On Mon­day I went to the stu­dio where “Pri­vate Prac­tice” shoots – Raleigh Stu­dios, in West Hol­ly­wood.  As soon as I arrived I met Gre­gory Van Horn ‘87, the won­der­ful pro­duc­tion designer who I was shad­ow­ing for the week.  He brought me upstairs to the fourth floor of the office build­ing, which is where all of the “Pri­vate Prac­tice” pro­duc­tion offices are.  Raleigh is also the home of two other TV shows, “Cas­tle” and “The Closer,” so the three shows all have office spaces and a num­ber of sound­stages for shoot­ing on the lot.

Gre­gory first brought me around all of the dif­fer­ent offices so I could meet the many dif­fer­ent peo­ple who work behind the scenes on the show in the pro­duc­tion, props, set dec­o­ra­tion, account­ing, and sev­eral other depart­ments.  I also met every­one in the art depart­ment, which was to be my home for the week – Kevin, the show’s art direc­tor, Cate, the set designer, and Ditte, the art coor­di­na­tor.  All of them were so wel­com­ing and help­ful through­out the week – they really went above and beyond in show­ing me around and answer­ing the many ques­tions I had about art depart­ment work and the TV indus­try in general.

I spent Mon­day get­ting to know the many dif­fer­ent places at Raleigh.  Gre­gory and Kevin first brought me down to Stage 1, one of the many sound­stages that Pri­vate Prac­tice has.  There I was able to walk around the set for the prac­tice, and get a close up look at all of the incred­i­ble work the art and set dec­o­ra­tion depart­ments have done.  Gre­gory and Kevin explained to me how the back­drops work (essen­tially, these are very large blow-ups of pho­tographs of L.A. that get placed behind win­dows on the set, and which can be altered with light­ing to por­tray either day­time or night­time).  They also showed me some of the work they’ve done for this sea­son in par­tic­u­lar – for exam­ple, the sur­face of the recep­tion desk in the prac­tice was changed this sea­son to one with a more shell-like design on it – and the dif­fer­ent walls and glass win­dows in the prac­tice that can be moved to cre­ate addi­tional room and vis­i­bil­ity for the cam­era.  Finally, we went to one of the most excit­ing places on set – craft ser­vices!  This is the very long table on set that has all of the food you can ever imag­ine, which the cast, crew, and pro­duc­tion staff can snack on through­out the day.  Through­out this brief tour, I asked Gre­gory and Kevin a lot of ques­tions about the dif­fer­ent art-related jobs (pro­duc­tion designer, art direc­tor, set designer, set dec­o­ra­tor, etc.) so I could get a sense of how they dif­fer and what areas I might be most inter­ested in.

After the brief tour of Stage 1, we went back up to the art depart­ment office.  I looked around at many of the draw­ings and col­lages that have been pinned up around the office and in the hall­way.  For exam­ple, all of the main char­ac­ters have their own poster in the hall­way that shows draw­ings and pho­tographs of their houses, along with details like car­pet mate­ri­als and wall­pa­per color options.  I was also given the oppor­tu­nity at this point to read through all of the scripts for the rest of the sea­son (episode 5.17 had just aired, so there were four to catch up on after that).

Gre­gory had a friend vis­it­ing the set in the late morn­ing, so the group of us went back down to the lot at this point for a com­plete tour of all the dif­fer­ent stages.  It was amaz­ing get­ting to see all the sets in per­son and to see how com­plex all of them are, because there are def­i­nitely some details you miss when watch­ing TV.  “Pri­vate Prac­tice” has five sound­stages at Raleigh (in addi­tion to a stage at the Sunset-Gower Stu­dios, a short drive away).  Stage 1 holds the prac­tice, Stage 10 holds the hos­pi­tal, Stage 14 holds Addison’s and Sam’s (two of the main char­ac­ters) Mal­ibu houses, and Stages 7 and 9 con­tain a num­ber of dif­fer­ent character’s houses and smaller rooms.  In addi­tion to get­ting to walk through all the sets, I also learned a bit about eti­quette on TV/ film sets – for instance, always keep­ing your phone shut off, walk­ing very qui­etly (or just stand­ing still) when the cam­era is rolling, and not enter­ing or exit­ing the stage when shoot­ing is tak­ing place (there is a red siren light out­side the door of each stage to let you know when this is happening!).

After the grand tour of all the sets, it was time for lunch.  Mon­day was a double-up day, mean­ing the show was shoot­ing two dif­fer­ent episodes at the same time.  Dur­ing lunch we went to the pro­duc­tion meet­ing for the new episode that had just started film­ing (5.21), so I got to see how the AD’s and pro­duc­tion office sched­ule the shoot­ing days and com­mu­ni­cate with the many dif­fer­ent depart­ments in mak­ing sure that every­thing gets done for the episode on time.  After the pro­duc­tion meet­ing, I left Raleigh to go to ABC Stu­dios in Bur­bank and fill out gen­eral intern­ship paper­work for them.

On Tues­day morn­ing, Kevin brought me down to the set to watch a bit of shoot­ing on the hos­pi­tal set.  I got to meet Jim, the first AD on the show (who basi­cally runs the set dur­ing shoot­ing), as well as many other peo­ple who work on the set.  I was amazed by the num­ber of peo­ple who work on shoot­ing – from light­ing to sound to cam­era oper­a­tors, grips, hair and make-up crew, cos­tumes crew, etc.  There were many peo­ple scat­tered through­out the set, some work­ing right next to the shoot­ing and oth­ers (like the Direc­tor of Pho­tog­ra­phy and the writ­ers of the episode) watch­ing the shoot­ing on TV screens that show what the two dif­fer­ent cam­eras are shoot­ing at the moment.  Kevin and I stood with Chuck, the video play­back tech­ni­cian (whose job is awe­some – he makes the med­ical equip­ment mon­i­tors in the hos­pi­tal rooms show dif­fer­ent images and stats for patients as needed dur­ing the scene) and watched the shoot­ing of a scene in one of the patient rooms.

After watch­ing shoot­ing, I went back up to the art depart­ment office.  Gre­gory showed me all of the set draw­ings that Cate makes for the show, and he explained to me how they rep­re­sent dif­fer­ent types of walls and sets on the draw­ings (for exam­ple, walls that need to swing out to make addi­tional room for the cam­era are marked dif­fer­ently than walls that remain sta­tion­ary).  Gre­gory also showed me “Per­spec­tive,” a pro­duc­tion design mag­a­zine made up of dif­fer­ent arti­cles writ­ten by pro­duc­tion design­ers about their work.  I spent some time read­ing dif­fer­ent copies of the mag­a­zine, which was really fas­ci­nat­ing as far as learn­ing about how dif­fer­ent pro­duc­tion design­ers approach their work in both film and TV.  After lunch I went back to the set to watch some more shoot­ing, this time on the Mal­ibu set.  Watch­ing shoot­ing on the Mal­ibu decks is really inter­est­ing because it’s incred­i­ble how much of the work is done in post-production (the entire beach and ocean are cre­ated by a blue screen right in front of the con­structed deck).  I con­tin­ued to meet a bunch of the peo­ple who work on set and learned more about how they got involved in their respec­tive areas of work. 

Greg Van­Horn and Amanda

After watch­ing shoot­ing I went with Kevin and Gre­gory to Stage 7, where they were work­ing on a smaller per­sonal project.  We walked around the set for Violet’s and Pete’s (another cou­ple on the show) house and Kevin and Gre­gory talked to me more about the dif­fer­ent jobs in cre­at­ing the look of each set (for exam­ple, if a lot of green­ery is required on a set they might hire some­one specif­i­cally to place the green­ery).  Tues­day was a pretty light day for the art depart­ment, so at 5 pm when every­one went home I went back down to the set to watch more shoot­ing at “Malibu.”

On Wednes­day morn­ing I got to go on a bunch of set dec­o­ra­tion runs.  First I went with Jill, the buyer, to the props house at Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios and to Alpha, a props house devoted specif­i­cally to med­ical props.  The Uni props house was one of the most amaz­ing places I’ve ever been.  It was enor­mous, con­tain­ing dif­fer­ent floors for drapery/ fab­rics, fur­ni­ture, and every kind of fix­ture and small prop you could imag­ine.  I walked around with Jill and saw the process through which she marks any items that the set dec­o­ra­tor, Melissa, might want for the show.  Jill also showed me around the set lots behind the props house, which can be rented out to peo­ple who are film­ing, such as the west­ern town and the Euro­pean square sets.

After Uni we went to Alpha, where Jill was get­ting a few boxes full of dif­fer­ent pill bot­tles to fill a new med­ical cab­i­net on the hos­pi­tal set.  Spend­ing the morn­ing with Jill was really fun and also really infor­ma­tive, because she taught me a lot about the dif­fer­ences between the art, set dec­o­ra­tion, and props depart­ments and unions, and she was very help­ful and eager to clar­ify all the ques­tions I had about the dif­fer­ent jobs that exist.

Almost as soon as I got back to Raleigh, I went right back out again with Ditte to the sign shop at Uni.  Kevin has a lot of graphic design expe­ri­ence, so he designs the new signs and posters that are fre­quently needed on the show sets.  The sign shop at Uni then ren­ders them into signs, so Ditte and I went to pick up a num­ber of the fin­ished ren­ders.  I con­tin­ued to have some really great and infor­ma­tive con­ver­sa­tions with Ditte about the dif­fer­ent art-related jobs in the indus­try, and how Pri­vate Prac­tice com­pares to other shows (for one thing, its shoot­ing sched­ule is very efficient!).

In the after­noon I helped Kevin and Ditte tape up new signs out­side the patient doors on the hos­pi­tal set.  I learned that the art depart­ment isn’t allowed to actu­ally affix the signs onto the set, because that’s the painters’ job.  I hadn’t real­ized until this week how seg­mented the dif­fer­ent unions are and how specif­i­cally the jobs on the show are divided up between peo­ple, so it was really inter­est­ing for me to see how many dif­fer­ent peo­ple cre­ate the look of the sets at every stage.

At the end of the day I stayed late again to watch shoot­ing, this time in the prac­tice.  It was a very large scene with all of the main cast mem­bers, so shoot­ing took a longer period of time.  Once again, every­one on set was very kind and it was inter­est­ing to see all the ways the set can be changed between takes to accom­mo­date film­ing the same scene from dif­fer­ent angles.

Even though my Princetern­ship was only orig­i­nally going to last three days, Gre­gory was very gen­er­ous in allow­ing me to come in on Thurs­day and Fri­day as well to con­tinue observ­ing every­thing.  On Thurs­day he and Kevin brought me to Sunset-Gower to show me around the other sets they have – Charlotte/Cooper’s home, as well as an exten­sion of the prac­tice (it’s inter­est­ing how the same build­ing in TV-world is actu­ally split up on two dif­fer­ent sets in the real world).  They pointed out some of the parts of the set that we rarely see on TV, like the bath­room in Charlotte/Cooper’s home and the shelves in Pete’s office.  On Thurs­day after­noon, I went back to the art depart­ment office and read many of the old scripts of the show.  It’s fun to see how episodes I’ve already seen trans­lated from page to screen, and all of the scripts in the art depart­ment office have set lists and draw­ings in the back as well that taught me more about how set plans are visu­ally notated and orga­nized for each episode.

On Fri­day morn­ing, the art depart­ment received the list of new sets that needed to be cre­ated for the final episode.  Gre­gory, Kevin, and I went into down­town L.A. to the L.A. Cen­ter Stu­dio to look at some pos­si­ble sets to use.  Like the back­lots at Uni, L.A. Cen­ter Stu­dio has a num­ber of sets in the build­ing that can be rented out for dif­fer­ent shoot­ing needs, like a cour­t­house, a jail set, an office space, and much, much more.  After walk­ing around the sets here and choos­ing some to be used for the new episode, Gre­gory and Kevin took me on a brief archi­tec­tural tour of down­town L.A.  On Fri­day, we received the new script for the sea­son finale, so we spent the end of the day read­ing through it (it was a very excit­ing good­bye present for me!).

I can­not express how amaz­ing this week was and how grate­ful I am to Gre­gory, the art depart­ment, and every­one else I met at “Pri­vate Prac­tice.”  I came into the week with a very strong inter­est in art depart­ment work, but I needed to learn more about the dif­fer­ent jobs that are avail­able in the TV/ film indus­try and which I would be most inter­ested in.  Every­one I met was incred­i­bly accom­mo­dat­ing and open to answer­ing all of my ques­tions and teach­ing me about what they do on the show, and I came away with even more excite­ment about pos­si­bly going into art depart­ment or set dec­o­ra­tion work after grad­u­at­ing this year.  Thank you, “Pri­vate Practice!”