Picking up from last week's 'cliffhanger' Aubrey, Van and I had set off from L.A. to San Jose on an early Monday August morning. I was feeling pretty good at having hastily arranged and shot the three pre-filmed sequences here in L.A. in the 8 days we had between San Diego Comic Con and the KTEH Studio shoot. So spirits were high until 2 things happened…
First, Simon (the ninth Doctor in our "45 Years" Video) who was supposed to join us fell ill and stayed behind. Second, we got a call from Robert Kovacs, who had built the Dalek we intended to use in one of the segments. He told us that, due to a transport issue, we might not be able to bring the Dalek in studio after all.
We had a panic. Then, we decided to do our best to roll with this.
Upon arriving in San Jose, we met with our producer Stacy Bond and our infinitely patient studio director (and editor!), Rich Bartlebaugh. We got a walk through the KTEH facilities, dropped off our TARDIS walls on the sound stage, and…
proceeded to stay up until 3AM writing new material to replace the segments that had originally featured our now unavailable Dalek and our sadly under-the-weather cast member.
Luckily, it turns out we didn't up needing this fresh material — which mainly consisted of three new skits. (One of these sketches involved the use of the KTEH Phones/Pledge Drive set! Since these segments weren't used after all, they may find their way into a fan film down the line. We'll see…)
Tuesday morning we got a call from Simon. Good news! He was on the road and feeling better!
Then Robert called about a half an hour afterwards and said he'd solved the transport dilemma. The Dalek would be at the studio when we needed it!
Lack of sleep aside, all seemed well. Well…almost.
Because we didn't think we'd have the Dalek, Stacy had called in some favors including calling up former KTEH producer, Steam Punk artifact designer and longtime Doctor Who fan Merv Staton. He and his wife Judith gamely rose to the occasion, bringing in a lot of fantastic Classic Dr. Who monster busts and masks to be featured on the air.
Stanton also helped Stacy contact Mette Hedin and Bryan Little, who showed up with their fabulous Vashta Nerada costumes!
So now, with the Dalek back on the slate after all, and so much talent to choose from, what could we do?
We decided we'd try and do two additional segments with the new props/costumes to feature if we could squeeze it in. Even if they didn't make it to air, we could put them online.
As always, time in the studio has a way of dematerializing out from under us. As the evening wore on, it became clear — we would not have time to shoot everything we wanted to.
Reluctantly, we had to leave the monster masks/busts off camera. We also scrapped our original closing segment in which we had planned to talk about the history of Dr. Who on PBS. Instead, we decided to feature the Vashta Nerada costumes in an interview with Mette and Brian.
If that last segment feels little more 'loose' it's because it was! That was the 2nd to last segment we shot that evening — and the only segment we did completely on the fly, without a script. It was harrowing, but fun. (Who doesn't love a challenge?) (more…)
Sun, Oct 11, 2009
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