There's something about being on a TV set that incites disillusionment. Up close, sets are two-dimensional, three-walled artifices that are too colorful and sterile to be lived in. When you're standing on set with four cameras, two boom mikes and 15 crew members staring you in the face, the whole enterprise suddenly seems less like magic and more like a sham.
Both of my internships are located on the FOX lot, so even on my more boring days I sometimes find myself running into "HIMYM." On Tuesday, I headed out by myself — as usual — to Mark's Food for All, a food stand which parks on New York Street (the back lot NYC facsimile used for all-purpose location shooting) during my lunch hour. I ordered my hamburger (In-N-Out style with Russian dressing) and then noticed some "HIMYM" cast members down the street. And they were dancing.
See, for the show's 100th episode - filming this week, airing Jan. 11th — the creators went all out and finally gave Neil Patrick Harris a big, set-piecey musical number. We're even shooting an extra day this week so there's two full days set aside for the sequence, which includes a bevy of dancers, all five lead actors and help from "Glee" choreographer Zach Woodlee.
And there they were, rehearsing the kick line right in front of me as the all-too-catchy song blared over the playback speakers. It was surreal. It was hilarious. It was magical.
The ins and outs of shooting are often mundane. You hear the bitter phrase "hurry up and wait" a lot in this town and it's often true. Camera set-ups and decoration, hair, makeup, sound and lighting all take a long time. Then there's rehearsal, second team (the stand-ins help the director set up her angles) and multiple takes. It's easy to see how years in this cycle can leave you jaded, tired, weary and immune to any kind of giddy enthusiasm.
But I'm not sick of it yet. I don't mind hearing seasoned actors repeat a joke after three or four takes, varying it a little each time. It gives me a little thrill to see the writers mull over the shooting script and change jokes on the spot, feed new lines to the actors and watch a split-second rehearsal turn into a full-blooded delivery. For that heady rush (if you love TV as much as I do), the waiting is worth it. Last week the script called for Marshall (Jason Segel) to be idly shooting some hoops behind his office building — which, for filming purposes, was our office building. As soon as production was finished on stage, the crew (and yours truly) painstaking wheeled and carried all of the necessary equipment out back: cameras, lights, podiums and even the canvas directors' chairs. Normally self-contained on Stage 22 or New York Street, it seemed a little silly, as if the entire production had leaked out into the office accidentally. After the move I went back to my desk to answer phones for another hour. But as I was leaving for the night, I walked through the set-up while heading toward the parking garage.
I was like, ‘Oh, excuse me. There's television production in my way.'
Naturally, I stopped to watch a few takes of the scene, a sweet tie-up between Marshall and Lily (Alyson Hannigan). But alas, I needed to get home to do some laundry. As I turned away to leave, I took one last glance back over my shoulder — at the lights, the cameras, the actors, the crew. And maybe for the first time I actually, consciously thought, "Yeah, I'm going to miss this."
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Rebecca Goldberg is a junior majoring in American studies. She can be reached at Rebecca.Goldberg@tufts.edu.
