Thursday, October 18, 2007
The style of how the show is shot is different but gives the actors freedom.
By ELLEN GRAY
PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS
You might not think that actors, accustomed to putting their best features forward under the best possible lighting, would take to being filmed on the run, from angles they can’t possibly anticipate, while occasionally delivering lines that may have popped into their heads only moments before.
But for Connie Britton and Kyle Chandler, two of the more experienced players on NBC’s “Friday Night Lights,” the series’ documentary-style filmmaking is at least half the fun.
“I love to talk about the style that we use because it’s so unique and as actors it’s been, oh, such a gift,” Britton, who plays guidance counselor (and coach’s wife) Tami Taylor, said in an interview this summer. The show airs at 9 p.m. Fridays on NBC.
“It creates so much freedom for us. We go in, there are four cameras rolling all the time. The cameras are always moving to different locations, always, so the cameras are moving just as much as we are,” she said.
“I call them the snipers, the people holding our cameras,” said Chandler, who plays football coach Eric Taylor, in a separate interview.
“They’re fantastic. They’re off in the corners, so when we come to the set, we don’t necessarily sit down and start rehearsing the scene. We come in there knowing the lines and, boom, we’ll just start up. And there’s an immediacy to the reactions that occurs and that’s what we take the scenes from, right there,” he said.
“You have a complete intimacy, you and I talking here,” Chandler said, gesturing to me, “so that camera, all those people, disappear. So we’re able to have these connections that feel so free.”
The show’s editors, he said, refer to some scenes as having “that ‘Friday Night Lights’ magic,” poignant moments that feel more real than scripted.
“You can have scripts that you know this is what they want. But those moments, oddly enough, on our show come when you don’t expect it,” Chandler said.
“And that’s the freedom that the actors have, not with the lines, not with the dialogue, but the freedom they have and the comfortableness they have on the set, with what’s going on, that those moments pop. And I think it’s a real hook as a viewer. Because you’re seeing something that — it’s a private moment, almost,” he said.
Britton had already experienced that on-the-run filming style when she played the coach’s wife (opposite Billy Bob Thornton) in the feature film of Buzz Bissinger’s book directed by Peter Berg. The actor/director — whose latest film, “The Kingdom,” included roles for both Chandler and “Lights”’ Minka Kelly — also developed the show, which is filmed in and around Austin, Texas.
Berg “makes everything so kind of loose and easy and smooth that you’re not really aware that that’s what’s going on ... Pete laid down the groundwork, so all these young actors, even if they hadn’t worked before, they fell in love with that,” Britton said.
“But I have to say, we’ve had guest actors come in, or guest directors come in, and definitely it takes them a while to get used to the idea that this is the way we shoot. Because it’s different, there’s nothing else like it on TV,” she said.
And in a medium where writers generally maintain more control of their words than they do in film, “Friday Night Lights” may stand out for ceding a little of that control back to the actors.
“The key for us is really knowing where our characters are coming from and what our intentions are in the scene, what we have to accomplish. And then we just roll with it. And it’s always surprising what comes out,” Britton said.
Chandler admitted to occasionally ad-libbing from his own marriage (like his character, who became a father for the second time in last week’s season premiere, he has two daughters).
And, yes, his wife notices, sometimes shaking her head at him as they watch together.
“There’s one line I say, when I walk into the kitchen, ‘You know what I like about myself?’ She’s heard that before,” he said, wryly.
“This show is literally for me it’s like the first day of rehearsal on a play, which is the most exciting day. It’s like that every day. There hasn’t been one day, and I can honestly promise you, that going to work on this show, I’ve not said, ‘This is gonna be fun today. I’m gonna have a good time,”’ Chandler said.