West Wing 2

August 18, 2005
Call time: 12:30 PM
Warner Brothers Studio
Burbank, CA

Today was a really cool day, because today, I pulled up to the WB parking lot and said, "I'm background for West Wing, 12:30 call." and I got to park my car and walk onto the WB lot.

They could have had me sit on my hands all day, and I would have been just fine. I managed to get to the souvenir store on the lot and use my pay voucher to get 20% off the WB pin I purchased. Next best thing to being a regular employee.

Clocked in at 12:30 (There really isn't a clock. That is just when they hand you your pay voucher) and sat around, visited the company store and walked onto the set of West Wing (actually behind the scenes). Like all things on T.V. they look bigger on the screen than they are on the set. After much sitting around and some wandering, the time came to go over to the "Ranch". This is where the WB has many more sets that can be used by any production. Today, we were shooting in a library. More specifically, the school library of the High School we visited yesterday.

We sat and sat and it was after lunch (5:00 PM) before my group of parents/teachers were called. Of course, during this time, rehearsals were going on with the talent and such. In the library, Santos finishes a speech and is then open to questions from the assembled parents and teachers. The subject of the questions was Creationism and Evolution. At one point the director (who looks like he just graduated high school) explained that he needed the background to respond to what Santos was saying, i.e. take a side and agree or disagree. He asked how many people in the group believed in Creationism and no one raised a hand. So he asked for a show of hands of those born between January and June. When the hands were up he said, "You folks now believe." Funny how this method worked for him in other ways. Santos makes a humorous remark and those of us born between January and October were the chucklers in the crowd.

Now here is something that you would never know if you didn't see it or weren't told. Sets are very warm/hot places. Lots of lights and people packed into a place with no air conditioning (picks up on the sound recordings) and the doors are kept closed during shots. By watching the show, you couldn't tell that the actors was being mopped between takes. Nearly every time the cameras stopped rolling, make-up was out with tissue and retouches as needed, and let me tell you it was needed. Bottled water was provided and I noted that the water was HtoO, which gives 100% of the profits (after taxes) to charity. I don't know if this is a WB thing or a West Wing thing, but I thought it was cool.

One of the books on this mythical high school set was "Complete Sexual Fulfillment" and a copy of the Financial Times was visible with a picture of George W. Bush on the cover. You never know what little secrets are kept from you on television.

If you want to make money in stocks, buy stock in the company that makes the black, orange, red, white and blue tape used by the crew to do everything with. I kid you not, one gal had at least one of every color on her belt, and it was used to mark where the camera stops and travels, where the actors stand, where the chairs are placed, and for tacking down anything that one didn't want getting up. The WB must spend a kings fortune on this tape, and Hollywood is full of studios that use it.

At 8:00 PM we took a brake while the set was adjusted so the cameras could look at the audience that Santos was talking to and we came back in and repeated the scene many times over with ever changeling camera angles and points of focus. The scene probably runs less than four minutes, and took a minimum of five hours to shoot.

We were done by 10:00 PM. While wondering around the Ranch, I came across a sign that you might recall from some of the WB's commercials for their shows. It's at the top of this post.