Month: July 2004

The DGA reports that TV drama series producers have notched a 61% improvement in delivering scripts on time.

The percentage of on-time scripts for single-camera one-hour dramas had increased to 61% for the 2003-04 season, up from 47% in the previous season. The DGA also said the proportion of scripts delivered more than two days late had been cut to 23% from 41% and the number coming in five to 15 days late dropped to 8% from 20%.

By “on time,” the DGA means having a script ready for the first day of pre-production, aka “prep.” Episodic TV directors have seven days to scout locations, cast actors, etc. before beginning the actual shooting of their episodes. It doesn’t seem like a lot of time when compared to features… but in TV shows, the majority of actors are already in place (the regular weekly cast), the major sets are already built (the standing sets, like the hospital in ER), and the production team is already a well-oiled machine. But if a director is new to the show, a week can seem like precious little time… even to a director who has worked on the show before, it can be tight.

It’s even tighter when the script isn’t ready for prep. Not only is the director screwed… so are the location scouts, the wardrobe department, the production designer etc… everyone is pressed for time and can’t possibly do their best work.

But mostly, it’s terribly unfair to directors. Because when the director delivers their show, and its mediocre, nobody at the network or studio is saying “yeah, well, he only had four days to prep.” The director gets the blame… and everyone conveniently forgets he was sabotaged from day one.

And I’m saying all this as a producer who just delivered a script one day late for prep.

Guild said the writers for eight series — “Star Trek: Enterprise,” “Law & Order,” “The District,” “JAG,” “Judging Amy,” “She Spies,” “Hack” and “Strong Medicine” — delivered all scripts on time in 2003-04. “Six Feet Under” was the only series to deliver all its scripts on time in 2002-03.

Guild also singled out “Ed” and “The Gilmore Girls” as not delivering a single script on time and pointed to five other shows — “Charmed,” “Everwood,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “NYPD Blue” and “The Practice” — as delivering more than 70% of their scripts late.

The number one priority of any showrunner, I believe, is the make sure a shooting script is ready on the first day of prep. Ideally, the teleplay should be in well before prep, so all the department heads … casting, production design, wardrobe, etc… have plenty of the opportunity to do their best work and to be thinking about the episode even before the director arrives. You get better guest stars for the parts if the casting director has two weeks instead of one to find the right actors for the role…if the location scout has an extra week to find best places to shoot… if the set designer has the extra week to create interesting sets. You get the idea.

There are times when events beyond a producer’s control make it impossible to deliver a script on the first day of prep… one of your stars takes ill, a storm makes it impossible to shoot an “outdoor” episode outdoors, the network re-arranges air order of the episodes at the last minute, etc. Inevitably, on every series I’ve been on, at least one or two scripts are delivered late.

It’s quite common on the first season of a show for scripts to come in late. Everything seems to be conspiring against delivering the scripts on time.. a late-pickup from the network, last-minute staffing and especially, the creative process as a show “finds itself” while being battered from all sides by notes from the network, the studio, the stars. Plus, it takes some time for everyone to learn how to work together, to discover the unique production problems inherent in your show. It can take a while for a new series to get settled, creatively and from a basic production stand-point.

But after a show has been on a season or two, there’s really no excuse for 70% of the scripts being delivered late. “NYPD Blue,” “Charmed,” and “Law & Order SVU” have been on the air for years… with relatively little staff turnover. You’d think they’d have it down by now. I can’t imagine what their excuse is. (And in the case of “SVU,” they aren’t waiting around for a back-nine pick-up, they already have a multi-year renewal, they can bank scripts well in advance)

The lateness of “Gilmore Girls” and “The Practice,” I would guess, has more to do with the fact that most of the scripts are written or rewritten by one showrunner (ie David Kelley on “The Practice”) who is stretched too thin. This, to me, is a big argument against the “writer-auteur” in episodic television… unless, like British TV, all the scripts are written well before production begins.

I’m glad to see there’s been a concerted effort in the industry to deliver scripts in time for prep — it’s good for everybody.

I’m a big fan of Discovery’s AMERICAN CASINO reality show… and one of the major “characters’ is Michael Tata, the nasty, back-stabbing, scheming 33-year-old vp of hotel operations at Green Valley Ranch Casino. Today, Variety reports that Tata was found dead in his home. Now there’s a twist the producers never imagined.

Tata was often shown feuding with hotel manager Ninya Perna as they sought to maintain the hotel’s high standards for VIP guests. Production of the series is ongoing, and the sixth of the 13-episode run will air Friday. Discovery wasn’t sure if or how it would pay tribute to Tata in an upcoming episode.

If Tata was murdered, and if this was a scripted TV show, Perna would be the obvious suspect, but my vote goes to the mousy exec Tata humiliated in a meeting by calling him “a human toilet who lets everybody shit on him.”

The staff of the Green Valley Ranch has hardly come off well in this series….the casino execs would have to be insane to participate in a second season of this show on their property, especially after this. But the big question is, if the ratings spike, will other reality shows knock-off their most-hated “characters?”

Many years ago, when I was a supervising producer on Seaquest, we had a wildly enthusiastic story editor on staff who was justifiably frustrated by the scientifici silliness of our show. He was Naren Shankar, and I was thrilled to read in Variety of his recent success…

“CSI” scribe Naren Shankar has been upped to exec producer of the top-rated crime drama, inking a new seven-figure, multi-year deal in the process.
Shankar has been with “CSI” the past two seasons, most recently as co-exec producer. Deal with CBS, Alliance Atlantis and Jerry Bruckheimer Television is expected to keep the scribe with the show through May 2007.

“CSI” exec producer-showrunner Carol Mendelsohn — already at work on the fifth season of the Thursday-night blockbuster — said Shankar fits in well with “all of us on the show, who are preoccupied with death and murder. And he brought his own warped sensibility with him to the show.”Shankar also adds something else to “CSI” not usually associated with drama scribes — a Ph.D. from Cornell U. in applied physics. Scribe started out his showbiz career as a WGA intern and, later, a science consultant on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

So you can imagine what it was like for him writing on a show where the characters included a talking dolphin and a guy with gills. Still, he gave it his all… doing his best to make the show as good as it could be… against insurmountable obstacles (like, for instance, the concept of the show). Naren wrote arguably the best episode of the season, “Good Soldiers,” which revealed that goody-goody Capt. Bridger (Roy Scheider) was, in the past, the equivalent of a Nazi concentration camp guard who turned his back on horrific abuses.

It’s great to see nice guys… and friends of mine…doing so well!