JaneEspenson.com

Oh my. I have been busy. I’ve been on set, my friends, watching the shooting of Andy Barker, PI. Fun! Hanging out with Andy Richter? I’ll say it again — fun. This is going to be a great show, people.

And I picked up a neat tip. When it’s very late and very cold, and they bring the hot foil-wrapped burritos around… get an extra one just to tuck against your belly under your coat. It’s like a hot water bottle only with beans. Delightful!

By the way, those of you who live in Southern California, or who happen to find yourselves in an area where a show or movie is being shot, might enjoy doing a little work as an extra.

****CORRECTION: This is not an invite to be an extra on Andy Barker — this is just a mention of the idea of extra-hood in general. Yikes — I should, like, read these things before I post them, huh? *******

Before I got started writing, I signed up with an agency in San Francisco that supplied extras for movies shooting locally. You can completely not see me in “The Doors” for example. I’m also entirely not visible in a television movie about Patty Hearst. It’s fun to get a bit of exposure to the filming process, if you haven’t had a chance to see it in person before. And it might give you a bit of the sense of what it’s like for the writer/producers, watching a scene as it’s shot and trying to figure out, on the fly, how to make it work better.

Which brings me to this. You know that little moment in your script that sort of *bumps* you every time you read it, because there’s something a little off about it, but the moment before it’s so good and the moment after it’s so good, and you can’t really figure out another way to get from one to the other? Well, imagine watching it being filmed, watching that bumpy moment over and over again, watching actors trying to make it work, discussing it with the director… bleahh. Fix it now! Even though you’re writing spec scripts, I think it’s still helpful to imagine *every moment* of your script getting loving attention from a whole lot of professionals. At the very least, doing this can raise your subconscious concerns about your script to the conscious level, where you can fret about them!

Lunch: chicken meatballs, salad and steamed veggies, wheeled out onto the golf course where we were shooting. Fun!