I bet the avg episode only takes a day or two to film. Your sitting down the whole time in one room . There were 28 - 23 minute episodes this year. Gabriel Byrne is getting old but daaayum - this is considered hard work ? For the other actors its barely part time work.
shareI agree. What exactly is so difficult about shooting two people talking in a room. The way it is shot, you could even have someone holding cue cards and have the actors reading the lines like Marlon Brando did towards the end of his career.
HBO have a lot of shows that would be difficult to film.
Rome, Deadwood, Carnival, etc.
But In Treatment should be one of the easier ones. It should also be relatively cheap considering there are very few outdoor shoots and basically no sets.
The lighting needs to be exact, there are nuances to delivery that are even more important because this series is all about the dialogue, and I'll bet it's shot several times so that editing can show it off best in terms of camera angle and facial expression.
It's also tons of very intense dialogue. Even without memorization this isn't easy in view of the content.
The Fabio Principle: Puffy shirts look best on men who look even better without them.
Lighting should be the least of all problems since the characters stay in one place most of the time. You adjust the light once and you can shoot away. In theory, you could even keep your setup for various episodes because the couch and the chair stay in the same position.
share[deleted]
Acting isn't just people talking. There's dialogue to learn, interpretation,
timing, focus and great skill.
Marge
I think part of the difficulty relates to Gabriel Byrne having to be in every single scene. Most leads in a TV show are in a majority of the scenes, but not every single one. I think it's probably grueling for Gabriel more than anyone else. And he may feel the amount of work he puts out isn't very rewarding since the show isn't necessarily popular. It's a critical success and one of my favorite TV shows, but I know the viewership isn't very high.
shareI think it's probably grueling for Gabriel more than anyone else.
Thank you!
Acting is not "hard work" under any circumstance.
That said, the filming schedule was very intense compared to other TV shows.
In my experience it takes almost an hour to film every minute of screen time.
share[deleted]
Let's not forget that they shoot around two hours worth of episodes for every week while most shows only have to shoot between forty four minutes to an hour of screen time material. On the flip side, the one or two location setup is obviously a lot easier to schedule and arrange than what most shows have to do so it probably balances out a bit
As far as acting not being hard work. It may not be waiting tables at a busy Chinese restaurants but it does use a lot more of your brain and emotional energy than many jobs, especially with all the intense drama on this show. I mean actors don't just show up and read cue card. That's ridiculous. Good acting requires a lot more than saying words out loud. You try replicating some of the scenes in this show and tell me how hard or easy it is. Just because professional mainstream acting takes place under kinder conditions (I've been on Independent films sets and the conditions are way below human. I came home with ant bites all the way up my thighs and calves because production didn't have chairs for us to sit in and I spent the whole day sitting on a tree branch ha ha) than say, coal mining, it doesn't mean it's not hard work.
That's funny. I was wondering how long it took to film this myself. I can imagine that getting the dialog and feeling of the session might require a lot of takes. It's a lot of dialog which can be hard... long stretches too. Most series have small takes with a lot of action and other actors to break it up. It's not so intense for the actors. I also noticed they film a lot of episodes per year. I just started watching the show and was shocked that the first season has about 30 episodes. That's like double what most shows do. So far I'm really enjoying it. They seem to capture the therapy experience well.
shareThe first Season actually has 43 episodes!
The second Season has 35 and the third Season 28 episodes.
I agree, what a load of tripe. Seems like a breeze to me to film this show. Sure it's taxing on Gabriel Byrne (sp?), but so what? He's gotten accolades for it. It's definitely shown what he's capable of. I'd be damned grateful.
I think you are glossing over and disrespecting the amazing work the actors are doing to bring these people alive.
This show is quite possibly the most intense and deep explorations of almost real people I have ever seen in a movie or series program - it is simply amazing, and it must take hours and hours to figure out what is going on with their characters and render that in a believable way.
Are you kidding … Byrne has a really hard job … instead of playing an action hero or criminal or cop, he has to play a very complex and not entirely heroic real human being!
I think he does a fantastic job - as do almost all the actors … I was blown away by Blair Underwood as the soldier. I have to wonder where that came from because he hit the nail on the head, as do all of the actors.
The show is way way way ahead of its time and a lot more smart than most of the people who are watching it, that's for sure.
It's a pity that those people with a brain have to be held hostage by the soap buying characteristics of the mass public so that shows like this are so rare and usually short.
It took about two days to film each episode.
And while the photography is obviously simple, only an idiot would look at this show and not see the tremendous acting challenges it faces. The simplicity of the camera work means that if the actors could not nail a scene there was no way to conceal their shortcomings.
With lesser performances, the series would have been laughable rather than moving.
Sometimes less is more.
There are probably some directors that would have used a shoulder-cam and run around between the actors zooming in and out trying to get reactions and generate tension.
This is just about as close to perfect of a show as I have ever seen, it is a real ground-breaking work of art, even if it was ripped off like so much of American media from overseas.
I am sad to hear it was cancelled.
[deleted]
[deleted]