Day 80: Studio
It’s June, and Goodwin’s journey is nearly over. The props, actors and script are the same as yesterday’s rehearsal, but now there are cameras and lights and boom-mics and a dozen or so black-clad crew-members swarming the set.
Bell-Booth is behind a wall 20 metres away, and can see the action only on her four screens: feeds from three cameras, plus a fourth showing a live edit.
‘‘I’ve made a change you might be interested in,’’ she tells me, taking a break from muttering technical directions into her headset. ‘‘I’ve dropped scene 13.
‘‘My episode was running three minutes 44 over, and there’s no information in the beat. It was hard to justify why it was in there, and it would have been the first to be sacrificed in the edit, so I’d rather not shoot it.’’
Stout calls ‘‘action’’ and Deb walks in on a dead Neville. Compared to the rehearsal, she’s giving her all. There are tears.
On ‘‘cut’’ Bell-Booth throws off her headphones and scampers to the set. One camera needs to come in tighter. Another needs to reframe to make Neville ‘‘a bit more profiley’’. Deb needs to briefly look up mid-CPR.
Resettled at her monitors, Bell-Booth explains: ‘‘The change I made there was finding a reason for Deb to look up, so I can get into her eyes. I’ve said throw Kate a little look, so I can get the shot I want.’’
She laughs wickedly. ‘‘It’s less accurate, but more soap.’’
There are retakes for fluffed cues, and more to provide options in the edit suite, but the pace remains relentless. Then suddenly, all the Neville scenes are in the can.
The conveyor belt is still moving. Shooting and an initial edit of Block 1259 will be complete in days, then Bell-Booth will make her changes, then Fleming and Malmholt will make theirs, then sound and colour will be tidied up, music and credits added, then TVNZ will take delivery of the completed episodes, a couple of weeks before broadcast.
I ring Bell-Booth. Did anything more happen to Neville Goodwin in the edits?
‘‘Well actually,’’ she says, ‘‘Yeah.’’ Once they watched the edit, it became obvious the final cliff should be Pele’s terrible diagnosis, rather than Neville’s death, so they shuffled the last scenes.
Will Bell-Booth watch her block when broadcast? ‘‘No,’’ she says. ‘‘I’ve carried this for more than a month, and I’m happy to see the back of it.’’
And how does she feel about the death of Neville? He was brought to life only to die for our entertainment. He was played by a guest actor on a short booking, and those roles often go to inexperienced (ie, terrible) actors. He was killed by Deb, a character who viewers are still just getting to know. Then, at the last possible moment, he was bumped from his prime position as the episode’s cliff.
This whole show is ‘‘an exercise in frustration’’, says Bell-Booth, and when a scene depends on a guest actor, ‘‘I prepare myself for the worst’’. But in fact she was delighted with Trevithick’s portrayal of a grumpy old bugger, and the rapport his character developed with Deb over the course of 321 seconds on screen. He came well prepared and did a good job.
‘‘I thought he died well.’’