Thursday, 24 March 2005
4:20pm
| H |
Yesterday was the first day of filming for the last episode of the season. It was also the last day they were going to be filming any scenes at the "school" and thus they won't be needing any "students" anymore. So in a way, it was the last day of school for us all... assuming the show gets renewed for a second season (signs seem to be pointing to yes on this one though), I probably won't be seeing a lot of peple for the next 3 or 4 months or so, while the show is on hiatus. I'm sure a lot of people I'll never see again. But I've had a great time, learned a lot of things, and met a lot of interesting people over the last two months.
I had never even heard of the show before when I answered an ad on craigslist looking for people wanting to work as extras on the show. The tuesday after the first time I worked on the show, they happened to be rerunning the pilot episode, so I decided to watch it, so I could see exactly what it was that I was working on. I ended up getting hooked on the show right there. I don't know how the producers would feel about it, but I went out and illegally downloaded all of the episodes of Veronica Mars that had aired up to that point and watched all 12 or 13 over the course of two nights... that's how good this show is!
At first I wasn't sure if they'd ever call me back again, but about a week later, they did. It was another location shoot at a high school, for the same episode... which will actually be airing this coming tuesday, the 29th of March at 9PM! Soon after that, I was called in to work again, but this time it was at their studios. I was pretty excited because I just wanted to see things like how they would do the lighting and whatnot when they were in a place where they had complete control over everything (unlike when shooting on location).
I gotta say, it was pretty darned neat that first time. All these things I saw in the TV show... and I was like... really there, man! haha. It was very cool being able to see everything up close... and touch them as well (I'm a very tactile person I think... I just love to enjoy feeling the way things feel!). It was very interesting seeing what was real and what is fake. A lot of the stuff that looks like granite or concrete is actually styrofoam or fiberglass. Poles that seem to be made of PVC pipe or something underneath the paint... finding out that a certain school bus is always parked in a certain spot because it disguises the fact that there's nothing behind that wall on the "building" next to it (as well as hiding other parts of the studio lot from view!!).
It was also quite interesting to me to see exatly what sets they had on that soundstage, versus what they shoot on location. All I can say is that the people who do the set decorating on this show are extremely good at their jobs because there were a number of locations that I swore looked too realistic or just too... well... lived in to be a fake set on a soundstage. But perhaps the craziest of all was knowing that for the apartment set actually has a section of the exterior which is an exact replica of the location they used for some exterior shots of the apartment which is actually a small, ocean cliffside hotel. But all of the interior scenes for this apartment are shot on a soundstage at the studio! It was pretty trippy watching an episode where I knew in one shot they were standing at the location in Point Loma, but in the next shot I knew in my mind they were instantly transported to a soundstage in Kearny Mesa.
TV shows in general have been a lot more difficult to watch, particularly in scenes with lots of extras in them. I can't help but picture all the stuff that is going on just outside of the frame and behind the camera. Just crazy insanity... an orchestra of chaos going on, just outside the field of view of people working, directing other people, managing equipment, whatever. Not to mention the fact that seeing a particular camera shot being able to say, "I know exactly what the guy holding the camera looks like" was kind of a new thing for me.
m seemed pretty excited about me working on this show. In fact, right after I posted my last update where I didn't even mention any specifics other than being used as a high school student, she emailed asked if I was working on Veronica Mars. My intial reaction was something like, "You've actually heard of it??" It was actually her zeal about the show that convinced me to actually make an effort to watch it, and you know if she thinks a show is good, it must be pretty good, after all, if anyone out there is watching like every TV show on the air right now... I've been feeding her some inside dirt and also trading theories on various plot lines with her ever since.
Another kind of sad thing is that we weren't allowed to use cameras anywhere while working on the show... so I have nothing to remember the experience by realyl... well then again I've been in pretty much every episode since the first one I worked on, so if you keep a sharp eye out for the background people, you just might see me every Tuesday night, haha. Still, I wouldn't mind having some nice high resolution photos of myself and some friends hanging out in the halls of "Neptune High School" -- actually, many such photos exist as the wardrobe people were constantly taking photos of us for continuity purposes... too bad I didn't think to try to get my hands on some while I could, haha.
Anyways, I'm sure I'll have more things to say as the various episodes I worked on get on the air (and I don't want to be printing any real spoilers or anything on my site). And I'm sure that after the next episode airs, I'll be posting plenty of screen shots with arrows pointing to me, ahahaha.