All posts by Geoffrey

Please, Hold Your Applause Until the Sign Starts Flashing

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After taking part as an audience member for my first live-taping of a television program, I believe I can definitively say that it’s an absolutely bizarre experience.

Attending Thursday night’s taping of TBS’s “Conan” was unlike any experience I could have imagined, and not necessarily in an enjoyable way, but certainly in an interesting one. We arrived at the Warner Brothers’ facilities around 2:30 P.M., where we were ushered onto the second level of a parking garage. At this point, we went through three security/check-in stations, from the boiler-plate metal detector, to a station where we were given “invisible” stamps that had to be specifically on the underside of our left wrists for some unknown reason, and finally, we presented our tickets and were given a plastic, numbered card. From that point, we spent roughly a half hour on some metal benches in the middle of an enclosed portion of the parking garage, simply waiting.

Around 3:00, maybe 3:15, they started calling numbers out and lining us up like we were boarding an airplane, at which point we walked out of the parking garage and across the street to the actual Warner Brothers lot. After standing underneath awnings with twisting barriers that caused some serious flashbacks to amusement park lines, we were finally cleared to walk from the edge of the lot into the heart of the various studios, being ushered along by countless security members, until we finally got to Conan’s studio and were led to our seats.

Once in our seats, the truly surreal aspect of the experience began. Around 4:00, an individual who could only be described as Conan’s hype-man began manufacturing applause from the audience members, calling out the over and under-enthusiastic in attendance, and explaining the “rules” of being in the audience. This man was like a wacky flight attendant, the way he wove stand-up comedy, audience participation, and instructions in such a rapid-fire manner. Soon, the Basic Cable Band came onto the stage and began performing, and the audience, as instructed previously, stood up and clapped along. Then, finally, Conan came onto the stage to raucous applause.

And then, the show’s star basically said, “Sike, we’re not ready to start yet, please keep waiting and clapping and cheering,” before leaving the stage again. After another couple of songs from the band, Conan reappeared and the actual taping of the show finally began.

All told, the taping of the show was basically no different than watching on television, save for the replacement of commercial breaks with a few minutes where we’d watch producers and camera operators rearrange the stage, while the talent milled about and talked amongst one another. Finally, after the show’s second guest segment was over, Conan promptly announced that the comedian scheduled to perform on Thursday’s show had already taped his segment, so our experience was over.

While watching all of this unfold was a bit strange, the most intriguing part of a live-taping definitely revolves around watching how the audience is trained to interact with the show. Throughout the taping, much of the audience clearly laughed a bit too loud and responded with more applause and cheers than Conan’s jokes probably really deserved. And yet, when a couple of the jokes really fell flat, it was fascinating to watch the audience genuinely not give the anticipated reaction. So much of a live-taping comes across as forced, manufactured, and ultimately, I don’t think I’ll be able to watch a show live-taped without thinking about how the process of taping exists to manufacture laughs and applause in real-time and subsequently hope that the response of the pre-taped audience might influence how the night’s television audience feels compelled to react themselves.

The whole thing was absurd and fake and bizarre. But I guess that could be said of most everything in Hollywood, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sunrise, Sunsets, and Thinking About Eternity in LA

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My head recognizes that the camera, the technology, the software, etc. is all secondary to the story unfolding on the screen. I get that. Hell, even Greg Foster, CEO of IMAX Entertainment, acknowledges that the technology of IMAX exists merely to serve the creatives of Hollywood. The camera, and everything associated with it, is merely a tool used to tell an interesting story effectively. As someone that’s drawn to the creative side of Hollywood in the first place (and subsequently maintains a substandard, at best, grasp of the technical side), hearing that the story still rules all is affirming.

But in tracking the history of Hollywood, it’s pretty hard to ignore that the most significant shifts in the industry are ultimately driven by technology in the first place. It makes sense. The history of the film industry burgeons from the desire to use the technology of the film camera as a new method to tell a story. Then, down the road, we add synch-sound to improve the ability to tell a story. And then, color. And then, with greater resources, we invest in practical effects, special effects, digitizing everything, and on and on. And all of these leaps work to simply provide a more compelling, immersive, and realistic storytelling experience. It’s great, because ultimately, underneath all the technological developments and tricks, the story still rules all.

Over the past week, starting at the humble beginnings of Hollywood and the Silent Era, it’s become incredibly apparent just how unimportant the technology can be on some level. Many hundreds of people, on a Monday night, poured into a theater to watch a showing of Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. Dozens filed into the Egyptian Theater last night to watch 8mm D.W. Griffith silent shorts on a Friday night. Obviously, the popularity of silent films and these screenings are partly a result of the abundance of impassioned film people in Hollywood (seriously, some of the conversations overheard during last night’s screening were near the peak of film-nerd eclecticism), but they’re ultimately still people. We can debate whether the stories told during these screenings were actually good (personally, I think they were merely okay, on the whole), but they’ve endured and some people still want to see them, even as they exist as artifacts of the relatively primitive days of film. To me, that’s incredible.

But all of this begs the question: do some people still willingly watch these films because the stories are actually interesting? Or is it just the novelty of watching the medium of film stripped away from all the technological advancements of the last ninety-plus years that provides the entertainment? And what does all of this say about the potential for a singular film to create a lasting legacy in the face of the potential technological achievements of the next hundred years? Will today’s stories still provide excitement and resonate with a mass audience when the limitations of today simply won’t be able to provide the same entertainment value of the blockbusters produced fifty years from now?

Anyway, here’s a mediocre iPhone pic of the sunset at Venice Beach the other day:

– Geoffrey