- Welcome to another segment
of Behind the Scenes of The Waltons.
This is an Ask Judy segment.
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It's always great when different people
who have been involved in the production side
or even the acting side of The Waltons pipe in
on my comments.
And one of the people
who's been very insightful about different things
has been one of our production assistants,
later turned director and producer
and writer himself, John Dayton.
He was talking about the various different drive-by's
and some of the location shoots and things like that.
So he shared, "The drive-by shots were generally covered
"for the season by one day of vehicle shooting up
"at the Los Padres forest location above Frazier Park.
"There was a dirt road below the main road
"that was basically an access point for maintenance
"and forestry officials.
"We ran the vehicles along this road placing the camera
"both below the road and above it.
"Notice in these wide shots
"that the occupants of the vehicle were not visible.
"In this way, we could make use of the film
"in multiple episodes and various scenes.
"It was indeed a gargantuan feat and expensive
"to haul the vehicles the 65 miles
"from Warner Brothers Burbank to Frazier Park,
"and then up the mountain road.
"I do recall one time where we brought one vehicle along
"for the shoot with the actors Richard and Beulah Bondi,
"in that the director wanted to clearly identify them
"as they drove the vehicle.
"That day we took advantage of the vehicle
"by shooting another generic drive-by
"which could be inserted into future episodes.
"Certainly, we used every minute
"to shoot everything we could
"while up the mountain including generic panning shots
"of the mountainous forested area which could be used later.
"A quick note on process shots.
"There was a line painted on the floor of our stage,
"Stage 26, this perfectly straight line was used
"to directly line up the camera lens on one side
"of the screen with the projector on the other.
"The camera was then interlocked with the projector,
"enabling the shutters of each opening and closing
"at the same time.
"In those days, the crews were very effective
"at positioning and interlocking,
"but it still was an added expense for the show.
"The biggest and most complicated process setup
"was for the Hindenburg episode.
We shot that on Stage 8,
"one of Warner Brothers largest stages of the time.
"When that episode is covered,
"I'll chime in on what an exciting day
"that turned out to be."
So, I guess I'll have to cover the Hindenburg soon,
so that we can talk about what went on in that episode.
So thank you very much, John,
for that insight into, more about process shots,
also a little behind the scenes about how many of those,
what ultimately were generic drive-by shots were filmed
with the various different vehicles.
Also I had some input about the raised question
about how do we make babies cry?
So, two different perspectives here.
One from our director, Ralph Senensky.
He said, "Hi, Judy, I can supply an answer
"to making a baby cry in a scene.
"I learned it from the woman in charge of infants
"on the movie pilot A Dream for Christmas,
"a Lorimar sister production to The Waltons.
"Someone softly cries into the baby's ear
"and the baby will start to cry, it worked.
"I used it soon after when I was directing another TV movie,
"The Family Nobody Wanted.
"There was a scene with Shirley Jones and a baby
"and the baby needed to cry.
"When I cried into the baby's ear, nothing.
"It took a woman's voice to get the result.
"So Shirley cried into the baby's ear,
"the baby started to cry.
"Shirley rushed back to her beginning position
"for the scene, the camera rolled and I called 'action'."
There you go.
So that was Ralph's input on
how you could have a baby cry when needed.
Then our production assistant, John Dayton, said,
"Hi, Judy, re: the crying babies.
"It was my experience that we would roll film prior
"to setting the infants in the crib or et cetera,
and the moment the guardian stepped away,
"we could usually count on a moment or two of crying.
"I have no recollection of ever presenting a toy
"and then taking it away.
"If so, that would have upset me
"and I would have questioned the action and motivation."
So, clearly a lot of concern as I suspected
and as I experienced about the care of the infants
and the children when filming.
A couple of different questions about directors,
Betonman 75 asked, "When different directors
"and or producers came to film an episode,
"what did the cast need to do to adapt?"
And then Judy asked,
"I noticed there were always different directors,
"I wondered why they were changed so often."
So, there's a lot of time involved in directing an episode.
It isn't just the six and a half days of actual filming.
But there is the whole preparation, pre-production aspect
of getting that script and breaking it down
and figuring out what a director wants to do
with each scene, how they wanna shoot it,
what equipment they're going to need,
if there's anything special, and then questions relative to
how budget is going to impact what they'd like to do.
There's the whole casting process
that the director is involved in.
And then once the actual filming is finished,
then there is the post-production, all the editing,
and decisions that are made that the director has input in
on all the things after the fact.
And many times our directors were directing for other shows
besides just The Waltons.
So, in terms of how they were contracted
and how far in advance or whether a director
was offered a number of episodes in a season,
those things I'm not familiar with,
so perhaps one of our production assistants or directors
can give input on that or maybe we'll check in
with Ralph Senensky or John Dayton on those points,
so, pipe in guys (chuckles).
In terms of adapting,
each director had their own particular style.
Some had come up through the technical side,
they had been camera operators
or assistant camera operators,
or had come up through the crew side of things,
had been an assistant director.
Some of our assistant directors in earlier seasons
later had an opportunity to direct episodes,
so they came up on that side.
Others as I have mentioned, like Ivan Dixon and Alf Kjellin,
Lee Philips, Larry Dobkin, they had all been actors.
And so, they came to it from the acting side,
of course, Ralph Waite and Richard Thomas
also directed episodes.
So everybody did have their own style to directing,
some had a lot of experience on both sides,
both directing and really understanding
the technical side of it.
So, we did adjust, some directors gave more acting input
to the actors, and some just let us roll with what we did.
As we had done the series for longer and longer,
there was less that directors needed to give us input
about our character or our motivation
or our subtext, what we were thinking
about what our character was going through,
because we not only knew that from that episode
in whatever homework each actor had done,
but we knew it from having done the whole series.
We knew the background,
we had shot the background experience of these characters,
so that made it pretty easy for the actors to know
what was going on and not necessarily
have to have a whole discussion with the director
about the character's reasons for what they were doing.
So then sometimes it was more just about working out
what were going to be the specifics
within the mechanics of an episode,
where we were gonna move, where the camera was gonna be,
things like that.
But sometimes, some directors would give more input
into nuances of a performance.
And that tended to be more with the directors
who had been actors, but not always.
Sometimes I felt closer, more in tune,
with certain directors than others.
Sometimes I didn't agree with a piece of direction
that a director gave me, and that was always a bit tricky.
You try to work with what the director is giving you,
but as an actor you have to trust your instincts too.
If you feel like it's really off track,
then there will be a discussion
and trying to find how you make that moment work,
because ultimately, the actor is the one on the screen.
And my feeling was always, if I do something really wrong,
really incorrect for that character, I'm sorry,
but I feel like the audience isn't gonna go,
"Oh, well, the director gave you a piece of direction
"that didn't work."
They're gonna go, "Wow, that was a bad choice
"on that actor's part."
So that's a tricky one to navigate.
So thanks for those questions.
Eduardo asked, "Somewhere I read
"that Michael Learned was 32 when the show started
"and Richard Thomas 20."
He was actually 21 when the series started,
he was 20 when we did the homecoming.
"It made me curious about the real age of the actors
"versus the characters and what an amazing job you all did
"portraying such different age on the screen."
So thanks, I appreciate that.
For the younger cast, we were pretty close
to the actual ages we were playing
'cause that's a little harder to fake.
So Kami was the youngest, by the time we started the series
she would have been about 7.
David was about 9 or 10, Mary was about 12, I was 14,
Jon Walmsley was 16 and Richard was 21.
We mostly just played our own ages
which made it a little easier.
For Michael being, at 32 she was young to have had,
John-Boy was supposed to be about maybe 17 at that point.
So, yeah, she could have had that child really young,
but she was a little young for that.
But she did have three boys of her own,
so she understood the parent mindset.
And I think that allowed her
to come to that experience of having seven children,
just added a few, so she was always lovely
right from the beginning.
Then, he also asked, that he,
he says that he grew up watching the show dubbed in Spanish
and later in life watched in the original English,
and have I ever watched it in another language?
I have not.
It would be fascinating to me.
And also, I don't know,
I've been a little leery of watching that
because you create a performance,
and to have somebody, another actor,
then dub your performance into another language,
they have to also be an actor
and know how to create that same performance
in another language, but I just haven't actually watched it.
So, perhaps I will one of these days.
So interesting question, thank you very much.
And thanks for all of your questions.
Please do keep posting them and I will continue
to take them up.
That's all I have for now,
stay tuned for future segments of Behind the Scenes
of The Waltons and future segments of Ask Judy.
Thanks for watching.