Soap

TV superwoman Jane Espenson took a time out from her busy schedule as a writer/consultant/producer to delve into the world of daily television soap operas. As she explains in her post, producing five fresh hours of dramatic content every week means that making a daily soap is a very different beast from a prime time product. She explains:

"The production aspects are insane-- the show I visited doesn't shoot, as you might assume, an hour's world of material each and ev'ry blessed day. No. They do FIVE shows in FOUR days. So it's more than one standard episode every working day. With no hiatus, of course. Year 'round, I'm sayin'. Holy cats. A single actor might be in seven, nine, eleven scenes in one day. I was told of one case in which and actor, trying to clear their schedule so they could take a week of... that one actor shot over twenty scenes in one day."

Holy cats indeed! Can you imagine being on a writing staff, having to come up with five hours worth of material each and every week? Being an actor and having to memorize all those lines every day, in an instant, and act on them immediately, many times in just one take? Or being the directors, having to set everything up ahead of time just to cut down on valuable time?

If you have time, Espenson's post is a valuable look into this "foreign" land of continual drama.