting into scenes with him. For instance, we shot all of his scenes in the surveillance room relatively quickly. As I always do with him, I encouraged him to be playful and unexpected. This is not a direction you can give all actors, trust me, but Zach can find a way to play a line in a completely unexpected way, that doesn’t lose the thought behind the original intention. I particularly like the emphasis he places on the word “terrify” when he says the line “I know I repulse you. Terrify you.”

Also the scene with Sylar and Angela towards the end is one I’m particularly happy with. Again this was a very well written scene with a lot of meat on the bone, and the actors were excited to get into it. But, surprisingly, it took a little while to get it there on a performance level. Both the actors and I had to talk through and work through the rhythms and beats before it found it’s final shape. I’m a big believer in blocking a scene. Blocking is a term that, I guess, comes from the stage – but it refers to how the actors move around within a scene. I really, really believe in trying to move the actors around whenever it’s valid and possible. Much too much TV is very static with people just standing or sitting still and saying their lines. I have found that, the right blocking lets the performances flow easily, and that the wrong blocking will clog up the energy of a scene like logs in a river. I try to work in the same way I always encourage actors to. I prepare and think about the scene on my own before the day of shooting. I conceive of the specific shooting style and blocking style that would suit the scene and the overall story. And then, and this is important, on the day of shooting I try to forget my homework and let the scene evolve in whatever way it wants to. The homework is a safety net that I can fall back on if new ideas don't come. But if I force the homework on the scene it dries up. I have found over and over again that a few key words or key blocking ideas is enough to allow a scene to flourish and grow quickly. Too much from me can atrophy a scene. By the same token – too little from me can create a vacuum where nothing occurs.

I began this particular scene on Angela facing foreword and Sylar out of focus in the background. He then makes a big sweeping walk around her and the camera pivots on her. This shot, for me, builds the energy and danger implicit in the scene. Then I jump to a big wide shot where Sylar slams a chair into the back of Angela’s legs and pushes her forward. It was scripted that he TK’ed her into the chair… But, in working through it, Zach felt that Sylar was angry and wanted a more visceral reaction. So we eliminated the TK and had him rough Angela up. From there, after my showy opening shot, the scene gets simple. I have just two angles for each character for the next 80% of the scene. I did a slow push in to each character that ends in a big close-up. I also did two super low angles which each have a very graphically interesting ceiling lamp in the background. By balancing the coverage, and the editing pattern, I believe the sense of equality is created. Each of these characters is a great chess player and for this part of the scene, they are in the early stages of a chess game. I also shot a wide profile shot, where each character is in 50-50 profile and the fireplace is between them. This was mostly for geography, and to let the scene breathe and not be so claustrophobic, and because the firelight was pretty. Later, on Angela’s line - “You were flawed. Weak. Malleable. Someone I could manipulate. Because that’s what I do. Because you’re right…I’m a monster, too...” I had Zach turn away from Angela into a close-up on a super wide lens. For me, the distorting effect of this lens accentuates Sylar’s sense of displacement and distortion…. Anyway, you get the idea. On a shot-by-shot level this scene is actually very simple. It was a scene where I didn’t need the camera to elevate or accentuate the already-excellent scene. But, my point is, even in simple scenes like this the shot making needs to be purposeful and specific.

On the Zach Quinto topic, Jeph Loeb had always written in an opening narration from Sylar and a montage recapping the season for the opening of the episode. But in post we all decided to expand and add to these Sylar monologues in an attempt to strengthen and clarify the theme. I was with Zach when he recorded these at the ADR stage. We talked about his tone being more omniscient than typical Sylar - as if spoken in reflection from a point in the future. But we also had to work to not make it too detached. Sylar has a certain level of cynicism and bitterness. We did a few takes and Zach played around. He is always amazing when he gets a chance to play with the material – mixing up the cadences and playing against the obvious intentions of some lines. I love the way his voice-over on these scenes turned out.

The final scene of the episode (The one with Nathan and the President) is meant as the prelude to the FUGITIVES Volume. I shot this scene in a different style than our usual ones – It’s full of off angles, non-matching angles, sides of faces in focus in the foreground, while the person speaking in the b.g. is in soft focus, jump cuts, etc. – which is a BOURNE IDENTITY-like style. This is a look we’ve used a bit in the past (I’ve always tried to do a scene or two per episode in this style – remember the scene with Peter and Angela and the strings from the second episode of this season, and the omitted scene between drunken Nathan and Angela available on the season 2 DVD set). This style adds a strong sense of tension because of the quick arrhythmic editing and the uncomfortable angles. It also creates a feeling of voyeurism and surveillance – which will be a theme of the FUGITIVES Volume.

Interestingly, we shot this scene in October – a month before the National election. But Tim Kring really wanted to cast an African American in the role of the President, even though, at that time it was quite uncertain how the election would turn out. Even though we kept him mysterious and didn’t show his face that much we were lucky to get Michael Dorn for this role. I’m sure many HEROES fans were also fans of STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE and STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. He was a great person to work with, easy and fun. He came in and we shot his scene quickly, in just 3 hours... And now he's our HEROES President!

Well, that’s it for this blog until HEROES comes back on the air on February 2nd. It’s possible I might do an update in between then and now, but at this moment I’m not sure.

As always thank you fans for your passion and loyalty. You are our lifeblood. I’ll be grateful for the short break from my weekly homework assignment – but also – I will miss you all.

Fondly,

Greg Beeman

AND NOW...THE PHOTOGS:

CRISTINE ROSE AND I

JEPH LOEB AND ALI LARTER

MOTHER AND SON???

HANS AND FRANS... UH, I MEAN ADRIAN AND MILO IN THEIR FLAME RETARDANT UNDERGARMENTS

"NO PRESS - PLEASE"

MILO AND I GOIN' OUT TO A SCANDANAVIAN DISCO PARTY

ME, SCRIPT SUPERVISOR MERRY DONNER AND DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY CHARLIE LIEBERMAN

"THE MAGNIFICENT 4"

MASI AND GEORGE TAKEI

ACTING IS A SWEATY BUSINESS

ALI AND ADRIAN APPLAUD SOME OF MY BETTER DIRECTION

SENDHIL AND ALI HITTING THE ROAD

ALI AND ADRIAN

GREG AND BREA IN A "CORNY" MOMENT

ON SET BETWEEN TAKES

BAD BOYS "FLINT AND KNOX"

NIGHT SHOOTS CAN MAKE A MAN GOOFY

HAYDEN TOUCHES UP BETWEEN TAKES

EVEN WITH A FACE COVERED IN BUG-SCALES, SENDHIL LOOKS GOOD!

JAMIE HECTOR BETWEEN TAKES

JACK AND JESSALYN - GUNNING FOR TROUBLE

BREA AND HER PHOTO-DOUBLE HEATHER STUNKLE

MASI, GREG G. AND "THE COMIC OF DESTINY!"

BREA AND GREG G.

JEPH LOEB TALKS ON SET WITH GREG GRUNBERG

KIDS CAN BE SUCH A HEADACHE

MANIACAL HAYDEN

COOL 'N CLASSY ALI LARTER

ON SET, D.P. CHARLIE LIEBERMAN LINES UP A SHOT WHILE MAKEUP ARTIST WENDI ALLISON AND ASSISTANT PROP MASTER JAMES CLARK GORE UP ZACH

SENDHIL - WHEN HE GOT INTO ACTING HE DIDN'T KNOW IT'D MEAN LAYING IN SLIME AND COVERED WITH SCALES

THE CREW TENDS TO DECORATE THEIR WORK BOOTS WITH AFFECTIONATE SAYINGS

BEEMAN’S BLOG - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 12

2008-12-08T10:08:00.000-08:00

“OUR FATHER”
WITH LITTLE DOUBT – SPOILERS ARE CONTAINED WITHIN!

Tonight’s episode was written by the writing team of Adam Armus and Kay Foster and was directed by veteran HEROES director Jeannot Szwarc.

Kay Foster's Credits
Adam Armus's Credits

Jeannot’s credits

Sadly – as of this episode Kristen Bell departs the show – we loved having her here. She is a pro and an all-around good egg. The scene where Sylar burns her body was her last scene in the series - but I actually directed her on her last day of shooting. This was the scene at the rental car dealership from episode 10. When we wrapped that scene the Assistant Director announced that Kristen was finished in the series. There was a huge round of applause and weepy eyes all around. Tim Kring and Kristen had explored keeping her around longer – and I know Kristen wanted to come back. There were potential storylines about pregnancies and babies…. But the truth is she has a very busy career with a lot of feature films, pilots and much else in the works. We had no official contract with her – and she couldn’t commit to exactly when she could return. And so it was decided that this would be the most exciting way to end her character. She will be missed.

For the very dramatic scene where Sylar burns Elle’s body, we needed somewhere completely isolated and controllable where we would be able to light a fire without any issues or constraints. For some reason that, I know, Jeannot never understood - we ended up at this weird beach in San Pedro. The beach was rocky and stinky and there were hundreds of feral cats living there. It was weird – but maybe the weirdness of the location fed into the weirdness of the scene.

Notably, there was a final shot Jeannot designed for this scene that ended up being cut out. It was a huge crane shot that swooped away as Sylar stood over Elle’s burning body. (See pix below) I remember the script read: “Sylar stands on her burning body. A tinge of remorse. Giving Elle far more respect than any of his previous victims.” Anyway, the shot was very dramatic and I found it very haunting, almost beautiful. But the network standards and practices people and even Tim Kring thought it was too disturbing. So we cut it - and ended up playing the scene on a simple close up Sylar. This works too. I don’t know, maybe America’s not ready for full-on immolation. I like weird disturbing stuff sometimes. I remember reading that one of the techniques of the Hindu and Buddhist priests in India is to go to the pyres where bodies are being burned and meditate upon them. These novices sit for days this way. The idea is that in fully experiencing death in this way they learn to accept their own mortality and hold a looser grip upon life... But, whoa... I digress.

As always my work along with the rest of the production team begins when the first draft of the script is finished. Usually we've read an outline - sometimes not even that. Often we have only a vague idea of what is going to happen until the day we finally get that first draft. This script, by Adam and Kay, was really a nice read with tons of emotion. Most notable were the scenes where Claire ends up in the past with her baby-self and her parents. And most beautiful of all (from my and Jeannot’s point-of-view, at least) was the scene where adult Hiro has a chance to see his dying Mother one last time, to ask for her help, to tell her that he turned out well and to ease her mind that his relationship with his father had been rectified. This scene was very moving on the page and on the stage. It is so full of archetypal resonance and wish fulfillment. Who wouldn’t want to be able to have, as an adult, one last chance to speak with a beloved parent who has passed? All in all a beautiful scene written by Adam and Kay.

It was the scene that Jeannot was most excited to direct and the one he talked through extensively in prep. But fate intervened. Turns out that George Takei was getting married to his longtime partner Brad Altman and afterwards going on a honeymoon. Like Kristen Bell, George is an actor who we write for frequently, but don’t have a contractual hold over. So the scenes in this episode with Kaito in them had to wait until George returned. This ended up being a couple of weeks after Jeannot had wrapped up the rest of the episode and by Jeannot’s schedule had him off to his next gig – an episode of SMALLVILLE.

So the duties of directing all the scenes in the Nakamura apartment fell to me. This is always a heavy burden for me – to direct scenes for another director -especially if they’re the director’s favorite scenes in his episode! I empathized with Jeannot’s disappointment, and I had a long talk with him about the scene before I shot it. In these situations, I always try to talk with the director and try to learn how they were planning to do the scene – both from a technical and an emotional standpoint. I had a similar situation last year when I directed the scene in Dan Attias’ episode 7 - where Hiro leaves behind the swordsmith’s daughter Yaeko, in front of the cherry tree. That was also a simple but emotional scene.

There was a lot of internal debate about wether to have our production designer Ruth Ammon design and build a set for these scenes or wether to find a location. The scenes were meant to happen in the apartment of the Deaveaux building. We've seen that rooftop many times - but the actual apartment hasn't been seen seince the pilot. It needed to be grand and spacious, but we also had to believe it connected to our oft-seen rooftop set. In the end we found a mansion in Pasanena California that Ruth believed felt like a New York Apartment. She built a connecting hallway on stage - so when Hiro and Claire run off camera from the roof set, they first run through this transitional hallway and then onto the practical location. On film, I believe, this complex transition is pretty seamless. In real life, there were huge windows in the mansion that looked out onto big gardens. But we were supposed to be in New York! So, we set up a forty foot tall and sixty foot wide bluescreens outside - so that out the windows the audience would see NYC. It's the same view we see from our rooftop - since, theoretically, it is just one floor below.

I was happy that a lot of time had been dedicated to shoot the main scene – 6 or 7 hours – which is generous by our standards. It is a very long and a very emotionally complex scene. The shooting style is, purposefully simple. The compositions formal – in homage to traditional Japanese cinema. Nate Goodman, the director of photography describes this in this way: “Try to imagine that you have drawn the shot – instead of photographing it. Objects re-compose within the frame, but there is little or no camera movement - unless it is purposeful."

In all these scenes, there are only a few gimmicks used to help the drama. The first is the use of an f.1 50 millimeter lens, which we used when Hiro’s mother kisses the bird. At this low f-stop a very shallow depth-of-field is created. The sick bird is in focus and as the mother leans in, her lips come into focus also. The other moment is when Hiro’s mother kisses his forehead, healing him and restoring his memory. In this moment we ran Hiro’s CU in slow motion and moved the camera in a semi circle around him. Not much moves in the frame besides the background and Hiro’s fluttering eyelids. I feel this nicely accentuates the experience Hiro has as his memory is restored.

Tamyln Tomita played Hiro's Mom. As you can see here, she has a lot of credits: Tamlyn Tomita

Tamlyn was amazing to work with. She nailed the part in the audition and nailed it again and again as we shot. (I first remember her in THE KARATE KID 2.) I shot many takes and many angles of this scene and she was right there every time. At the beginning of the day, Masi, I could sense, was a little nervous. This is an important scene and something unlike anything he had done before on the show – except a little bit with the character of "Charlie" in season one. As a director, I always feel the most important thing to do is to “allow” a space for the actors to work in. It’s not often necessary to come up with all the nuance and subtext that an actor needs in the scene. They are professionals and have done their homework. It’s more important to create a space within the set where they feel safe and supported to experience their emotions publicly. Acting is a very subtle and scary craft in which the actor has to fully experience emotions – often uncomfortable ones – in a space full of crew and lights and many other things that make it "false." On this day I worked gently with Masi, monitoring how he was feeling and letting him know that it was in his close up when he would have to “bring it.” I monitored how he was feeling and I got from him that he wanted to do his close up as the very last shot we did of the scene. When we got there I thought Masi did an amazing job of bringing a very truthful and heartfelt experience to the scene. Unfortunately, after Masi had done just one take, we found ourselves up against the mandatory lunch break. I knew that, now that we were into his performance, we had to complete it. I called the studio and suggested that we needed to go into a “lunch penalty." A lunch penalty is a name for a financial penalty the production incurs for encroaching on the crew's mandated lunch break – we have to pay the crew members each a small bonus for invading their lunch hour. A penalty that lasts a half hour or less costs us several hundred dollars. The studio understood my point. The cameras kept rolling. Two takes and ten minutes later we had the scene in the can. I was very proud of Masi and I’m proud of the scene. My first most important critique came from Jeannot who was very happy. My next will come from you, the fans.

An interesting note is that, on this day, I was working with a second unit crew. A lot of the crew members were just working for us that day and were unfamiliar to me. Many of them had never read the script and weren’t familiar with the story. Furthermore the actors were speaking in Japanese without the benefit of subtitles. So, technically, this crew should have no idea what was happening in the scene. BUT as we were shooting, a couple of times I looked around and noticed a lot of people were tearing up or otherwise having an emotional experience as we shot the scene! It just shows that when truthful, valid emotions are happening they transcend language. Very interesting!

AND NOW – PICTURES, PICTURES, PICTURES….

DIRECTOR JEANNOT SZWARC

WRITERS’ ADAM ARMUS AND KAY FOSTER

A TRIO OF ACTORS

ALI – GOOFIN’ OFF

SENDHIL – EXPIREMENTS WITH HIS “BUG TONGUE”

UP UP AND AWAY MASI!

MASI – HANGIN’ AROUND

DAD IS SAD. VERY VERY SAD. HE HAD A BAD DAY. WHAT A BAD DAY DAD HAD.

ZACH AND KRISTEN – ANOTHER DAY ON SET

ZACH AND BURNING ELLE

DEAR DIARY: IT'S BEEN KIND OF A WEIRD DAY...

SCALY SENDHIL

JEANNOT AND FIRST A.D. ANNE BERGER

ON SET MONITORS

MASI AND TAMLYN TOMITA

MASI AND MOM – WIDE SHOT

AND A FEW FROM PREVIOUS EPS – I FORGOT TO POST ‘EM BEFORE:

EP 11 – THROUGH THE CAMERA’S VIEWFINDER

EP 7 – JEANNOT AND CRAZY EYED HAYDEN

EP 10 – CAST RELAXES BETWEEN TAKES

EP 10 – GREG G. TRIES TO READ WRITER JOE POKASKI’S THOUGHTS

SEASON 3 – EPISODE 11

2008-12-01T12:37:00.000-08:00

“THE ECLIPSE – PART 2”

Tonight’s episode was written by Aron Eli Coleite and Joe Pokaski. It was directed by first-time HEROES director, Holly Dale.

As I mentioned in last week’s blog, Aron and Joe don’t normally write together – but they collaborated on this 2-week long episode. Our first ever 2 parter!!! Joe and Aron both came from CROSSING JORDAN, where they began as assistants and then became writers. They both collaborated closely with Tim Kring on the pilot and came here with Tim from the very beginning. Joe has been the interview subject of a past blog and Aron will be interviewed in an upcoming blog – I promise!

Aron’s credits.
Joe’s credits.

Holly came to our show via Roxann Dawson. Roxann is a director who had worked on numerous CROSSING JORDAN’S – in Season 1 she did one excellent episode of HEROES and we wanted to hire her for many more – but unfortunately she got snapped up as a producer-director on the CBS show COLD CASE. That was sad for us – but luckily Roxann called up a year later and recommended one of her top COLD CASE director’s… Holly!

Holly is a Canadian director who has directed numerous shows that shoot in the Great White North. She did an episode of STARGATE ATLANTIS which shot in Vancouver and I got to know many of the cast and crew during my time in Vancouver on SMALLVILLE. I knew that show did a lot of action and visual effects in a lot less shooting time than we have. She had also done an episode of THE DEAD ZONE that I was familiar with and I thought had an excellent visual style. Holly met with Allan Arkush and I about a year ago and impressed us with her experience and confidence. She is also a huge HEROES fan and was intimately familiar with all our episodes and our style. That always helps. When setting the schedule for this season we made sure to make a spot for her. I think Holly did a great job. She was also a favorite with the actors, many of whom reported the good experience they had working with her on this one.

Holly’s credits.

I’m going to keep this one short. An cold took me down over the American Thanksgiving holiday and I'm prepping to direct Episode 19 so I have limited my time.

Only one or two notes:

The guys at Optic Nerve created a really cool appliance for Zach Quinto for the moment when Jack Coleman slits his throat. We shot film of Jack really cutting this appliance which gushed blood. It was freaky. But in post-production we found it more powerful to have Jack do the slice off-stage in a close up and then cut wide for the aftermath as Zach started to bleed out. I had recently seen THE DARK KNIGHT just before we started post-producing this episode and I was struck by how they never showed any violence as an on-camera event – everything was implied, and yet actually felt more violent. That might have influenced the decision to edit this scene this way.

I also really like the way the scene turned out in which Hiro pops in and out just as Sylar is about to kill the Bennett family and then disappears everyone one by one! This scene is good I think, because it is oddly light-hearted and comedic at a moment of awfulness. It was rather complicated to accomplish because of the number of starts and stops that had to be done when shooting. Many of our scenes require complicated visual effects, but Hiro popping in and out is done I DREAM OF JEANNIE style. We just tell the actors to freeze and Masi either runs in or runs out of frame. But because Jack Coleman was busy hanging in a harness against the wall during the whole scene it had to be done quickly and efficiently.

Weirdest thing just happened – At the very moment of this writing I’m at the airport in San Francisco on my laptop, writing this blog and a fan recognized me from the blog as I was writing the blog. Plus I’ve never been recognized in public before. Weird. Her name is Rachel and as of now she is in the running for biggest fan of HEROES. OK - shout out to Rachel!

That’s it. I’m done. And now…

THE PICTURES:

DIRECTOR HOLLY DALE AT THE MONITOR

WRITER'S ARON ELI COLEITE AND JOE POKASKI

HAYDEN AND HER YUCKY WOUND

KRISTEN AND HER YUCKY WOUND

ZACH QUINTO AND HIS ‘LIL YUCKY WOUND

ZACH QUINTO AND HIS BIG YUCKY WOUND

HAYDEN – “WANNA SEE MY YUCKY WOUND?”

MILO AND MAKEUP ARTIST WEDNI ALLISON - SHE CREATES ALL THE SCARS AND YUCKY WOUNDS

ZACH REFLECTS UPON LIFE AND DEATH (HEY WENDI NICE PICTURE! – SHE TOOK THIS ONE!)

ADRIAN AND WRITER ARON ELI COLEITE IN A DISPUTE OVER A LINE

HOLLY DALE IS A CANADIAN – CANADIANS ARE AFFECTIONATE – SHE DEMONSTRATES HERE

JACK COLEMAN IN “HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUN”

JIMMY JEAN-LOUIS CELEBRATES VICTORY

JIMMY JEAN AND ADRIAN GOIN’ CRA-ZEE IN HAITI

ADRAIN AND DEMETRIUS GROSSE – COMING IN ON RUNWAY 2

ZACH PREPARES FOR HIS SCENE

ADRIAN IS CHAINED TO HIS WORK

HOLLY DALE AND HER COLLABORATOR, DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHER CHARLIE LIEBERMAN

HOLLY AND BEST BUD, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR ANNE BERGER

ZACH AND KRISTEN

ZACH AND KRISTEN PLAY “¿QUIEN ES MAS SEXY?”

ASHLEY CROW AND BED-RIDDEN HAYDEN

JIMMY JEAN AND “GANGSTA” ADRIAN PASDAR

JIMMY JEAN MIND-WIPES DIRECTOR HOLLY DALE AS ADRIAN AND MILO CELEBRATE!

BEEMAN’S BLOG - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 10

2008-11-24T11:53:00.000-08:00

“THE ECLIPSE - PART 1”

Tonight’s episode was co-written by Aron Eli Coleite and Joe Pokaski, and was directed by your humble servant – me!

One of my duties as executive producer is to sometimes drop in quite suddenly to episodes that I wasn’t planning to direct. Originally Sergio Mimica-Gezzan (who directed the third episode of this season) was going to do this one. But he dropped out just a couple of weeks before, and I had to drop in.

Directorally I am happy with this episode. I feel it has drive and urgency. I’m happy with the performances and with the way it looks. I think Wendy and Lisa did awesome work with the music and Stargate did great with the visual effects. I also want to tip my hat to my editor Lois Blumenthal. She has been an assistant editor on HEROES since the beginning but we recently moved her up to editor. This is her first credit as a full editor and I think she did a great job. One of the things that is so important as a director is that when your editor puts the film together for the first time it at least adequately expresses what you had in mind. If you’re lucky you get pleasantly surprised. Well Lois did a great job and right from the first cut, posting this episode was an easy experience.

In the end, as always, you fans will decide what you think of the episode.

Joe and Aron aren’t usually a writing team but they co-wrote this week’s and next week’s episodes which are called THE ECLIPSE – PART I and THE ECLIPSE – PART II. They were so excited about these scripts and told me “It’s the first part of our first ever two parter.” I cynically replied. “Isn’t it part forty-four and foty-five of one ongoing episode?”

One of the most challenging aspects of this episode was, obviously, that half of the episode took place in an eclipse. The series has done eclipses twice before - in the Pilot, and briefly in the first episode of Season 2. But this episode carries the look much more extensively. Nate Goodman the director of photographer and I discussed how to achieve this. Ideally the look would be evenly lit and flat, i.e. no bright highlights, it would be dim with a blue-ish cast. Creating this look for interiors was one thing. Nate discussed how he would do it, with a large number of big lights surrounding the set, gelled with a heavy blue gel and creating a constant amount of hard light. The exteriors would have another approach. In the ideal, we would soften all the light and avoid all backlight. Nate wanted to put up big silks over the actors in every exterior environment (these are, essentially, 20x20 foot or 40x40 foot sheets that soften all the light coming through them) but the ability to hang these devices on our schedule became impractical. Ultimately we had to, sometimes, live with the light we had. Nate gets very excited about all this kind of stuff – but the more he described how he would achieve it the more I kind of glazed over. It was enormously technical. And, while I have a pretty good technical understanding of how most things work – I have my limits. I trust Nate completely and I knew his enthusiasm was a good indicator that all would turn out well. Sometimes as a director it’s best to just let something go and tell the person in charge of it “I trust you!”

There were also many discussions about how to slowly ramp up the eclipse throughout the episode. This was of particular interest not only to Nate but also to Eric Grenaudier and Mark Spatny from our visual effects house Stargate. Of course, we all had to get past the un-reality of the event. In real life there would never be a full eclipse visible from all these places on Earth at the same time. Eclipses also never last for this kind of duration. (Hey – I’m dubious about the whole premise that the eclipse would take our Heroes powers away at all. I don’t think the Pilot’s eclipse gave powers… But others disagreed and that ship had sailed.) But, after our first meeting and a brief round of arguments (that sounded a bit like the floor of the stock market) we all agreed that while Stargate would show numerous steps as the eclipse progresses – from a lighting standpoint there would just be “none,” “a little” and “full on.” Ultimately I believe in simplicity and clarity whenever possible.

But I still wasn’t really sure how it would all come together. And we weren’t able to really see the final look until the last stage of the process – which is the color timing. Color timing happens just a few days before we air the episode on Monday nights. Color timing is a process where we run the show through an electronic process that adjusts the colors, the lightness and darkness, and all manner of subtle things within the final look of the episode. It is a little known but critical part of the show. In this case, I went to color timing on the Thursday before the Monday when we went on the air. The timer had already worked through the picture and gotten it to a fine-tuned level, but we went through the eclipse scenes bit by bit, adjusting the amount of blue, darkening a lot of things, sometimes brightening the faces, and also flattening out the highlights in the shots. Only after all of that did I finally feel confident that the show had a compelling look. I was relieved.

I had fun designing shots for this one. My plan was to begin with slowly moving graceful shots. To try to create a steady sense of movement with the camera. Then, in act one to increase the pace of the motion. I started using faster stedicam shots, like the one with Angela and Claire in the Primatech hallways, and Peter and Nathan outside of Primatech. Then, as the eclipse began drawing nearer, I wanted to create the visual sense of bodies in orbit, and orbit around bodies - like the sun and the moon. I began using a circling pattern in my shot design and in the design of the blocking with actors. This is most evident in the scene between HRG and Claire in the safe house. The camera circles them over and over, orbiting them Immediately afterwards is a scene of Tracy on the phone which is intercut with Arthur on the phone. In thise scene I had the camera orbit around Tracy in a counter-clockwise pattern and around Arthur in a clockwise pattern. Intercut, there is a sense of antagonistic motion between the two halfs. This kind of stuff is fun to design, and while on the one hand it's very intellectual, I think it creates an subtle emotional component to the viewing experience.

One of the other challenges of this episode was creating the environment of Haiti. There aren’t that many places to shoot jungles in Los Angeles. The best and most frequently used is the place we ended up in, is the Los Angeles Arboretum in Pasadena. This place is famous, but I had personally never shot there. It was used in FANTASY ISLAND and GILIGAN’S ISLAND and now it has been further immortalized in HEROES. What the arboretum is is a lot of tropical plants in about a half acre of land around a lake. There are big pathways all through it and plaques on all of the plants. It looks impressively jungly but not huge, and if you step back you see a lot of stuff that shouldn’t be there – like park benches. Also, the rules are strict there and the crew and cast weren’t allowed to walk on or through the plants. So, ironically we had to bring in a lot of palm trees and ferns for anything that we interacted with.

The trick to making the jungle look good was to go on very long lenses and use lots of foreground. At first I went on wider lenses and used the crane and my other usual techniques… This was on the scene where The Haitian is leading The Petrelli boys through the jungle which ends with them running off after they are shot at. I’m the least happy with this sequence of all my jungle scenes. After that I went to long lenses foreground and either hand held or shaky camera (imitation hand held) from the dolly.

My favorite scene is the one where Peter and Nathan get in a fight, which culminates in the appearance of Jimmy Jean-Louis. The scene was very well written and had a natural escalation in the conflict between the brothers. It got to some core issues that I think haven’t been said as bluntly before. Milo and Adrian got pumped up for this one and came at it with strength. I think, in general, I was pushing for them to get angrier and grittier and yell more – to really let loose. But I’m always impressed by how much power Adrian can have when he goes soft. One of my favorite line readings of the scene is when, after being challenged by his brother, Nathan says “I’m a US Senator, you’re a nurse.” If I remember right, this line was scripted to be yelled, but Adrian went very soft and intense and I think the line is more cutting and powerful that way.

But, one story I must tell you, is that, for some reason, Milo and Adrian decided to pump themselves up for this scene by taking turns slapping each other on the back of the neck as hard as they could. I’m not sure how this brilliant idea got started, but I remember looking over and watching these two goofballs just smacking each other with all their might. There would be a loud CRACK! That echoed in the fake jungle and then, whoever had just been slapped started jumping around yelling, “Ow ow wow! Sonofab*&ch!” “Ah…” I thought to myself, “Ah, The Stanislavski method at work.” If you don’t believe me check out the pictures below. One is of the back of Adrian’s neck with welts in the exact shape of Milo’s fingers on it.

In the scene in Matt and Suresh’s apartment, when Hiro and Ando come to the door, there is a funny moment when the four cast members huddle around the comic book, which is a drawing of the exact moment they’re in. I always encourage the cast members to try to mimic the positions that Tim Sale has drawn for then as closely as possible. But, in this case Tim had drawn Matt’s hand in an incredibly awkward position to imitate. It cracked me up watching Greg Grunberg squish his hand around to try to get it to match. If you freeze your TiVo at the right moment you can see Greg Grunberg holding his hand in the dorkiest position ever. Try it!

I was also happy with the scene in the cornfield with Hiro, Ando and Matt, the one where Hiro throws corn at Matt to try to motivate him. I don’t think I fully appreciated this scene on the page. But when the actors started to act it out – it was just so funny. Masi was so committed and he just kept hurling corn at Greg. The line “The corn will keep coming!” makes me laugh even though it’s in Japanese. And Greg ad-libbed a funny one too when he turned to James and said, “How do you say ‘Stop it’ in Japanese?” My main contribution to the scene comes from the fact that I have a ten-year-old-boy at home. Because of this I had knowledge to encourage Masi to make a “Swoosh” sound every time he threw a cob.

Speaking of the corn. The art department had to screw thousands of corn stalks onto wooden 2x4’s and create the cornfield outside of the house – which is a standing set on a ranch owned by Disney. Greensmen had to move it around to camera every shot. Whenever you see a really wide shot, then all the distant cornfields have been added digitally and the characters are in front of a blue-screen.

Ah, our little show… Now, at last, the pictures…

SENDHIL AND I DOING COMMENTARY FOR THE ON-LINE VERSION OF THE SHOW. HEY! YOU CAN WATCH IT RIGHT NOW IF YOU WANT ON NBC.COM

WRITERS ARON ELI COLEITE AND JOE POKASKI DISCUSS SAFE DRIVING TECHNIQUES (D.P. NATE GOODMAN HUDDLES IN LOWER LEFT CORNER)

ADRIAN AND MILO CONTEMPLATE THE JUNGLE

ADRIAN AND MILO – HANGIN’ IN THE JUNGLE

ADRIAN’S NECK AFTER BEING SLAPPED REPEATEDLY BY MILO

LITTLE GAL WITH A BIG FIREARM

A NEW FOLK SINGING GROUP - ANDO, MATT AND DAPHNE!

MASI AND BREA - AWW

HAYDEN HAD HER BIRTHDAY ON THIS EPISODE - THIS WAS HER CAKE!

HAYDEN CLARIFIES TO THE CREW THAT IT IS HER BIRTHDAY AND THAT THE CAKE IS ALL FOR HER

HOW ACTORS PREPARE FOR THEIR BIG SCENES PT. 1

HOW ACTORS PREPARE FOR THEIR BIG SCENES PT. 2

ZACH AND I - IN WHICH ZACH PONDERS A DIRECTION I JUST GAVE HIM

MASI SMASH!

WRITER JOE POKASKI AND ZACH QUINTO HUDDLE AROUND SCRIPT SUPERVISOR VAL NORMAN LOOKING FOR GUIDANCE. VAL - WHO IS SHE? WHAT DOES SHE DO??? SOMEDAY WE'LL BLOG ABOUT HER

GUEST STARS SETH GREEN AND BRECKIN MEYER

MASI CONTEMPLATES FATE, NATURE AND THEIR RELATION TO COMICS

ZACH'S SECRET ARM

JACK AND HAYDEN EMBODY THE SERIOUSNESS AND STYLE OF TV STARDOM

KB ZQ AND I

JIMMY JEAN-LOUIS SNEAKIN AROUND IN THE JUNGLE

SENDHIL CONTEMPLATES LIFE AND MORTALITY AND WHAT THE HECK IS THAT GROSS CUT OPEN BODY DOING IN FRONT OF HIM?

SENDHIL GETTING FINAL SLIME AND GOO TOUCHES BEFORE SHOOTING IN HIS COCOON

ZACH STRAPPING ON HIS POP-OFF ARM

GLEN HETRICK OUR SPECIAL EFFECTS MAKEUP ARTIST JUST BEFORE THREE HOURS OF MAKEUP

GLEN AND I GO OVER THE SCENES REQUIREMENTS

GLEN TAKING IN THE SIGHTS OF THE STUDIO BACKLOT

BEEMAN’S BLOG - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 9

2008-11-17T12:59:00.000-08:00

“IT’S COMING"

WARNING: GOVERNMENT ADVISORY – SPOILERS AHEAD – PLEASE PROTECT YOUR FAMILY FROM SPOILERS

Tonight’s episode was written by Tim Kring and was directed by Greg Yaitanes. This is Greg’s second episode of HEROES – his first was Season Two’s most awesome “CAUTIONARY TALES.”

Greg is the subject of this blog’s interview. He is an excellent director – perhaps one of the the best all-around directors I’ve ever had a chance to work with. The industry obviously agrees with this as he was also the winner of the Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series Emmy this year for an episode of HOUSE.

I find Greg to be characterized by great intelligence as well as a hard work ethic. He plans a lot. He is also easy to work with, because he approaches everything in a very causal way – no matter how complex. He also prepares more diligently and shoots as fast as any director I’ve met. Here's his credits: GREG YAITANES.

GREG BEEMAN: First of all, Greg, let me congratulate you for your Emmy win this year. What was that experience like for you – specifically when you have to go up in front of thousands of people live and millions of people watching on TV and give an acceptance speech?

GREG YAITANES: It was truly an out of body experience. I was up against, mostly, pilots. So I had no expectation of winning. I just wanted to enjoy the experience. When I won it was amazing. It’s a neat thing to have accomplished at this point in my 38 years of life.

GB: I had a similar experience a few years ago. I won the Director’s Guild Award, which isn’t televised. But still you walk on stage and there are lights in your eyes and thousands of dim faces watching you silently. For me, time slowed, and I had no idea what I was saying…

GY: It’s funny because we’re going to be talking about an episode in which a dream sequence is a big part of it. When my name was called everything seemed to go into the language of dreams. My name was called. Then suddenly I was in the aisle. Then suddenly I was on stage. I didn’t have anything prepared, which was fine because nothing in my brain was working to remember a prepared speech. But, luckily, when they called my name and I looked over at my wife smiling and clapping, two things came into my mind. The first was that, during the whole of the shoot on HOUSE, I had my cell phone velcroed to the front of the monitor. Because my wife was pregnant and due at any time. That whole shoot happened with me wondering when I would get the call. And also, when my name was called as a nominee there was a thunderous applause, and I realized that I had worked with many many people in the room -- so many talented people. And those two ideas gave me something to focus on when I gave my speech. Afterwards my wife said I made sense, so I was glad.

GB: What was it that made you want to become a director?

GY: I’m from a small town just outside of Boston. It was so small that it didn’t have cable until I was about fourteen. And with cable came public access and that’s where I first became interested in film. I wasn’t that athletic. I wasn’t especially great in school. I loved movies though, and I became the guy with the handheld camera taping the football games.

Originally I was going to get into psychology, but I also had a strong interest in film. I came to California and, in my mind, I was going to let what happened out here determine which path I’d take. Gradually film became what won out.

I went to film school at USC. I had excelled there, but I never got the opportunity to make one of the official films there. I wasn’t selected by the faculty to direct or even to pitch to make a film. It was odd. So, as it was getting time to leave school, I went outside of the school to make a film. A professor there, Rick Edelstein, who is still my mentor, arranged a class for me where I could get school credit for a film I made outside of school. I got Panavision to donate some cameras, I got Universal to donate an editing room. I scraped together $18,000, begged, borrowed and stole - and made the movie.

This was at the tail end of when short films would still help you get considered for features – around 1992 to 1993. It was a time of transition. But, still, it got me the chance to do a movie – a one million dollar film called HARD JUSTICE. I was about 24 when it was made, and it’s just awful. But they cut a great trailer from it. I spent a good year putting together the elements and going after what I wanted. I had ended up editing across the hall from John Woo, who was making his first American movie HARD TARGET. I got to know him, and admire him, and became familiar with all his work. And whatever else can be said about it, I am very proud to say, with certainty, that my movie was the first American-made John Woo knock-off.

After that I ended up doing re-enactments for AMERICA’S MOST WANTED which led to episodes of Jerry Bruckheimer’s first television series SOLDIER OF FORTUNE, which led to DOUBLE-TAP which was a Joel Silver/Richard Donner production. I got that one after a meeting where I had to wait 7 hours in the lobby to meet Richard Donner.

GB: So… The consistent thread I see in all of this is – persistence.

GY: Yes. Persistence. I’ve got to say that if I have any edge, that is what gives me the edge. Others would give up and I just didn’t. I saw so many others give up when things got a little hard. But my dad instilled in me a great work ethic. I was doing every odd job from the time I was a kid.

In fact, one of my favorite stories, from my Dad, is about Joe DiMaggio. Late in his career, the Yankees were up by 10 games late in the season and they were up by 5 runs in the 7th inning. And, still, Joe Dimaggio was diving for every fly ball, and running out every ground ball and sliding into third. And some rookie asked him, “Joe why are you killing yourself. We’re way ahead.” And Dimaggio looked into the stands and said “Because someone out there is watching me play for the first time.” And that’s what I’ve learned. No matter what your reputation or how good you’ve done in the past it’s always about doing your best. With the gypsy nature of TV – you have to keep delivering. No matter how you’ve done elsewhere, on every job you are working with people for the first time, and they will be having a first impression of you. So you always have to do your best. Every time.

GB: So, let’s talk about HEROES in general before we talk about the episode, specifically. What is you’re experience of HEROES, from a directorial standpoint.

GY: It’s the hardest job I’ve ever had in TV. HEROES requires all the skills I’ve learned on every other project combined. It has all the genre work from the features and syndicated TV I’ve done. It requires extreme knowledge of visual effects. Of stunts and action. It pulls you in every direction at once. Also, working with actors is so important on this show. You’ve always said to me, beyond “See the spaces, see the faces..” "Performance is what matters most." I think the thing I like best about HEROES is the collaboration with the actors, which is both accepted and appreciated.

To give an example, there is no other show I work on which I storyboard as much as a necessary tool for communication. There is no other show that is as stylistically complicated. There is no other show that is as logistically complicated. Also it requires you to keep your patience, because the ground is always shifting. The schedule is always changing and you have to just go with it. Jim Chory, the producer, has this office with all these white boards that list all the different units, and locations, and episodes and actor requirements, and there’s all these lines and diagrams connecting them. I joke with him that it looks like A BEAUTIFUL MIND, just keeping the schedule straight.

As a director you want to help, not stand in the way. And I get to do things here that I would never get to do on any other show.

GB: Directorial design is so important on this show. And so hard for me to get director’s to achieve. For so long I tried to figure out how to describe to directors how to shoot the show and design the scenes and the shots. I’d say, “these scenes are like graphic novels with extreme close angles and extreme low angles and extreme high angles. And these scenes are like BOURNE IDENTITY handheld and messy and cut quickly. And these scenes are like John Hughes movies from the 80’s…” And on and on. Finally I realized that there’s no way to say “how” to direct this show. It’s very intuitive... But the shows that work best are the one’s with a strong sense of directorial design. That’s what you are so good at.

GY: Thank you.

GB: So let’s talk about tonight’s episode.

GY: Well the cool thing is – the episode that I did last year (CAUTIONARY TALES) was one cohesive story. This one is five completely different storylines which hadn’t intersected up to now in the season. We, Charlie Lieberman (the Director of Photography) and I tried to give each one a distinct look. Peter’s story had a lot of gravity, constant pressure - so handheld. Hiro’s story when he was ten was bright with a lot of center-punched frames and wider lenses. Elle and Sylar’s story was extremely dark. And so on. I was always energized by the fact that I was shooting five different shows at once and that every day was something new.

GB: I’d like to talk about two sequences in particular which are among the most difficult we’ve had either technically or conceptually. The first is the scene where Claire jumps out the window past Peter, which was enormously complex in it’s execution. Could you talk about that?

GY: Well, you and I had spoken early on, and you had mentioned the idea of doing something like that all in one shot…

GB: Right. I referenced BLADE II the one directed by Guillermo del Toro. There’s a shot early on where Blade chases a guy down a hall, leaps out a window, lands several stories below, knocks a guy off a motorcycle and rides off - which is done all in one shot. But that had a lot more visual effects help than the way you did it.

GY: Really? Because I don’t remember the BLADE reference. I remember talking about CHILDREN OF MEN, which had all these complicated action scenes that were all done in one shot.

The idea, though, of the shot was staying with Peter’s point of view. Using him as the pick point of the scene. You and I have very similar sensibilities about how we do things. And I have to give you props for inspiration for that moment and for suggesting doing it the way we did it. On HEROES, as the director I am always encouraged to come up with things from a strong point of view.

There were hours of meetings about how to accomplish this and many designs and discussions all about - how do we have a real stunt person fall past the real actor and to feel the impact below and to show that moment but not to stay on it too long and to not have it look fake. We wanted to make it more tactile and less effecty. In fact, the stuntwoman fell on a cable and was descended in such a way that we didn’t even need a pad, she was just stopped inches above the pavement. On the day we shot it, we actually did that big stunt very quickly, which is a testament to how well we had prepared for it.

GB: There were a few visual effects elements that were added in post production… Some falling glass sahrds and a shadow of Claire that streak past Peter just before Claire enters frame, and we added a lens flare at a critical moment when he looks up just as the stunt woman enters frame because she was moving a bit slow and looked a bit fake – but just for a few frames. It was all just to enhance the amazing shot – not in any way to save it.

GY: Well, thanks for that.

GB: Talk about the experience as a director, when you have big ideas like this, and you have to defend them and protect them all through the process until they’re finally in the can.

GY: Well you talked to me about this. Everything you predicted would happen happened. You described the big scenes in HEROES as being like a pie, and that sometimes a little slice at a time they get taken away a meeting at a time. So that at every turn the compromise doesn’t feel like you’ve lost that much. But finally, when you look down – most of the pie is gone and you’ve just got a small slice left.

But here I have to give Jim Chory credit. He will understand what’s important and will pick battles for you and shuffle the money around to make it happen. He helped a lot in making that particular scene happen.

GB: So let’s talk about the dream sequence. Truthfully, for me, on the page, that was a very troubling sequence – because it had enormous potential for confusion. It had all the same characters in the same spaces in and out of the dream in the same wardrobe and then two Daphne’s. Back in prep, if I had had to bet – I would have bet that it would be much more likely that sequence would not work than that it would work. I fully believe the success of this sequence – which I now think is one of the most dynamic things we’ve ever done – is fully to your credit. It is so well designed and executed and especially edited, that not only is it cool and eerie – but more importantly, it’s very clear what is happening. I give you credit for all of that, in lesser hands the audience would have NO idea what was going on.

GY: The inspiration of the scene was to really try to use the language of dreams. To create a film language that dreams happen in, that people can relate to. Moving through space without the connection of “a” to “b.” In my dreams it’s always like that. i.e First I was here and then I was at my house, but it wasn’t my house, and then I turned around and my mother was there and then she changed… I wanted to play with space and suddenly be there and then suddenly be over there.

We used Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY as a reference. Kubrick knew how to make things dream-like. And he also was able to make scary things happen in very bright spaces. It’s very effective and haunting and you’re not hiding anything.

Charlie Lieberman came up with a lighting plan that enhanced this. We used very wide lenses for the dream and he used very hot backlight and sidelight and came up with a way to halo that light.

GB: Well, in my book, it’s incredibly effective. That’s all the time we have. Thank you for your time Greg. And we look forward to seeing your next episode, which will be #14 – the first episode of the next volume, which will begin after Christmas.

GY: Thanks.

NOW THE PICTURES:

GREG YAITANES - HAVING A GREAT IDEA

A BIG BUDGET SHOW DESERVES PROPER EQUIPMENT - WE SPARE NO EXPENSE FOR MR. YAITANES

KRISTEN BELL - IT'S TRAUMATIC BEING AN ACTOR

KRISTEN IN THE MIDDLE OF A TAKE

GREG Y AND FIRST A.D. ROBERT SCOTT CROSSING OFF STORYBOARDS AS THEY SHOOT THEM

GREG AT THE MONITOR WHILE ZACH DOES A HANDSTAND IN THE B.G.

ZACH QUINTO PREPARES FOR HIS NEXT SCENE

THE VILLAINS

GREG DISCUSSES THE SCENE WITH THE CAST

CRISTINE ROSE – YOU CAN’T KEEP HER DOWN!

NTARE MWINE AS USUTU - HE MAY BE DECAPITATED - BUT HE STILL STALKS THE HALLS

GREG GRUNBERG - PUT ME IN COACH

ZACH AND KRISTEN – PSYCHOS TOGETHER!

GREG YAITANES AND ALLAN ARKUSH - TWO OF OUR FINEST!!!

AND FINALLY THE STORYBOARDS FOR THE ABOVE-DISCUSSED SEQUENCE WHERE CLAIRE JUMPS OUT THE WINDOW PAST PETER

BEEMAN’S BLOG - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 8

2008-11-10T12:14:00.000-08:00

“VILLAINS”

Tonight’s episode was written by Rob Fresco and was directed by Allan Arkush.

Rob Fresco used to work on a TV show called PROVIDENCE which is where he met Tim Kring. When Tim created CROSSING JORDAN he brought Rob there where he worked for 2 years. And this year he comes to HEROES. (By coincidence, I also worked on PROVIDENCE, back in the days when I was a visiting director. I directed only two episodes of that series - one was written by Mr. Kring, and one by Mr. Fresco. And thus are the threads of the universe connected.)

This is Rob Fresco’s first script for us and I think (in my own humble opinion as always) long-time fans will really enjoy the way this episode goes back in time to cross some “t’s” and dot some “i’s” in the HEROES universe.

One idea that was in the script from the beginning, that I think Rob came up with, is that the main title, instead of saying HEROES would say VILLIANS… I thought that was enormously cool, but truthfully, I thought this was going to get more resistance from NBC than it did. But it didn’t. It sailed right through.

And of course, this was supposed to be the episode where we explored the villains that we introduced in the season opener. Frankly this changed a little bit as the script went through studio notes. The first draft really featured the villains – and our main characters were the side stories. This shifted as the drafts went on to the version that we now see.

Interestingly, there was a whole storyline that was dropped from the episode. There was a story that featured the character of Knox and his relationship with Matt Parkman. The story took place in L.A. and told how Knox was part of a gang and was trying to get out of that life. Matt was a cop who had busted Knox once and was trying to help him stay on the straight and narrow. As things progressed Knox realized he had the power of incredible strength whenever people around him were afraid. This caused him to turn away from Matt’s good guidance. It was a good story. But it was 9 minutes long. And, in the editing room, when Allan tried to fit it in – all the other stories became compromised. So the decision was made to just drop that one story altogether. It’ll be a great DVD extra someday.

A fun thing to tell you about is the scene on the bridge where we transition from Jessalyn Gilsig and Eric Roberts on the overpass bridge with Claire. I think it’s great how this episode connects the stories in with scenes from the pilot. The original script indicated that the camera craned up and over a hill to reveal the train wreck below. But Allan wanted to make a more direct connection. So they found an overpass and put a big 40 foot green screen on the other side. The shot had to line up with the wide shot, from the pilot, of the train crash very carefully – that footage was already shot and could not be changed. As Jessalyn and Eric Roberts walk over the bridge they walk in front of the green screen. But the key to the shot was the “hookup” point – the point at which the new footage can be hooked up to the old. There is a pole holding a sign that is the edge of the matte line. Humorously, this sign originally said “Metro” train – but because we were dealing with an Amtrak crash and not a local Metro line, we had to change the sign in post. We chose of course one of our old stand by’s the Burnt Toast Café.

As you know, from time to time I like to interview different members of the crew – to give you, the loyal viewers some insight into the many facets of HEROES specifically, and the film business in general.

Today I’m interviewing Lori Madrigal who is the head of our makeup department. She is a veteran makeup artist with an impressive resume. She is extremely well loved by the cast and the producers alike, and we are lucky to have her on this show. Here's her iMdb: Lori Madrigal

GREG BEEMAN: Lori where did you grow up?

LORI MADRIGAL: Right here in Whittier California.

GB: And how did you get into doing makeup for film and television?

LM: It’s something I always wanted to do ever since I was sixteen. But I waited awhile to get started. I was in radio advertising for years, selling airtime, which I liked – but I always knew that I really wanted to do makeup. So one day I decided to do it. I put myself through esthetician school and makeup school. And then, the doors opened up and I’ve never looked back. I’ve been working steadily for twenty years.

GB: Where did you go to school?

LM: The esthetician school was in Seal Beach and I also went to Cinema Secrets to study film makeup. Maurice Stein trained me.

GB: So once you made the decision to do it everything came together?

LM: Yes. I always feel that if something’s meant to be, if it’s really your heart's desire, then nothing can stop you. It’s not like it was all easy from the beginning. I definitely pounded the pavement. I cleaned houses between jobs and some of my first jobs were photo shoots for “E” Entertainment where I got $30 a day. But after awhile I pushed and convinced people that I knew what I was doing and I got started.

GB: What was you first big break?

LM: On a miniseries - NORTH AND SOUTH.

GB: And we started working together because of an Exec at Warner Brothers named Lisa Lewis…

LM: I love Lisa. She’s cool.

GB: Well she loved you. She knew you from “E-RING” and she recommended you for the AQUAMAN pilot I did. I brought you over here and the rest is history.

LM: Yep.

GB: Now, as a producer, the head of the makeup department is critical – not just because you need your actors to look great, but because the hair and makeup trailer is where the actors all start their day and where they spend most of their day. The actors have to have a great relationship with you or they are miserable and if they’re miserable – the set doesn’t run right.

LM: Exactly. And that’s why my trailer is the way it is. Why I have music and coffee and food and fun photos everywhere. I want it to be a place where the actors want to start their day and hang out between shots all day. We have a lot of fun, and also, that way I know where they are at all times.

GB: You definitely create a very happy environment. So can you talk about the two aspects of the job, the creative and also the interpersonal aspect of your job?

LM: I always say there are two parts to the job of makeup artist. Part one is “makeup” and part two is “therapist.” You never know what kind of mood the actors are going to be in when they get their in the morning, but you have to make sure that, no matter what – you’re in a better mood than them.

GB: The actors not only all like you, but they all trust you...

LM: They have to trust you. You can’t lie to them or BS them. You have to please them and what they want, but at the same time you have to please the producers and the studio and you have to please yourself. It’s great, it’s really a rush, when you get to achieve all that.

GB: After all these years do you still find it glamorous that you get to hang out with all these big stars all day?

LM: You know, I never really found it glamorous. I think from the beginning my attitude was that we are all just people working together to do a job. Maybe that’s why I do end up getting along with them, because I feel that we’re all just people.

GB: So let’s talk about the artistic part. What is it that gives you the biggest thrill about doing makeup?

LM: Color. I love it when someone sits in your chair for the first time and you open a drawer with a thousand colors in it, and you pull out the right one on the first try. I’m good with color and it’s really fun to just trust yourself with it. Color is where a lot of people go wrong because they don’t really understand what colors are right for them.

It’s really fun to take a person and change them. To take a person who is attractive and with just a little bit of work to make them beautiful. You actually need very little makeup to achieve that, as long as you know what your doing and it’s carefully applied.

GB: What about the other side? We also mess people up a lot on this show.

LM: I know. And I love that! Mostly I let Wendi do that on this show, because she loves it and I’m so busy with the girls. But it’s so fun to do blood and scars and cuts and bruises. Like today we had this guy who was a dead body – and so, I pushed Wendi aside and said “I’m doing this one” – he was all cut up and bruised up and it was so fun.

The rewarding part of my job is when the actor comes out of the trailer and everyone says “That’s awesome.”

GB: What about the hours. Our crew normally comes in at 6 or 7 a.m. to start work. But you have to come in a couple of hours earlier than that every day to get the cast made-up, is that right?

LM: Yep. I came in at 5 a.m. today and 4 a.m. yesterday.

GB: And, for us, a 12 hour day is the norm. Does that mean you're putting in a 14 or 15 hour workday every day?

LM: Most of the time, yes.

GB: Did you know that was what you were signing up for when you got into this business?

LM: No. I thought it would be way more glamerous. No one ever told me you'd have to be applying makeup in a swamp, or that you'd be peeing in a big box. Because on location there's no "boys" and "girls" room - there's just a plastic outhouse and everyone has to go in it.

GB: So what do those hours do to your personal life?

LM: What are you talking about? I have no life. But that's what the job is. You know what though? I love my job, so it's worth it. The crazy hours is just part of it. This whole business is like a carnival that packs up and moves on to the next town every day. If I didn't love my work it wouldn't work - but I do, so it's all good!

GB: Thanks Lori. You’re awesome. Thank you.

LM: No problem. You know I love you Beeman!

THE PIX OF IT ALL:

ALLAN ARKUSH AND CRISTINE ROSE

ROB FRESCO “THE WRITER”

THIS WEEK’S INTERVIEWEE - LORI MADRIGAL, THE HIGH PREISTESSES OF MAKEUP (on the right) AND WENDI ALLISON, KEY MAKE-UP - LET THE RECORD SHOW... THEY ARE THE BEST!!! (ALSO - CREDIT IS DUE TO WENDI – SHE GIVES ME MANY OF THE PHOTOS THAT I USE HERE ON THE BLOG )

MALCOLM MCDOWELL, CRISTINE ROSE AND ROBERT FORSTER
(KICK BACK KIDS AND WATCH HOW THE OLD SCHOOL GETS IT DONE!)

ALLAN AND D.P. NATE GOODMAN LINE UP A SHOT

THE COOL KIDS

KRISTEN BRINGS HER FAVORITE BOOK TO SET (AND MAKES US SIT DOWN SO SHE CAN READ IT TO ALL OF US ALL THE TIME!)

KRISTEN AND ZACH (AS ZACH MENTALLY PREPARES FOR ANOTHER "READING" BY KRISTEN)

JESSALYN GILSIG – ONE HOT FLAMETHROWIN’ MAMA

MILO AND ADRIAN - JUST HANGIN’

HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUN

DON’T MESS WITH THE QUEEN

BEEMAN'S BLOG - SEASON 3, EPISODE 7

2008-10-27T18:40:00.000-07:00

ERIS QUOD SUM

Tonight’s episode was written by Jesse Alexander and was directed by Jeannot Szwarc. Jesse is one of our co-executive producers, a frequent writer of episodes and is an instrumental part of the ongoing development of the show. Jesse Alexander

Jeannot is a cast-and-crew-favorite director who is now directing his fourth HEROES and has an impressive resume of TV and films that goes way back in time. Jeannot Szwarc

This episode also marks the return of Kristen Bell to the show. If you’ve been following this blog you’ll remember that we had to wait for several months for her to become free. This meant that we couldn’t complete filming of episode 2 for quite awhile. We knew that she’d become available to us for a nice run of episodes beginning with episode seven, and Jesse and the other writers developed her re-introduction of her character with this knowledge.

I’m slammed with work right now so this will be a picture heavy blog. Onward..

DIRECTOR, JEANNOT SZWARC AND WRITER JESSE ALEXANDER

WRITER JESSE ALEXANDER AND DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY CHARLIE LIEBERMAN

DIRECTOR JEANNOT LAYS OUT A SHOT FOR ME - I AM DUBIOUS

KRISTEN AND HAYDEN

THE STUNT COORDINATOR AND STUNT DOUBLES LAY OUT HOW HAYDEN SHOULD BE THROWN BY KRISTEN

THE “THROW”

ADRIAN PASDAR - DON'T HATE HIM BECAUSE HE'S COOL!

BREA GRANT DISPLAYS PROPER SUPER SPEED POSTURE

SCRIPT SUPERVISOR VALERIE NORMAN AND ZACH QUINTO (UNBEKNOWNST TO THEM - A 2ND ASSISTANT DIRECTOR TASTE TESTS ZACH)

THE BEHIND-THE SCENES "SCRUM" THAT PASSES FOR OUR NORMAL WORK DAY

ADRIAN AND SENDHIL "DOES THIS MAKE ANY SENSE TO YOU?!"

DANIA RAMIREZ BETWEEN TAKES

SENDHIL - IT'S SAD BEING A FREAKY BUG MAN

JEANNOT AND I FROM THE WEST HOLLYWOOD PRODUCTION OF “WAITING FOR JEANNOT”

ALI LARTER "PUT ME IN COACH"

JESSALYN, JACK AND ADRIAN BETWEEN TAKES

ALI AND ADRIAN BETWEEN TAKES ON SET

FILMING A SCENE AT "PINEHURST"

HRG SAVES THE DAY

SENDHIL AND MILO "THIS MIGHT STING A LITTLE"

BEEMAN’S BLOG – SEASON 3, EPISODE 6

2008-10-20T11:31:00.000-07:00

DYING OF THE LIGHT
WARNING GALE LEVEL SPOILERS CONTAINED WITHIN

Tonight’s episode was scripted by Chuck Kim and Chris Zatta. It was directed by Dan Attias.

This is Dan Attias’ second episode of HEROES. Last year he directed Episode 7 “Out of Time.” Dan is a real veteran of television as you can see from his imdb link:
Dan Attias

He is one of those directors who is hard to book because he is sought after by every other show. And that’s no accident. He is a talented person who knows where to put the camera and, most importantly, always concentrates first and foremost on the emotions of a scene and on performance by the actors.

Chris Zatta, as of this season, is a staff writer and Chuck Kim is the executive story editor. Chuck has written 2 previous HEROES episodes - Season 1's Episode 19 titled ".07%" and also (co-written with Aron Eli Coleite) Season 2's unaired episode 13 entitled "True Identities." Chris has written 1 previous episode - Season 1's "Parasite" and was the subject of an earlier blog interview entitled “CHRIS ZATTA LIVING THE DREAM”

Chris came up from being an assistant on the show and Chuck was an editor/writer for DC Comics working on various titles including Batman and Superman. They are not a team per se’, but Tim Kring and the other writer’s who run the writer’s room decided to team them up for this one.

I am very proud of tonight’s episode. It looks great. It has sad moments. Funny moments. Action. Tension. And all that HEROES does well… You may completely disagree with me about all that, and that’s fine, but this one I feel we can hold our head up about.

It’s funny, because I remember, personally being pretty happy when I read the first draft of the script. But when Dan Attias came in, he really went after the script on a lot of levels. On day one he had a ton of logic and motivation questions. I can’t even remember what they were now (this episode prepped way back in June), but I do remember that this impressed me. Not every director gives a lot of script notes or asks the tough questions. It is a phenomenon in TV that, as a traveling director, you get the hand you’re dealt, script-wise, and you have to play it as best you can. It is more common in features and pilots for the director to give extensive notes, but Dan treated this one more like a pilot director would and I remember that, as the group addressed his many issues, the script got better.

One of the fun aspects of this season is that we are introducing new “villains” as we go. Trust me, this isn't not going to become a freak-of-the-week phenomenon (as my old show SMALLVILLE used to sometimes be criticized for) but it is nice to bring new characters in and explore them for just one episode without worrying about how they’ll be threaded into the series for weeks on end.

On this episode we got lucky. We read a number of people for ERIC DOYLE - the puppet master. This was a well written part, but, as you can imagine, it was very open to interpretation. In the auditions we saw many different physical types of actors who approached the material with many different delivery’s and physicality’s. We tried not to give them too many pre-conceived ideas. When David H. Lawrence came in, he read once and was great, and then we gave him some re-direction. The two notes I remember being given to him were (a) to realize that he really does love Meredith first and foremost. He truly believes he will and can win her over... And (b) to bring into his performance a certain infantilism. Doyle is a child who needs love, in an almost-maternal way, and who gets very angry when he doesn’t get it. David ran with these notes on his second reading - and we knew we had our man. credits

I’d been to the location and talked through the scenes extensively with Dan Attias – but I wasn’t there when we shot the bulk of the work at the puppet theater. It was a good sign to me that when I saw the shooting crew a couple of days after filming these scenes, many of them came up to me to remark on how good David Lawrence was. In the end, I think David really captures the screen and captivates you. He was also a great guy to work with. He was very happy and excited to be on the show. (Apparently once he even got klonked on the head super hard by Hayden who was getting quite into character. He took the hit and fell down as he was supposed to without complaint. Hayden, of course, was very apologetic.)

I’m also happy with the scenes in Africa with Hiro and Ando and Usutu. These scenes are fun and make good use of the space-time continuum. They were complex to lay out though, as you can probably imagine. We had to find natural rocks in the environment that suited the blocking and then Tim Sale had to paint images we knew we could achieve. I’m speaking, specifically, about whenever Usutu hits Hiro on the head. Getting the actors to match a pre-existing Tim Sale painting can be a challenge. But, luckily, Masi has a mind that is quite good for this. One of my favorite moments is when Masi goes back in time a minute only to get hit on the head with a shovel for the second time. We then cut to a shot of Ando from a scene we’ve scene just a few moments before. Hiro blinks out and, not two seconds later, he walks back in. This is a simple green screen effect, but it fits into the story very well – and I think the joke is capped off by James Kyson Lee’s reaction-shot to Masi walking in after Ando saw him disappear not-two-seconds before. I told James the other day that he, in my opinion, is like a highlighter pen to the joke. The joke happens. We cut to James. And the joke is highlighted. In the editing room, James is our go-to-guy for comedic reaction shots.

But enough about that, and on to what you really come here for – BEHIND THE SCENES PICTURES – WOO-HOO!!!!!

MASI OKA AND DIRECTOR DAN ATTIAS

WRITERS CHRIS ZATTA AND CHUCK KIM

MASI AND ME

AN ACTOR PREPARES PART ONE (REHEARSING THE SHOVEL-WHACK W/ MASI OKA AND NTARE MWINE)

AN ACTOR PREPARES PART 2 (ZACH REHEARSES AN OMITTED SCENE - WHAT THE HECK??!?)

WRITER JEPH LOEB SUPERVISES ON SET

ACTORS AND DIRECTOR DISCUSSING A SCENE

HEY KIDS LET’S PUT ON A (PUPPET) SHOW!

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN – MALCOLM MCDOWELL

THE HEROES MUTUAL APPRECIATION SOCIETY

TWO COOL CATS AT COMIC-CON

BEEMAN’S BLOG - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 5

2008-10-13T12:03:00.000-07:00

ANGELS & MONSTERS
NOTICE: A SPOILER WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FOR THIS BLOG

Tonight’s episode was written by Adam Armus and Kay Foster and was directed by Anthony Hemingway.

Anthony is a first-time HEROES director. He came to us recommended by NBC. I watched an excellent BATTLESTAR GALACTICA episode he directed (which is a favorite of many in our writing staff.) He was an assistant director on THE WIRE which is the show he moved up to director on… he directed several episodes of that as well as ER and CSI: NY. Immediately after finishing his HEROES episode, Anthony got a gig directing a movie for George Lucas. He is currently in Pre-Production on the Lucasfilm movie RED TAILS. I think he did an excellent job here. He was a big fan of the show and had seen all the episodes. Whenever someone is new on the show, I get a little nervous, and maybe spend a little too much energy going over and over the numerous cinematic styles and techniques we use. I make lots of suggestions and am kind of opinionated. Different people deal with this in different ways. Anthony was very mellow with me and kept listening and nodding and saying, “Got it. No problem.” He tried to assure me he had it under control – and after watching him shoot for a couple of days I was confident that he did. He did what we do well – mixing up big close-ups with wide-wide graphic shots, moving the camera effectively and – most importantly – accurately locking into the emotions of the characters.

In some ways this was a big THE WIRE reunion – Jamie Hector had already been on the show for several weeks and now Andre Royo also came aboard as Stephen Canfield - The Vortex Man.

As always, everything springs from the script. The script is the soil that the actors, the director and the production team plant their ideas in. In this case I think Adam and Kay wrote a complex and rich script with a lot of scope and emotion.

Subjectivity part one: It’s always the case – but especially true on HEROES that ideas are very subjective. First something is written in the script (in this case I’m referencing the idea that a character creates a black-hole-like vortex that matter is sucked into.) At a script level, this idea serves a very pragmatic goal. Noah Bennet has stated that he plans to discover Sylar’s weakness and kill him. But how do you kill an invulnerable super-killer? The matter-sucking vortex becomes a simple answer.

But now, all of us have to visualize this event and figure out how to design the visual effect and shoot the scenes in such a way that support the effect. A day into the prep our whole team sat down and had a long meeting about what this vortex would look like. The writer’s started with their concept and then the director and the rest of us jumped in with our own opinions – expanding, enhancing and sometimes being in conflict with each other. At the end of that meeting – based on talking it out aloud – we all were in general agreement about what this vortex would be. The art department and the visual effects team would sketch up some drawings.

A couple of days later we met again and the drawings were laid out. A frequent response upon viewing these was: “What is this!?” “This isn’t what we talked about?!” A funny thing in this business is that, in discussing any abstract idea – whether it be a black-hole-vortex or a living-dead reptilian monster – each person has a different picture in their head. These various mental-picture-images can all agree with one verbal description and still be wildly different from each other.

After viewing and discussing the concept art, we all finally agreed upon an one art drawing of what vortex we liked best. But even then we were not finished. see, the final version would live as a moving live action element, not as a single frame upon a piece of paper. So, the next step was to get examples from other movies where things like this had been done. I suggested referencing the third HARRY POTTER movie when the death eaters sucked away at Harry Potter’s soul. Adam and Kay suggested a movie from the 80’s called: THE ARRIVAL – where a very similar event occurred. I think it was Jeph Loeb who brought up JUMANJI – when, at the end, the whole Jumanji world was sucked back into the book. I personally thought this was the best reference. In JUMANJI everything was dissipated into tiny particles of matter and then sucked down as if down a whirlpool. But then financial reality came to bear. A JUMAJI-like technique would require numerous 3-D objects to be created so that they could be digitally destroyed. The limited amount of time in postproduction was also a factor. Also, the director’s initial shot list included 30 to 40 cuts of this event. This also caused a general hue and cry and we finally agreed that we would stick to a 2-D vortex and that we would limit the total number of shots where the vortex was seen to about 25.

For the key sequence, to support the idea that the vortex would be in danger of sucking 3 of our main cast members into oblivion - we agreed the actors would all be hung on rigs and wind machines would be blown and the camera would be shaken and hopefully that would all work out.

In post, though, we were disappointed with the first few rounds of the vortex effect. It just wasn’t enough. We added digital objects flowing thorough the foreground of all the actors close-ups - even when there wasn’t a black hole visible. We even added the idea of the floorboards being ripped up digitally. When all was said and done I think we have about 65 visual effects.

And, even after I must confess that I'm not sure we got the best effect imaginable for this event. Just the best one we could afford in the time we had. That is the nature of TV, and even though HEROES is big TV - time and money are still our masters. Having said that, though, the story is of the Vortex is well told and what is happening is clear. That, in and of itself, is huge! So it's all good.

Subjectivity pt 2: The cocoons – I won’t go into as much detail as I did on the last piece – but this was an equally subjective concept. The writers informed us that Suresh was going to capture and entomb a number of people in cocoons on the walls and ceilings of his loft. Again numerous questions practical and conceptual immediately came up... What do these cocoons look like? Are they clear and luminous? Fibrous and thick? Viscous and bloody? Slimy? Dry? How do they function? (Both within the story and practically.) Can we hang our actors in them safely? How long will it take to rig the actors into them? What about stunt men/women? What about mannequins? How to rig them safely? How many are there? How do we photograph them? How can we see the actors in them and still feel like they’re trapped? How long will it take to make them once they are designed? How much will they cost? These questions went on and on while the clock of production deadline ticked louder and louder. In the end - all this is well and good - but the biggest question on everyone’s minds was never asked or answered – How and from where does Suresh make the goo that makes up the cocoon material???

Another note - It was fun for me to see Jack Coleman and Zach Quinto working together as partners. There is a short scene where they’re driving in the car talking and arguing over the radio. This scene was out of the episode for a while, because the early cuts were long time-wise – but in the end Tim Kring really wanted it in. He felt strongly that these little character moments add as much as any big action or special effects. So we found the time by trimming other things - little scenes within the episode.

The last thing I would like to comment on is the scene where Hiro kills Ando in the bar. I really liked this scene in the script. I like Hiro and Ando. And this really comes out of nowhere in a great way. What always blows me away about HEROES is that this kind of a scene - that would usually end any other show – It’s a big “What the f#@*?!?!?!" That would be a great “TO BE CONTINUED” moment on any show! But Nooooo…. Not here. Here it’s just the end of act 4. We still had to introduce 2 new villains, kill half our cast and paralyze Cristine Rose. Now that’s a real what-the f#@*?!?!?!

And now onto the pictures....

DIRECTOR ANTHONY HEMINGWAY (A MYSTERIOUS BABY FLOATS NEARBYE)

WRITER ADAM ARMUS WITH SENDHIL RAMAMURTHY AND DANIA RAMIREZ

JACK COLEMAN AND ANDRE ROYO GOING ROUND LIFE'S MERRY-GO-ROUND

"CLOSER... HAYDEN CLOSER...CLOSER...CLOSE ENOUGH."

"OKAY WHOSE GONNA CLEAN THIS UP?"

A MERRY GROUP

ALI BLOODY ALI - PART 2

CRISTINE ROSE - THE QUEEN IN HER CASTLE

D.P. CHARLIE LIEBERMAN REFLECTS ME BACK TO ME

DANIA AND SENDHIL GO OVER THE SCRIPT

HAYDEN & JACK ON SET

MALCOLM MCDOWELL AND BREA GRANT RELAX ON THE SET OF A 60'S TALKSHOW

MALCOLM MCDOWELL AND WRITER KAY FOSTER

SENDHIL DOWN IN THE DUMPS IN NYC'S CENTRAL PARK

SENDHIL MANFULLY HAULS A DUMMY AROUND

SPOOKY SYLAR

ZACH QUINTO RIGGED TO FLY

SEXY COMPANY MAN ZACH QUINTO

ZACH REFLECTS ME BACK TO ME

ZACH ADMIRES COMPANY MAN HE'S BECOME

FROM EPISODE 4 - ZACH AS CHEF - "ALL HAIL HIM"

FROM EPISODE 4 - ME 'N WHITE-EYED ZACH

FROM EPISODE 4 - WRITER ARON ELI COLEITE AND ALI LARTER

BEEMAN'S BLOG - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 4 - “I AM BECOME DEATH”

2008-10-06T17:59:00.000-07:00

(SPOILERS SOMETIMES REACHING A MAGNITUDE OF 3.4 ARE CONTAINED WITHIN – PROCEED WITH CAUTION)

Sorry faithful fans -- It's been a bit crazy around here of late. I'm currently directing episode 10 and 13 at the same time - episode 12 has two days left of shooting - episode 11 is complete - episode 14 starts tomorrow and episode 15 is prepping hard and starts shooting next week. We're bringing on a third crew to complete some of the work and the schedule changes, not just daily, but minute-by-minute... Suffice it to say, my head's spinning and therefore this blog will be a photo-heavy experience!

Tonight's episode was written by Aron Coleite and directed by David Von Ancken... ONWARD

A HUG FROM THE BIG GUY CAN TAKE ITS TOLL

ALI LARTER AND ADRIAN PASDAR ON SET

ALI LARTER AND SCRIPT SUPERVISOR VALERIE NORMAN

BACKSTAGE - ADRIAN REGALES THE CAST WITH ONE OF HIS MANY TALES

THE BANK SCENE & THE "FROZEN TIME" RIGS - THIS ONE'S FROM EP.3 - BUT I LIKE IT

EPISODE 3 AGAIN WITH ZACH AND DORK-TASTIC JACK C.

FUTURE PETER AND WENDI ALLISON - THE LADY WHO APPLIES HIS SCAR

GREG GRUNBERG AND HIS NEW DOG "SPARKY"

INSERT YOUR OWN CAPTION HERE

JACK 'N ASHLEY

ME 'N JACK COLEMAN CHILLAXING BETWEEN TAKES (BUT WAIT... WHO'S THAT IN THE B.G.?!?!?)

MILO IS STRAPPED DOWN BY PROPMAN JAMES CLARK - PETER'S PHOTO DOUBLE CAN BE SEEN IN THE BACKGROUND

PETER AND ADRIAN

REHEARSAL ON SET, WRITER ARON COLEITE WATCHES (REAR LEFT)

SENDHIL PRACTICES THE ANCIENT MARTIAL ART WHATTHEFU......

SENDHIL READY TO JUICE UP

THE GREAT MALCOLM MCDOWELL

THE PREZ AND THE FIRST LADY

TWO GREAT TASTES THAT TASTE GREAT TOGETHER

ZACHARY QUINTO AND MISS HAYDEN PANETTIERE

MMMMMMMM......SCALES

ME 'N ADRIAN ON SET

BEEMAN’S BLOG - SEASON 3 - EPISODE 3

2008-09-29T11:37:00.000-07:00

“ONE OF US, ONE OF THEM”
(WARNING: SPOILERS ARE CONTAINED WITHIN. SPOILERS MAY BE HAZERDOUS TO YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE)

Episode three of our third season, was, from my point of view, a hard birth. I’m happy with the final result, but the process getting there was tough.

The director of tonight’s episode was Sergio Mimica-Gezzan. Interestingly, he was Steven Spielberg’s Assistant Director for many years on some of Spielberg’s biggest movies. He made the transition to directing on “Taken” 6 years ago. If you want to check out his impressive resume try this link… Sergio Mimica-Gezzan.

He came recommended to us from execs at NBC – he had directed successful episodes of “Battlestar Galactica”, and I had also seen the pilot he directed for the TNT network show “Saving Grace” starring Holly Hunter. We hired him last year to direct our 13th episode of season 2. He was halfway in the middle of production on it, when the writer’s strike hit and we shut down. Much of what Sergio directed ended up on the cutting room floor, or as DVD extras for the Season 2 DVD package. My personal experience with Sergio is that he is an extremely focused and intense guy with a great eye.

The writer of tonight’s episode was Joe Pokaski. He is a producer on the show, who came up from being Tim Kring’s assistant on “Crossing Jordan.” Notably Joe is also the writer of the current Marvel comic book series “Secret Invasion: The Inhumans” and “Ultimate Fantastic Four.” He also wrote many of the HEROES online comics that have been assembled in the highly successful HEROES HARDBACK GRAPHIC NOVEL.

THE HEROES GRAPHIC NOVEL

The first draft of the script, from a production standpoint, was very big. It had the bank robbery more-or- less as it currently exists. It also had a Claire/Meredith scene, which currently occurs in a cargo container. This scene originally took place in a deserted warehouse where Claire was surrounded by fire. The Hiro/Ando/Daphne scene, which currently occurs in a German movie theatre, originally took place on a train traveling through India, complete with Hiro and Ando on the roof of the train and Ando nearly falling out the side of a baggage car.

Personally, I loved the first draft of this script. It was a great, incredibly exciting read. I loved the way the bank robbery was written, and the idea that Sylar was to become HRG’s new partner blew my mind. The entire component parts were great – but, collectively, it was also, obviously, too big to be affordable. Beyond that though, the choices we producer’s faced of how to get the budget down became very subjective. The bank robbery was the obvious thing that had to stay because it drove the central story and the key recurring stories for the series– For me, the scripted moment where time freezes and future Peter appears was a key event (it sent a chill down my spine when I first read it.) So the Claire story and the Hiro story were what had to be attacked.

The prep process was odd because, it felt like, at every turn, whenever we attempted to make something cheaper, it either seemed to stay financially neutral or, ironically, became more expensive.

For instance, when the decision was made to shift from a burning warehouse to a metal shipping container – it sure seemed that that would reduce the scope… But then conversations started up about how to create an effect for the walls to appear to be glowing molten hot. Those conversations evolved until, at one point, we were going to create an entirely 3-D greenscreen environment of glowing metal walls. That lasted a few days until reality set in and it became clear that that would cost more, and take longer to shoot than the original warehouse idea. We backed off the digital environment and the glowing walls and just decided that there would be a couple of key shots of Meredith’s fire going up the walls and digital heat waves would be generated throughout to sell the heat.

As far as the Hiro/Ando/Daphne scene – we explored two plans. We needed two railroad cars – a passenger car and a cargo car – as well as a roof. One plan was to find existing trains and re-dress them and shoot them on location with green screen out the windows. But the cost of going on location and re-dressing was prohibitive. So we explored building the two train cars on set surrounded by blue screen. This was also too expensive.

Many discussions were held and we came to realize that this story could take place anywhere. The writer’s wanted it to be in an exotic foreign country, and the story had to be containable enough that the Haitian’s power would shut down Hiro and Daphne’s powers. The location department was sent off to come back with exotic-looking locations, which Joe Pokaski could write to. They came back with several. My favorite was a mosque that looked like it could be in an Arabic country. There was also a beautiful library – which would have been set in London. But the German moviehaus was what the writers selected – and from that choice stemmed the fun choice to have the Buster Keaton movies playing in the background.

Interestingly – the mysterious woman who is exchanging the briefcase with the Haitian is Sendhil Ramamurthy (i.e. Suresh’s) real-life wife Olga Sosnovska. They met in London, where she was a star on the British television series MI-5.

There were changes made to reduce budget in the bank scenes as well. Most noteably – at first Jesse’s power was Earthquake-stomp (Like Gorgon of the Inhumans from the Fantastic Four comics) But this power implied cracking floors and walls and all manner of damage that would be expensive to produce. At the last minute we changed him to a Sonic scream (like DC’s Black Canary) – this was easier to accomplish but was a bummer too us because we already had Echo from the online webisodes with sonic power – Oh well…..

There’s one last thing worth talking about: Originally episode 3.2 (the episode I directed) ended with the scene where Angela brought Bridgett to Sylar and “fed” her to him. Ironically, that scene is, literally, the only scene we kept from the two incomplete episodes shot last year. Double-ironically Sergio directed that scene in the never-completed episode 2.13. Triple Ironically – the only new material added to that pre-existing scene was two close-ups – one of Angela and one of Sylar – where Angela spelled out “I AM your mother.” And I directed this. So, in the end, Sergio’s material ended up in his episode and my material ended up in mine.

Episode 3.3 originally opened with Tracy exploring her freeze-o power on the rose, it then went to Nathan in his office asking after Tracy, then it went to Angela introducing HRG to his new partner Sylar. This section of the show ended with Peter and with villains arriving at the bank to rob it. For some reason, even though every scene was in-and-of-itself good, it felt like the show began in an un-focused way.

Katherine Pope, the president of Universal, was the one who came up with the idea of ending episode 3.2 with “I am your mother” and shifting the Bridgette part of the scene into this episode.

At first, from a selfish point-of-view, this bummed me out. When episode 3.2 ended with Bridgette screaming and Angela stalking down the Level 5 hallway – I used to imagine fans leaping out of their chairs screaming “OMG this show is SO F%#d up!!!”

But, on the other hand, when I saw episode 3.3 with the Bridgette scene shifted into it as the opening, the whole episode seemed re-focused and clarified. It’s always amazing to me what editing and juxtaposition of scenes can do… Without the new scene, this episode felt like an episode about Peter and the Villains at the bank robbery. With this new opening it became an episode about HRG/Sylar and Angela. It fact, the whole episode, became balanced (as if by design) with both the first and last scene of the show involving Sylar and Angela in Sylar’s cell.

Now a brief interview with writer Joe Pokaski:

GREG BEEMAN: So, Joe, where are you from?

JOE POKASKI: I grew up back east in a town near Boston, Massachusetts.

GB: And you went to Tufts University?

JP: Yes. With Sendhil Ramamurthy.

GB: Really?

JP: Yes. We were in the same fraternity together at Tufts.

GB: Did you have anything to do with Sendhil being on HEROES?

JP: I don’t think so. I recommended him for a part on “Crossing Jordan.” Which was the Indian friend of someone on the show, and I think he read for the casting people. But that script changed and that role went away. So either they knew him from their files or it was a coincidence.

GB: And you, famously, were Tim Kring’s assistant.

JP: Yes… famously.

GB: So how did you get from a small town near Boston to being a writer/producer on HEROES?

JP: Well, mostly I was just a TV fan. I loved television and shows like “Cheers” and “Mash” and “Quantum Leap” and I dreamed of being a television writer. But that didn’t feel like a job a real person could have. It felt more like “astronaut” -- just a fantasy job that regular people couldn’t do.

GB: Right. I remember you telling me that when you were a kid and you first saw “Alf,” that you though t television had peaked.

JP: That’s true. I was eight and I remember thinking that TV couldn’t get any better than that – a Muppet from outer space. I’m still waiting to be proven wrong.

GB: So what did you do then?

JP: At Tufts I studied to be a lawyer. But, I quickly knew that that was never going to happen. So when I graduated I went into advertising in Boston, because it felt like that, at least, had a little creativity.

GB: But you kept dreaming the impossible dream…

JP: Yes. I suppose the real game changer was meeting my future wife, Jessica. I met her and fell for her and told her my dream and she didn't laugh. Quite the opposite. So I went back to school. To get my Graduate degree in Television Production at Boston University.

GB: Then what?

JP: Then my girlfriend at the time, agreed to move out with me to Los Angeles to become a Television writer. She didn’t disagree loud enough, and so we moved.

GB: And how many high level contacts did you have upon arriving here?

JP: Exactly one. A guy named Mike Daley who worked on Crossing Jordan. He was a friend of a friend of Jessica's (who was my girlfriend at the time) co-worker. In fact, it was on the night that I was going to ask her to marry me, and we were already planning to move, and I had the ring in my pocket, and I was so nervous, and we were out at a restaurant and her friend was saying “When you get there you should call Mike.” I could barely hear her, I was so nervous…

GB: So you didn’t even really know Mike?

JP: No. Now he’s one of my best friends - but at the time I didn’t. He was very helpful though and he promised me that as soon as any job came open on “Crossing Jordan” he would let me know. And he did. A production assistant job came open and I got it.

GB: How old were you at this time?

JP: 28.

GB: And how was that experience?

JP: Being a P.A. at 28? It sucked. I felt miserable. I had cut my salary in half and I had to get coffee for people. But I was there in the middle of what I’d always dreamed of, and I met a lot of incredibly cool and talented people – like Tim Kring, Damon Lindelof, and Aron Coleite.

GB: And how did you go from P.A to Tim’s Assistant?

JP: Well, his old assistant left and Tim asked me to fill in at his desk until he could replace him. And after awhile it just became clear that he was never going to do that and that I had become his assistant. This took awhile.

GB: And when did you become a staff writer on “Crossing Jordan” ?

JP: I never did. Tim, graciously, asked me to write a freelance episode. And that was the first Television script that I had produced.

GB: So you never were on staff before HEROES?

JP: No.

GB: So, you’ve only recently begun to really live your dream?

JP: Uh, I guess. Thanks a lot.

GB: No, I didn’t mean it like that. I think it’s good. Perfect, really. So tell me about your involvement with the pilot of HEROES?

JP: Well, Tim was thinking of the idea. And, as any good writer does, he was excited and he wanted feedback and input. He went to Aron first who was famous for being an avid comic book reader. Tim really didn’t know the conventions of comic books and he wanted, at first, Aron’s feedback and later mine.

GB: And…?

JP: We were blown away by the whole idea. We thought it was awesome. Then, when it began to be clear that it was going to become a pilot and more than that… We just volunteered to do anything Tim needed. Whenever he was too busy to do anything related to HEROES we stepped in and helped.

GB: What’s an example of this?

JP: Well, Tim’s mantra at the time was “What’s next?” Where would these characters go? What would the stories actually be beyond the pilot? So Aron and I worked together to think about ideas for the characters and stories – a lot of which became elements and aspects of episodes 2 though 5 of the first season.

GB: Now you are also writing comic books. ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR and SECRET INVASION: THE INHUMANS? Did Jeph Loeb facilitate this?

JP: Absolutely. Jeph is a great and very big-hearted guy. And when the writer’s strike happened he came to me and to Aron and asked if we’d like to keep feeding our families by writing comics. I said “Sure. I love feeding my family.” And the people at Marvel somehow trusted him enough to just let it happen.

GB: So, which impresses you more? Writing for HEROES or writing FANTASTIC FOUR?

JP: Wow. Now you’re really putting me on the spot…

GB: Because I’ll tell you I’m pretty impressed with the latter. As you know, my main dream in life, up until about age 17 was to be a comic book artist. Unlike you, I failed in this dream - and I regret it to this day.

JP: Well, twelve-year-old me is pretty wowed that I’m writing FANTASTIC FOUR. But, truthfully, HEROES is so amazing and exciting and there are so many talented people on it that have become like a family to me – it’s pretty hard not to be impressed to be on HEROES.

So there you have it kids... The lesson here is one that I always believe in and frequently promote – YOU TOO CAN ACHIEVE YOUR DREAMS – AS LONG AS YOU HOLD ON TO THEM AND WORK HARD TO ALLOW THEM TO HAPPEN!!!!

That’s enough. I have to direct episode 13 in the morning – so I’m knocking off for tonight. See ya next week… Until then…

THIS WEEK'S BEHIND THE SCENES PHOTOGRAPHY:

SERGIO DIRECTS THE CAST

WRITER JOE POKASKI – JUST THRILLED TO BE HERE

SERGIO STUDIES HIS NOTES

THE VISUAL EFFECTS MEETING – D.P. CHARLIE LIEBERMAN (BACK) AND ASSISTANT DIRECTOR ROBERT SCOTT (FOREGROUND)

THE VISUAL EFFECTS MEETING – JOE POKASKI UP FRONT AND LEAD VISUAL EFFECTS SUPERVISOR ERIC GRENAUDIER IN BACK

GREG GRUNBERG IN CHATSWORTH/AFRICA – “WHOA - IT’S WEIRD TO HAVE GIANT PAINTINGS OF ME ON THESE ROCKS”

GREG GRUNBERG AND NTARE MWINE AS USUTU IN CHATTSAFRICA

SERGIO AND JOE IN “AFRICA”

BLAKE SHIELDS AS “FLINT” ONE OF OUR “VILLIANS”

ADRIAN PASDAR ON SET

ALI LARTER ON SET

SERGIO AND ZACHARY QUINTO

CRISTINE ROSE AND JACK COLEMAN

SERGIO, JOE AND CHARLIE ON SET – LIVIN’ THE DREAM!

ME – LURKING ON “LEVEL 5”

IN A STAGED RE-ENACTMENT OF REAL EVENTS - JOE AND I GO OVER SOME NOTES

THIS ONE’S FROM LAST WEEK, BUT I LIKE IT – ALI LARTER AND “GREATEST AMERICAN HERO” WILLIAM KATT ON SET