- Welcome back to another segment
of Behind the Scenes of The Waltons.
Today, we're here with Ask Judy
and I'm going to be taking some more of your questions.
I try to pick up various different questions
from the comments below, so I'm sorry if I don't get
to yours or sometimes I'll just answer them directly
in the comments, but, however it goes,
I do try to read and answer as many comments
as possible and then pick some up here on Ask Judy.
This question is from LoJ who says,
"I can't remember the title, but it was the episode
when Ralph was taking John Boy to shoot his first turkey.
In this episode, Ralph Waite was wrestling with a bear.
How was that done?"
Well, it was a combination of there being stock footage
of a bear, that was the real bear,
and then they had a bear suit and there was someone
who was meant to be wearing the bear suit
and they were trying, and it just wasn't looking realistic
and Jon Walmsley said, "Well, let me do it."
So Jon ended up putting on the bear suit,
so the wrestling that you see between Ralph and the bear
is actually Jon Walmsley.
Designs Billy asked,
"Why do they shoot scenes out of order?"
Well, it really has to do with budget
and the cost of moving equipment around.
So if we were, let's say, the first scene
is in front of the house
and they have all that equipment out there
and say, all it is is John Boy drives up,
he gets out of his car, he goes into the house.
Next scene is in the living room of the Walton house.
Well, that would mean packing up all that equipment
and then transporting it all back
to the soundstage, unloading it all, setting up,
doing the lighting and everything
to shoot John Boy enters the living room.
Maybe John boy says, "Mama, Daddy?"
And Mama says, "I'm upstairs."
John Boy heads up the stairs to go upstairs.
Next scene is in the bedroom.
Now they have to move all the equipment
from the living room into the bedroom.
It's not so big a move, but let's say after that,
they walk back downstairs and go into the kitchen.
Now they have to move all the equipment into the kitchen.
Now let's say the next thing is out in the barn.
Now they'd have to pack up all that equipment
and run it on out to the barn.
So it just doesn't make sense
to keep moving equipment around like that.
When you have live shows, like three camera shows,
they have all of the sets lined up in a row.
So the camera just basically shifts over
and every single set is already pre-lit,
so the camera just moves into the next position, shoots.
Moves into the next position, shoots.
Whereas for us, because we had one camera,
and one set of equipment, then basically each time we moved
to another set, everything had to move,
everything had to be lit again.
So that's why we shot out of order.
It can also make a difference within an existing set.
If, let's say we're even in the kitchen,
there are day scenes and night scenes.
Things will look different in the lighting if it's day
as opposed to night.
Therefore they will shoot all
of the day sequences first, perhaps,
or all of the night sequences and then the day sequences.
Those types of things'll happen
if it's more of a lighting change.
Sometimes it'll have to do with, for us
with the children or what time the children came in
because of how many hours the children could work.
So even within a given set, it might be,
"Well, let's do some things the children aren't in
and then we'll do the stuff with the children.
Then when the children have to go home,
then we can finish up with some things
the children aren't in."
So all of those things came into play
in putting together the schedule for a day.
So hope that answers your question
about why we don't shoot in order.
Would be much easier for the actors to shoot in order
because for us, then we always have to keep track
of what day is it, what's already happened,
where are we emotionally within the episode,
things like that.
And that sort of leads me into the next question from Fiona,
who says, "I would love to know how long
it would take you to prepare
for an emotionally trying scene
and did those scenes affect you for a long time afterwards?"
So yeah, you know, everybody had their own process
for how they prepare for emotional scenes.
You know, it depended.
If we'd just come from something
that was really lighthearted and funny and everything,
I would need a little bit of time
to sort of switch gears emotionally.
But there is always time between scenes
because you do have to move the camera and,
to a degree, change the lighting,
probably change wardrobe, perhaps run by
and get your hair and makeup checked.
So there would be some time in there,
which I found was plenty of time,
to sort of reset emotionally,
take a look at the scene again if I need to,
just reacquaint myself
with where my character was at, emotionally.
If I knew that I had a lot of emotional work
during a day, I would pace myself.
I would know how much I could sort of step away
from it during the day.
Sometimes between takes, or even,
I would kind of just go off by myself
and not sort of come completely out of that emotional
state or the awareness of the circumstances
I was dealing with.
But again, each actor has their own way of doing it.
That makes a nice segue into the question
from Dutch, who wanted to know what it was like
to be on the Walton set and then be back
in real life after filming
and did it feel unusual sometimes.
Was Mary Ellen's character easy to go in and out of?
Did Mary Ellen sometimes leave set subconsciously?
No, I've always been an actor who can step
into my character and step out of my character.
I have never really found myself taking the character home.
Some characters are closer to me in nature.
I think Mary Ellen was a little closer to me
than maybe some other characters
because I started playing the character when I was young
and there were similarities like being a tomboy
and things like that.
Being a bit of a rebel, you know,
was something that was easy for me,
although I'm not particularly rebellious in real life.
But the confidence and the independence,
all of that is very much a part of who I am,
which is probably why it was such a good fit
in terms of the casting.
If it's a character that's less like me,
it might take a little bit more work
to step into the character, but dropping characters for me,
even if it's been a really emotional day, is pretty easy.
Tex asked about how they did scenes with the rain.
For example, in season one, in the episode
The Boy From the CCC, where they had the raccoon that died
and we buried the raccoon in the rain.
So rain was never in Southern California, real rain.
So they would bring these really,
really tall rain birds out.
And they would put them up high,
out of sight of the cameras,
and then they would turn them on,
just like big, high sprinklers
and they would have them on while we filmed
and then they would turn them off between takes.
And when we were done, away they'd go.
So if need be, they would cover the camera
to protect, and any other equipment,
to protect it from the rain.
But the rain could be very specifically located
just so that the camera could see it.
But quite often, it had to be coming down pretty strong
for the camera to actually read that there was rain.
So we usually got pretty darn wet, which is interesting,
because I spent a lot of years filming in Vancouver,
up in Canada, where it does rain a lot,
but not always heavily.
And I did any number of scenes where there was
a light rain going on all the time,
but the camera couldn't tell it was raining,
So they would have to run in and put umbrellas
over the actors in between takes to try and keep us
from - our clothes and our hair from getting too wet.
A little personal behind the scenes here,
some of you have noted that my locations,
'my' locations are sort of changing.
What's happened is that I've actually moved.
I had been in Southern California
for years and years and years.
In and out of there while we were filming the Waltons,
I lived there.
Then I went to Canada for 10 years
and then I was in Sacramento for three years,
then I was back in LA for, gosh, since 2005.
So about 16 years.
And then, just recently, I moved
up more to Northern California.
So this is part of the new location that I now live in.
So I'm experimenting around the new house
with different places that I like the scenery of.
So this may be my go-to
'cause I kinda love the trees out there.
I'm living in an area with a lotta oak trees.
So you'll get to explore perhaps a little bit
of this new area with me.
That's what I have for you for this segment of Ask Judy.
I will be back with more Behind the Scenes of the Waltons.
Thanks for watching.
This is kinda like a blooper.
See this guy, he keeps going back and forth,
so I have to keep like redoing shots so he's not in them.
(laughs)