00:02in directing something like that like how much do you think about like having scenes like that
00:08where they can like really sort of like leap forward realistically yeah we spend a lot of
00:14time uh working with the actors on the specifics of the text so because the performances are very
00:19much theatrical in the sense that they're much more like directing in the theater
00:23um where you we have a lot of conversations about what we're going to do because when we
00:27start shooting it you need the paces getting the camera up and moving much like a live performance
00:32so the we spent a lot of time sort of talking about scott gimel wrote this wonderful uh writer
00:38and executive producer and um we spent a lot of time talking with the actors noah and sean and i
00:43spent a lot of time talking about that scene so when we got to it it was really a performance
00:47we
00:48did it in four or five takes um and it's pretty much complete there were not uh real cuts in
00:53there
00:53we did the entire we almost with every scene we shoot the entire scene uh and then we'll come
00:59in and do a little bit of coverage but not a lot of coverage so um it really is a
01:03a sense from the
01:05beginning in each scene of like what's the scene going to be about talking about it talking about
01:08it with the actors because they're going to be expected to kind of perform it as if it was in
01:12front of a live audience how much pressure is there to have fewer takes when you're doing the
01:19sort of more like medical stuff that requires a lot of cleanup and reset afterwards yeah there's a
01:25lot of there's a lot of that where you're in the more technical aspects i think we're going to look
01:29at one of the scenes that's very technical uh you're trying to break it down as a director into
01:33the pieces that you're going to do and i'll talk and i think we're looking at one of the pieces
01:36and
01:36i'll tell a little bit of some of the specifics of that in these kind of scenes it's really a
01:41conversation with the actors before we go like let's walk it let's figure it out let's figure out
01:45where the cameras are going to go and how many times like i had conversations with noah um there
01:50was a progression through the entire season but also through this episode because we shoot in
01:54continuity so we start with the first scene in the episode and we shoot all the way through
01:59continuity with the exception of when we have a scene that's outside so he has to have a continuity
02:03performance over nine days and so we spend a lot of time actually talking about how we're gonna
02:10parcel that out over the season and then actually over the days that we're shooting so
02:14my conversation with noah during this was you know what's the place that you want to get to
02:18here's the place that i would like you to get to how many takes do you think you have in
02:23you
02:23to get there because um act some actors noah's not one of them but some actors can take a long
02:29time to get there some actors come in and by the second or third take they're actually where they
02:33need to be and you don't want to keep flogging them you know uh to go through these very difficult
02:39scenes uh were you and noah in agreement on where he needed to get to in this episode well we
02:45had a
02:45large conversation about that the entire episode is really shot from his point of view he's um we
02:50we do a lot of decide we it feels oftentimes like there's no point of view in the scenes and
02:56that
02:56you're following everything but if you watch it you'll see that there's always one character
02:59this scene's really about and so in this entire episode the the closer shots are always on noah
03:05through the entire episode whatever the scenes are so we we're conscious of following him as our
03:10central character and piece and we use different lenses a little bit of different lenses we
03:14get closer on them and we have a lot of conversations with jojo who's our cinematographer
03:20and the camera operators about that those scenes um and we have them fairly regularly are really like
03:25doing stunts i've done a lot of stunts uh you know big action stunts and they take the exact same
03:30kind
03:30of planning so we start about three months in advance because the prosthetics the thing that get
03:35the things that get built take a long time to actually be built we have a wonderful uh makeup
03:40and uh and and prosthetics team which builds all these things and so it's a full stage so you're
03:46learning it this that took about three days to shoot so um but you're doing it in sequences and
03:51they're all different kinds of problems the the uterine bag that we cut we only had four of them so
03:56it's sort of like you only have like two two shots at the uh at the car rollover um and
04:02so uh
04:03you know and then we had problems because the baby once we put the uh the the automatronic baby
04:09in the inside and then put the goo on it um the amniotic fluid that was inside dissolved all the
04:17stuff that was on the baby then we couldn't get it out so you have all these constant things we've
04:22got puppeteers so when you're doing those scenes we'll have two or three separate puppeteers who are
04:26in the rooms underneath because they're doing all different kinds of things and the resets are
04:29very difficult because the wonderful actress who actually played the woman um she's wearing a huge
04:35uh prosthetic belly and then her body is most of her body is actually underneath the gurney kind of
04:40fits underneath the gurney so people have to go to the bathroom you know so um and it takes about
04:4545
04:46minutes to get you know the actor out and we're you're trying to be conscious of really asking don't
04:51you know if you have to go to the bathroom let us know that you have to go and don't
04:55try and brave it
04:55out because actors will try and brave it out which is always a really bad idea um so it's a
05:01series of
05:02events we have a number of the nurses who are in that scene are actually practicing er nurses who work
05:09in around we have anywhere between four to six er nurses who are there and they work their shifts
05:15around our schedules we've got a full-time er physician who's always on set and they work we have
05:21four of them and they rotate between episodes and then we have our three writers who are your
05:25physicians who are on staff on the writing staff so you have a lot of technical support for what it
05:31would actually look like but it's a piece-by-piece process much like building a complicated stunt and
05:37you need to make sure that everybody's safe because they're real scalpels that are being used and you
05:41know there's all different kinds of stuff that gets on the floor which is slippery and you know so
05:45there's a lot of safety concerns and it's slow but you know it comes together that is almost entirely
05:51practical there are only three or four things in there that were actually done with uh with visual
05:56effects one is the baby's mouth moving which we couldn't get quite to work on the on the on the
06:02little uh they have a little pump that they were doing um and then the others we added some of
06:07the
06:07blood to the cut because because the blood scalpels don't actually look very accurate to what it
06:13actually looks like when we do cuts but it's mostly just piece by piece you know shot by shot i
06:20mean
06:20when considering that it isn't so practical how much is filming a scene like that evolved since like
06:28er well we we get the support of max which is fantastic of hbo max to actually show what the
06:35physicians see which has made the huge difference so we didn't we we had prosthetics and things that
06:40we certainly did on er and on china beach before that because i was on china beach um but now
06:45we
06:45have the ability the whole idea with the show was to be following the physicians through the day as if
06:50you're actually there with them and so we needed to show what you actually see and and hbo max casey
06:56sarah joey everyone was very supportive that from the beginning and and i do think we were talking
07:02beforehand that we on the pilot on the first episode we introduce a degloved foot um right away
07:09so it's a warning to the audience that uh you're gonna see what you haven't seen before and uh but
07:16people become a little annoyed to it you get a little more used to it it's easier to watch as
07:20you
07:20go along even though it can be tough but it's really what it looks like we use a lot of
07:24a lot of real
07:25footage to plan what we're gonna do i mean the set of this show i mean the entire show for
07:32the most
07:32part is filmed on this set and in addition to that that's just a creative choice you and i spoke
07:37once
07:37about how that's a great way to save money and be like hey we can shoot this in los angeles
07:42and we
07:42can shoot this many episodes um but just from a a visual point of view and this is i guess
07:50sort of
07:50kind of set up the next clip um like what are the what is the what are the pro the
07:57perks and pitfalls
07:58of working within such a specific space almost exclusively well we're able to pre-light it which
08:05is great although we every we have 200 and i don't know exactly what the number is this year but
08:09246
08:10separate lighting zones each lights controlled individually so as we block the scenes and start
08:15to figure out where the camera is going to go and how they're going to dance with the actors
08:19um the dp and the gaffer are following behind us they actually are lighting changes that are made
08:23all along there for skin tones and for people as they go so there's a very complicated electronic
08:28thing that's going which is allows us to go relatively quickly but shooting in continuity was
08:33the only way that we could do it the the literal continuity of all the background artists we have
08:38as many as a hundred background artists on set many of them uh who are in the beds sign on
08:43for the
08:44entire seven months they have to say that they're going to be there the whole time they have their
08:48own stories their own medical they know when you know they're and we have two continuity um script
08:54supervisors one who's just in doing the background and one is doing the foreground dialogue and
08:58everything because we're shooting in depth the entire crew wears scrubs because you're constantly
09:03getting caught uh in the shots there's no way to get out in time so we just say if you
09:08see rolling
09:10just turn around and look busy um so occasionally you'll catch somebody with a walkie in their ear
09:16but it's uh you know the the advantages are that we can shoot it like a live performance so we'll
09:22you know we'll shoot you know seven or eight uh pages you know in a morning that way with four
09:29pages at a time you know five pages at a time well he has to do that if he's gonna
09:34spend three days
09:35on that when we shoot in pittsburgh um at this time of year when we've shot this time of year
09:41the lantern bugs get uh and they're everywhere so we added them in later just because those of us
09:47who have to shoot in pittsburgh are always like surrounded by lantern bugs the entire time but
09:51it's fun to get outside the crew gets very excited when we leave the stage to shoot but we really
09:56only
09:56do that on the first episode in the last episode and then occasionally in the ambulance bay
09:59which is shot over at st joe's in burbank they gave us their old ambulance bay before they built
10:05their new emergency room we shoot up there and occasionally on the roof we do a work we do a
10:10week in pittsburgh that we have to do for the entire series because it's one day we can't go back
10:15a couple
10:15different times and risk that there are differences in the trees or anything so uh it's a real challenge
10:20for uh the actors and for the the writers because oftentimes they're writing scenes for the last episode
10:25months before the episode's actually written so and that and directing it gets pretty exciting because
10:32you're kind of saying well i think this is what's happened uh there's a scene in this which i don't
10:36think they were showing which um took place on the roof with them watching uh fireworks and we shot that
10:42before we had any idea what was happening in the last seven or eight episodes so i just told one
10:46of
10:47the actors cry and said another one looks sad and uh and told scott gibble and the writing staff that
10:53that's what we did and now you gotta write stuff that kind of gets us to to what we actually
10:58shot
10:58because you didn't finish the scripts did you consult anyone about that well i sort of asked and they
11:04were like we don't know and i go okay well then if you don't know as a director i'm just
11:07gonna make
11:07decisions and uh and it worked um i mean i guess with that uh scene in particular uh she she'd
11:16really
11:17been through it that day um as they all have um but how much do you think about the ways
11:23that you
11:23can show someone exiting their shift um especially in that case where it's like we don't i don't know
11:29that we'll ever see that woman again yeah we don't really go home with them we don't see them at
11:33home
11:33and and so it's a big part of like when you get off we just really what happens is the
11:38writers and all
11:39of us talk to a lot of emergency room physicians and health care professionals and ask them what their
11:44experiences are and how does that feel at the end of the shift how do you feel when you come
11:48in on a
11:48shift how do you get ready to come in on a shift and that gets written into the scripts and
11:53that's
11:53what we tell the actors do people cry with you a lot when they talk about this stuff
12:00um the the sessions that we do with the real emergency room physicians um and and nurses and
12:06technicians are very emotional for everybody because um i mean one of the nicest things that
12:13people have said to us about the show is people in the medical profession feel as if their family
12:18knows what they do and why they don't come home and talk about what they do um and so they've
12:24seen
12:24they have felt seen by that and so now when we have the emergency room physicians come in
12:29and nurses and uh they they all want to tell us what they would like their family to know
12:36about what they do and sometimes that gets very emotional i mean i guess just speaking about the show
12:41broadly um it's been such a success uh and you're making it whenever it's not airing for the most
12:50part it's it's a it's a full year for you so having had these two seasons now having had audiences
12:58react to them differently and feel ownership over certain things like how how are you approaching the
13:04third season and is it the the third shift that you all originally thought you might be going into
13:11well i would say that the audience reaction to it doesn't really impact what you write you have
13:16to be very careful about about um particularly what's online because there's on this show it's
13:21been really wonderful and strange to see the fan fiction and the memes and the things that have
13:27been created and we don't pay any attention to them just because it might impact the way in which
13:33you were thinking about telling stories so uh you know we were talking to hbo max the other day they
13:40said can you tell us what the third season's about and and uh i said this third season's about an
13:45urban
13:46hospital in crisis because that's what the show's about it's it's not romances it's not you know it's just
13:56people's lives and we meet them sort of one day a year or one day every six months and see
14:01where they
14:01are and what's happened and you sort of learn about them that way so we have a lot of conversations
14:05about what has happened in that interim period to them and then we have a lot of conversations
14:11about how much would you actually if that had happened and you've been seeing these people all
14:14along how much would you actually say or tell what would they already know who knows what about who
14:20so that we can drop into these workplace days and have it not feel as if we're doing a lot
14:25of exposition
14:26but that the audience finds out in the same way that you would in a normal workplace so and that's
14:32a that's a very difficult writing assignment they do a fantastic job in the writer's room i mean there
14:38are a a million versions of this episode that could have ended with dr robbie riding off into the sunset
14:47with or without a helmet um to indicate like where he was um and instead you chose uh just like
14:55a
14:56about as intimate a scene as you could really film um on a show like this uh tell me about
15:04that choice
15:05uh it was uh the idea from the beginning of the season was the where were we actually going to
15:11end
15:11um and scott had this idea that he should end with the baby and we should not tell people exactly
15:17what
15:17happens because you don't always know what happens at the end of the day for someone um and then i
15:22said
15:23a baby really through the entire season when they get bigger so how many groups of babies are we going
15:34to have uh as it turned out we ended up uh with four different uh let's see it's actually four
15:42different times with two sets of twins so you know um yeah each time you see the baby it's in
15:48the
15:49uh in during the episodes they they kept getting bigger so i directed the first one and we had
15:55some great babies that i loved and by the end they were smoking cigars and drive driving themselves to
16:00work so um so uh but this is all noah you know this is a noah wiley uh there was
16:07supposed to be
16:08another scene actually with him with the baby in um in like a rocking you know an infant chair uh
16:14that
16:15we shot and it was just completely unnecessary when we finished this i was like because you get
16:19the babies for 20 minutes on set uh you know to shoot so the baby comes in and we had
16:27a bunch of
16:27them in the hopes that somebody wasn't crying and uh some of them were and uh and came in and
16:35put the
16:35baby down and and kept everybody we have a sort of a protocol for working with young uh infants
16:40um where it's very quiet and it's very structured on the set we've already blocked out exactly what
16:45we're going to do with the cameras so that they know and then we bring the baby in and he
16:50started
16:50and we just shot those in single takes that's two separate takes with two separate babies but those
16:56are real babies throughout and and um and that's just noah doing a live performance of this scene
17:03you know which is a gift as a director you just not everybody can do that yeah he can
17:08uh babies are divas uh that's all we have time for thank you so much thank you
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