January 25, 2007 - Action!

Today was probably one of the most exciting days I’ve had, so far. Things were slow before lunch. But, while I was eating, Kate called me out, because Marsha Norman (a writer for the show and the woman who wrote The Color Purple) was going to set and she’d asked her to show me around. Of course, I’d already been there several times and met many of the staffers, but Marsha was really nice to give me a tour and introduce everybody, so I played along. We went into one of the swing sets and watched as a re-shoot (a rare occurrence) took place. She had one of the sound people give me a set of headphones, so I could hear what was going on.

After they crew finished filming that scene, Marsha took me to the main/permanent set (the squad room), where Kathryn Erbe and Eric Bogosian had gone to rehearse. Marsha informally introduced me to them. Vincent D’Onofrio joined them a short while later. They practiced their lines from the sides (parts of the script, containing only the scenes to be shot that day) that’d been printed the previous night. Then, they went to their trailers to memorize lines and their “2^nd Set” (can’t remember if this is the correct term, but they’re actors paid to stand-in for them while the crew prepares sound, lighting, and blocking) came in.

Meanwhile, it was break time, so I joined the crew and had some food from the buffet table that’d been set-up. I was still a bit hungry, as I didn’t get to finish my lunch. Within a few minutes, everybody had finished prepping and the actors returned to set. I watched, as a certain scene was filmed a dozen or so times. There were a few periods where filming ceased, because the actors found the blocking, as scripted, created some inconsistencies. A few takes later, they came up with an acceptable solution and everything went smoothly from there forward.

About 4 o’clock, they’d stopped shooting for a few minutes, in order to move to a different scene. I figured I should probably head back to the office and see if they had anything for me to do up there. Warren had the novelist/writer from the other day back to discuss Acts III & IV, so I sat-in and observed. Carmen took notes and, as with last time, I created scene note cards for Warren to put on his cork board. At 7:30, they’d hammered out the last detail for the episode, adjusted the sequence of events to their liking, and called it a night.