by Bob Levy
The opinions of many people, many of them powerful, egotistical and confident of their tastes and opinions, are involved in pilot casting, and the process can become unwieldy and political. A network president once pleaded with a very powerful writer/creator on a pilot I produced to cast a pop star in a lead role that the writer was completely convinced the singer was unqualified for, and the writer/showrunner succeeded in deflecting the network president’s pressure. Another time a network president flat out refused to cast the producers’ and director’s top choice for a lead role, and then finally, after days of pleading from the creator and studio president, relented. That actor went on to become a breakout star in the role in what became a hit show. To borrow the expression of a writer I cast a pilot with, pilot casting is often one huge “fustercluck.”
By this point in pilot prep the producers and director have probably begun shuttling back and forth between casting and other responsibilities in LA and the pilot production locale, where they scout locations with the line producer and oversee local casting (roles with one or two lines that aren’t worth the cost of traveling an actor from LA) and crew hiring.
While prep continues on multiple fronts, the director creates a “look-book” in consultation with her producers and delivers it first to the studio, then to the network. All the parties involved in a pilot at this point have agreed upon the script and the cast; what they don’t know is what the pilot will look and feel like. The producers and director want to avoid surprising their network and studio execs once production begins, and so use a look-book to give them as clear an idea as they can of how they intend to spend the network and studio’s money.
The director typically finds images (often simply borrowed from the internet or magazines) of the lighting and film quality the cinematographer will try to capture, actual photos of the locations that have been chosen and borrowed images of how they’ll be decorated (Figures 2.2 and 2.3) and costume fitting photos of the actors to show the style of wardrobe to be used for each lead role. Hair and makeup test photos might be included, or inspiration photos that the hair and makeup departments have found. First the studio and then the network president and development execs review the look-book and deliver feedback.
FIGURE 2.2 The Vampire Diaries pilot look-book page illustrating the location intended for Elena’s house, a private residence in Vancouver, British Columbia. Interior photos depict rooms prior to art direction and set decoration to give network and studio executives a sense of the layout and architectural details of the rooms. Photo by Marcos Siega. Reproduced with permission from Warner Bros. Television. All rights reserved.
FIGURE 2.3 The Vampire Diaries pilot look-book page showing the location for the Salvatore brothers’ house on a farm in Langley, British Columbia. Interiors for both the Salvatore house and Elena’s house were recreated as sets on soundstages in Decatur, Georgia, once the pilot was ordered to series, and the entire production moved to Atlanta for the duration of its run. Photo by Marcos Siega. Reproduced with permission from Warner Bros. Television. All rights reserved.
The final and quite fraught step of prep is typically a table-read, where the entire cast gathers for the first time in a large conference room at the studio offices in LA or sometimes in a hotel or temporary office in the city of pilot production, and the producers, director, casting director, line producer (if it’s held in the city of production), network and studio presidents (if it’s held in LA), along with their development execs and casting execs, gather to watch the pilot script read by the cast from beginning to end. The actors sit at a large table in civilian attire. The writer/showrunner welcomes everyone, expresses his excitement and optimism at their joint project, then turns the room over to the director who reads the script’s shot description as the actors perform the dialogue to the room.
The table-read is fraught because, while it’s invariably exciting and celebratory, it can also be a moment of danger for the writer and actors. Immediately following the table-read the cast is thanked and dismissed, the network execs huddle together in one corner, the studio execs huddle in another corner, and when they’re ready a small contingent representing the two companies, usually the two presidents and their development execs, sit down with the producers and director and deliver a final round of notes. If the table read has not gone well, drastic script notes may be delivered and actors may be fired.
Development executives are skilled at imagining how scenes written on a page will play when brought to their feet by actors and directors, but sometimes, hard as they’ve worked to develop the best possible pilot script, hearing the entire episode read aloud by actual actors reveals weaknesses no one noticed or might have only silently suspected. The network president has greenlighted only the strongest pilot scripts to production, and yet sometimes the table read on the eve of production demonstrates deficiencies in the storytelling no one foresaw.
Likewise, rigorous as the casting process is, mistakes are made and occasionally discovered at the table read. Sometimes the table read is used to reintroduce a simmering disagreement amongst the large contingent of people who share a deciding role in casting the pilot, and the intensity of this moment can be leveraged to request or demand a change. (Did I mention the term “fustercluck?”)
If casting changes are made at this late date just about everyone involved feels a pang of sadness for the actor who has come so far and gotten so close, only to receive a call (frequently the night before boarding a flight) that they won’t be joining the pilot after all. (The fired actor will be paid his full fee for the pilot episode, but obviously won’t earn any of the potential years of episodic acting fees and residuals if the pilot is successful and goes to series.) If a network fires an actor at the last minute they often have a backup candidate in mind, possibly a runner-up from the network test, and the change is made swiftly. The casting director relays the sad news to the actor’s reps who then make the painful call and let down their client as gently as possible.
Painful as it is in the moment, most actors who are good enough to be cast as series regulars in pilots tend to have careers that survive and thrive despite the setback. Sarah Silverman was fired after the table read of one of her first pilots. Her career took a different direction and has thrived ever since. In TV development, as often in life, things tend to find a natural equilibrium.
Step 8: Pilot Production
Following the table read, the cast, producers and director travel to the city of production and begin shooting the pilot. One-hour drama pilots shoot anywhere from 10–20 days, half-hour single camera pilots shoot in seven–eight days, and multi-camera half-hour comedy pilots rehearse for six–seven days and then shoot in front of a live studio audience during one evening on a soundstage on a studio lot in LA.
If the pilot shoots on location (as most single-camera pilots do), the network and studio development executives and studio physical production executives might visit for a day or two or might remain in their offices in LA and screen dailies, which they stream via password-protected websites each day following production. The development execs may call the producers on location and deliver notes on the footage they’ve viewed. Notes can range from performance notes, direction notes (regarding shot selection, camera movement, staging or any number of issues) or styling notes about hair, makeup or wardrobe. The producers relay relevant notes to the director and appropriate cast members or department heads as shooting continues. In rare instances “pick ups,” individual shots or portions of scenes already filmed, may be shot or entire scenes reshot if concerns from the dailies are large enough and either the network or studio is willing to pay for additional production time. Network and studio development execs usually have multiple pilots shooting at a given time so they’re screening dailies and speaking to producers on multiple pilots.
While the development execs focus on performance, visual style and storytelling, the studio’s physical production department monitors schedules and budgets. The producers focus p
rimarily on the creative progress of the pilot, but they’re also in communication with the studio back home about the budget and schedule, and figuring out with the director and line producer how to ensure they land the plane on time and on budget.
Actors, typically offered precious little rehearsal time and usually none before filming begins, often take a few days of production before they settle into their roles. An astute director and producer can spot the day or even the exact scene when an actor locks into her character.
While the pilot shoots, the editor and her team of assistants and technicians are back in an edit room in LA, cutting together scenes as dailies come in, sometimes calling the director with feedback about how his footage is cutting together. Experienced producers and directors usually know if a pilot is working or not, if it will come together or not, but whatever doubts or fears they may have during production, they soldier on and do the best possible work within their limited production schedule, understanding that they won’t know for absolute sure what they have until they see it cut together.
Step 9: Pilot Post Production
When the producers and director wrap production and return to LA their exhaustion from weeks on location usually coincides with their editor’s need for a few days to finish her “assembly,” the editor’s first cut of the whole pilot episode. When the pilot assembly is done, either the director views it with the producers or alone with the editor. The director is guaranteed first cut by the Directors Guild of America basic agreement. For a Hollywood studio feature a director is guaranteed ten weeks alone with her editor to deliver her first cut to producers or the studio. For a one-hour TV pilot, the director is guaranteed four days. (While almost all pilots are much shorter than feature films and the pace of production and post is much faster in TV than movies, that single fact might be the best evidence of the place directors hold in the TV pecking order versus feature pecking order, as discussed earlier.) In some cases the director and producers have a friendly professional rapport and the director says, “We have very little time to get this pilot in shape, let’s pool our edit time and do it together,” or the director may not feel a creative kinship with the producers and insist on screening the pilot assembly alone with the editor and doing her cut before the producers see it and put their editorial stamp on it. It all depends on how well the team has gelled during prep and production and if the producers and director have a history together. But, most likely, they all behave respectfully and professionally and figure out some arrangement among themselves that more or less satisfies everyone. If the director uses her four days to do her director’s cut in concert with the editor, she then hands over her cut to the producers who have about seven days to do their producer cut.
Both the producers and the director typically edit to temp score, usually scored music from an existing series or movie that has a similar vibe. (No one’s concerned about music rights at this stage; the pilot is for internal screening, not for air. That’s a long way away, and there will be plenty of time to compose and record a score and license music cues if the pilot is ordered to series and receives a premiere date.)
When the deadline arrives and their edit is finished, the producers deliver their cut to the studio development execs who view it with their president and give the producers edit notes. The producers then recut and redeliver to the studio, addressing their notes to the best of their abilities. Studios know that the network’s first viewing of the pilot is crucial to the likelihood of the show getting picked up to series, and they know the network will perform some kind of quantitative research on the pilot episode (to be discussed later in this chapter), so some studios perform research tests of pilot rough cuts themselves to anticipate potential network executive and network research feedback.
The studio uses its own research department or hires an external research company to recruit typical viewers (based on the demographics that the studio believes the network has in mind for the project’s ultimate audience), who then view the pilot and answer a battery of questions and/or perform “dial tests,” where sample civilian viewers hold a dial and turn it clockwise if they like what they’re seeing and turn it counter-clockwise if they don’t like what they’re seeing. Producers sometimes watch dial-test results live in a room adjacent to the test viewers, while a graph illustrating “like” and “don’t like,” one color representing male test viewers and one color representing female test viewers, is superimposed over the pilot video as the episode plays on a monitor. If the test audience reaction graph starts heading down and then down further, producers’ hopes go with it.
Sample viewer feedback that emerges from the studio research test is digested by the studio research execs (larger TV studios and TV networks employ entire research departments), development execs and producers, and producers go back into the edit room to make adjustments to the pilot to try to address whatever creative concerns they believe they can. While most producers and industry creatives tend to be skeptical of corporate research, one category of feedback that often emerges from rough-cut research that many creatives find helpful is clarity. The producers and development execs who work on pilots know every word and shot and moment of the pilot. They’ve talked about every aspect of the script and story for months or years and know them backwards and forwards, and it’s often easy to overlook the forest for the trees. The fresh eyes of sample viewers can sometimes be useful to flag problem areas, things the producers assumed would be clear but instead cause viewers confusion and frustration. New dialogue can be written and actors called in to “ADR” (automatic dialogue replacement) to help explain things. Dialogue can’t be put into an actor’s mouth because the lips won’t match, but places can be found to insert short pieces of dialogue over character’s shoulders or during reaction shots. Another common solution to test-audience confusion is to add voice-over narration. (The voice-over narration by the character Stefan that begins The Vampire Diaries pilot was added in post-production to address viewer confusion.) Text messages and emails (which play such a large role in many TV pilots and series these days) are frequently rewritten and digitally recreated during post production to help clarify or otherwise fix story problems that producers and development executives discover require repair.
When the studio is satisfied with the cut of the pilot, they “temp” complete it with color correction and a full temp sound mix. They want the first network screening of the pilot to look and sound as much like a finished TV episode as possible, rather than looking like a sloppy rough cut. Often the network president and development executives travel to the studio and view the pilot in a studio screening room. The network execs then deliver notes to the producers and studio development execs, and producers go back into the edit room yet again to make more changes to address the network’s notes, until the network is satisfied and signs off on the cut. At that point the episode is locked and finished for real, with final color correction, audio mix and titling.
Step 10: Network Screenings
After the network president and development execs sign off on all a development cycle’s batch of pilots, screenings are convened for the top executives of the network to view the pilots and weigh in. When I was a development exec at NBC about 60 of the company’s top executives from both its LA and New York offices would gather in a large conference room in LA and watch and discuss all the new pilots over the course of a week. Senior brass from marketing and promotion, scheduling, network sales and affiliate relations would be there; even the heads of the network’s news, sports and daytime divisions would be part of the process of screening the network’s new crop of pilots for the first time. A much smaller group of senior executives makes the final decisions about the fate of the network’s batch of pilots, but most network presidents like hearing the perspective of trusted executives outside the company’s programming department as a reality check on the work that her small team of development executives have worked on for many months.
The large group of network e
xecutives has a robust discussion after screening each pilot, debating its strengths and weaknesses. A much smaller subset of this large group then convenes to make the final decisions about which pilots are ordered to series and which are not.
Step 11: Network Research
Almost every TV network uses some kind of research process to try to calculate how their targeted viewers will receive the pilot and potential series. Creating a “sample episode” to test is one of the traditional purposes of developing and shooting a pilot. Larger networks have their own in-house research departments and smaller networks hire independent research firms or borrow the services of their larger parent company. While the artists who make TV often cringe at the thought of their painstaking work being “focus-grouped” and tested in these ways, networks – as everyone knows – are businesses, and, like most businesses, TV networks try to quantify the likelihood of a product’s potential success. Translating audience reaction into data, assigning numbers to how much a test audience likes or doesn’t like a pilot, is also a way for networks to compare pilots against each other and across many years of pilot development. When a pilot tests better or worse than benchmark series that went on to perform well (or badly) in the real world, the team of businessmen and women who make the final decisions want to know.