- Welcome back to another segment
of Behind the Scenes of the Waltons.
I'm going to be taking more of your questions today
in a segment of Ask Judy.
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I have a question here from Timothy
who asked about scenes that would have people dancing.
Now would there have been more than normal rehearsal
of the scene?
Not necessarily because we were typically just dancing
however we danced to that music.
So we weren't doing a choreographed dance.
So therefore it was just up to us
what we did with that music.
And you'll see varying degrees of that at times
but that I think made it a lot more realistic
because we were just supposed to be people going to a dance
and we weren't necessarily supposed to be trained dancers.
So I think it worked out well.
He also asked would, would you have certain actors
like some of the children that would have been bored
with the scene and as a result taken longer to film
than a normal scene?
I don't think so.
I think everybody loved the energy of the music
and getting to dance.
So I don't know that these scenes were any more difficult
or took any longer.
And with the actors, the regular cast,
we were used to dealing with the long hours
and the many takes so we were pretty grooved in
and with extras,
background players that we would've brought in,
quite often they were part of a group of, of actors,
extra people that would be brought in.
So they would know already who they were using
and that these were people that could handle it.
If somebody had come in at some point and not done well
with it they probably wouldn't have invited them back.
And final question, can you hear music while filming?
Sometimes, it depends what we're doing.
If we are just shooting the dancing and there's no dialogue
then yes we would've heard a playback of the music
that had been prerecorded.
If there was dialogue being filmed,
then they would cut the music out
so that the dialogue could be recorded cleanly
and then layer it back in in sound editing.
Emma asked, how is it decided what season of the year
an episode will be set in
and is every season of the show supposed to go through
all four seasons in order every time?
Sometimes it seems the whole show is set in the summer,
probably because of all the green.
I understand we were shooting in Southern California,
but then I remember the voiceovers of things like
it was the fall of the year.
But what would happen is we would start filming
a season in May.
Those episodes would start airing in September.
So in May, beginning of June, we were shooting what
would've been sort of fall episodes.
And then as we got into the summer,
we would be shooting winter episodes.
So here we were and it was summer and we were hot
and we were shooting more wintery sort of thing.
So that could be challenging.
You're wearing winter clothes in the summer.
And then as we got into later parts of the filming season
then we might be actually looking in the colder time
of the year, where we're shooting summer things
and having to get in the water or spray water around.
So it, it was still difficult for us as actors
because we didn't sync up with the seasons,
but they did not specifically every season say,
oh, it's now spring, it's now summer.
It's now fall, it's now winter.
But you would see different episodes
that would reflect that.
Like The Easter Story did kind of all as an episode
go through many seasons.
And there was this sections where you saw Mary Ellen
and GW up on the mountain dancing
and there was clearly snow.
So we would've had to shoot that at a point
where there was actually snow in those mountains.
In The Love Story,
I remember thinking how cold the actors look, looked,
and yet it wasn't supposed to be winter.
So we dealt with those kinds of aspects.
In The Best Christmas they actually created a sense of snow
on the back lot despite the fact
that there would not have been real snow.
So things like that would happen
and they would just create those seasons.
Emma also asked was there ever a story
in the show based on an actual event
of Earl Hamner's family?
Some things were maybe loosely based on things that happened
in Earl's life.
But for the most part it was all fiction.
They were all just crafted stories
and it was not really biographical
other than that it was about his family
but not necessarily the specific events of his family
or the people that he had met
or that had come through the family's life.
Next question is from Dave.
Can you do a discussion on lighting?
I'm really curious how that works on a show.
What type of lights, how hot it gets.
I'm not really technical in the sense of lights.
What I remember is that when we were filming
we had really large lights.
You actually got to see a trace of that
in the episode The Abdication,
when it's supposed to be a movie set.
And those were sort of those big lights
on stands were indicative of the type of lights
that we were still sort of using on The Waltons,
The big giant ones I remember them,
I think referring to as 10Ks, not sure why.
Somebody will pipe in in the comments
and explain these things in more detail I'm sure
and I'm hoping.
Then I remember there being juniors and babies
and inkys and each one got progressively smaller
as a light and what it was designed to do.
Then I remember there was a point where we started using
what they called nine lights,
which were was basically a square box,
square shaped light with nine individual lights.
Those were incredibly hot.
And I remember in The Wedding when Tom and I had to re-shoot
or shoot our closeups for our "I dos" in the ceremony
they'd forgotten to get them on location.
So they put us up on these ladders on the back lot
of the studio and put these giant nine lights in our faces.
And I know I'm trying really hard not to squint.
So what I remember about the lights was they were very hot
and then they would have big reflectors
that they would use to bounce the light
into different places to fill things.
And they would also have these big giant
what they called silks.
That is basically exactly what it sounds like,
a big giant piece of silk that they would put up on stands
sometimes when they wanted to block the actual sun
so that they could have consistency in the lighting.
They would do that outdoors
and same thing with the reflectors.
Those would pretty much be used outdoors.
Nowadays, things have really shifted
and lights aren't as hot.
They can do more with digital cameras to
not have to have as much light.
So it's, it's quite different today.
I've worked with like LED lights that aren't very hot.
I worked on something where we use what they
call these quasar lights that literally they had
like magnets in them and they could just like stick 'em
on a piece of metal anywhere in the location.
So it, a lot of those things have made it easier
in some ways.
If someone knows what they're doing with lighting
as a good cinematographer then it seems like there is
are fewer actual lights and not so many big heavy pieces
of equipment maybe in the lighting that need to be utilized.
So hope that helps with that a bit.
And then you asked another question.
I noticed a ton of extras with lots of extra costumes.
How much does that raise an episode's budget
and how hard is it for a director to coordinate?
Well, this was kind of a wardrobe department thing.
So if, like for all the actors we had our normal sort of
wardrobe that we had for the season
and maybe some pieces would be added during the season
but we would wear a lot of the same clothes.
And it was up to the costume supervisor to keep track
of which day in the episode it was.
Are we day one of the episode, day two of the episode,
if it has a lot of days and then to say oh on day one
Mary Ellen was wearing her overalls and that blue shirt.
On day two she was wearing her jeans and that plaid shirt.
And so then when a scene is going to be filmed
they basically go in and go well we're on day two.
So this is the wardrobe.
So they keep track of it that way.
With extras similar they know which day it's going to be.
And they would have a stock of costumes for extras.
And perhaps people would bring a few things of their own.
With a period show people tend to use
less of their own wardrobe.
If you were on a modern day show,
if I was guesting on a show I would often bring
a number of my own pieces to my wardrobe fitting
and might end up wearing some of my own clothes.
Same thing with extras if it is a modern show.
For this one it was the wardrobe department.
So that just means that they have to arrange extra time
at the beginning of the day before a big scene like that
to make sure everybody has their wardrobe set up.
So did it add to the budget?
I expect it did a bit
but big scenes were a little more to shoot anyway.
So it was just how they scheduled everything
to make sure we got through it.
That's what I have for you for this segment
of Behind the Scenes of the Walton's, Ask Judy.
I will be back again for more
Behind the Scenes of the Waltons and more Ask Judy.
Thanks for watching.