In one day, Scott Essman assembled a cast and crew and shot a spec sitcom. Here is how they planned and shot a classic-style sitcom so quickly.
In one day, I assembled a cast and crew and shot a spec sitcom. I always thought I could create a classic sitcom but never thought much about actually doing one. Now with web visibility and this being pilot season, I decided to take a whack at it. So, on April 3, at an office in Orange County, California, I spent regular business hours shooting a sitcom episode on spec. Here’s how we did it.
Assembling a Cast
Before I did anything else, I reached out to actors with whom I had worked to see if I could gauge their interest in participating. With a one-day commitment, I wasn’t asking for serious time, and with a Saturday daytime schedule, I wasn’t encroaching on anyone’s typical work or social time. Very quickly, I received positive feedback from a group of top performers, most of whom I worked with before on a variety of Los Angeles-area projects. Previously, I had conceived of and produced several live events, short films, documentaries, and other works, all of which I carefully videotaped, both for archival and production reasons.
With a team of talent in front of the camera, including men and women of various ages, I then wrote parts for them, all of whom were going to be playing a host of eccentric types all gathered together for a one-day mandatory traffic school. In fact, the idea hit me in early winter of 2010 while I myself was sitting in an endless traffic school surrounded by people from all walks of Southern California. With my concept intact and my different performers signed on, I created an initial script of 18 pages. Writing comes very naturally and fluidly to me, and this was no exception. Though I had “pre-written” many of the scenes and character situations in my head, tailoring them to the specific actors who I knew I would be working with, I spent one very late night cobbling together a script in standard screenplay format. Since I had pre-written many elements, the actual creation of the body of the script was done between midnight and 4AM on Friday, March 27. Why then? Because at 1PM that day, I had most of the actors arriving at my house for rehearsal! We read through the entire script about three times, doing certain sections a few additional times, and it was infinitely helpful. I have found that rehearsal is most helpful for ironing out specific line readings with the actors. Of course, it changes on the actual shooting day, but at least you have something on which you can build.
After a few re-writes through the week leading up to production, we were ready to go. Work started at 8AM on Saturday April 3. We had all of the equipment prepared, including four high-definition Canon XL H1 cameras, plus four camera operators with whom I had worked on previous projects, plus a sound mixer/boom man, and a great team of two makeup artists and a hairstylist to make sure that everyone looked good. Two script supervisors logged all of the shots, which were done as to close to sequentially as possible, and I had an assistant director to help with basic paperwork and organization. After several hours of makeup and hair, my cast assembled in the main classroom that served as our set. We had pre-lit the set for shooting and had prepared a minimal amount of props and basic costumes for the performers. Going through the script and shooting it with four different angles on the performers for each take, I methodically got the words from the script down onto the immortality of videotape. We would do at least two clean takes of every scene, and the script supervisors and I had broken up the script into roughly one complete scene per page. As often as possible, I like to shoot complete scenes with multiple performers, as opposed to isolated shots on each performer. With four cameras, this was possible. We captured much more this way, necessary in a short shooting period, and had the advantage of on-the-spot performer interaction.
The Aftermath
After four hours of shooting everything with four cameras, we had 97.5% of the 18 1/2 pages of script in the can. We will proceed with a few “pickup” shots of different things that we didn’t have time for during principal photography, but that can be easily done with only one camera and two extra actors who weren’t shot on the main day. Our job now is to put a cohesive, funny, well-constructed piece together in post. But I already have an editor on board to do so, and considering that we did everything in a day, I have more than I need to realize a cohesive spec sitcom episode. Next step after post will be a sound mix with intermittent music and effects, and, only if absolutely necessary, looping, or automated dialogue replacement. Otherwise, we should be able to “find” this final project in the editing room and export the finished work. At that point, we’ll output the final video for web and DVD. It should tap out at about 15 minutes, and be made available to everyone and anyone who will have a look. And we did this on an extremely small budget. I won’t say exactly how much, but you could not buy an iPad with my budget. But it’s done, it worked, and we’re onto the path of having a finished project. See you in Traffic School!
Since the mid-1980s,
Scott Essman has been writing and producing projects about motion picture craftsmanship. He is the author of the books, “Freelance Writing for Hollywood” and “Tim Burton: An American Original.”
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