This post is crossposted at Everyday Goddess.
Oh, "10 Items or Less" (TBS) set visit opportunity, how did I love you? Let me count the ways...
- Set visit
- Star "Trok" themed episode
- Totally improvised comedy show, and therefore, a form I've never observed
- Female director
- Shoots in an open supermarket
Seriously, what we have here is a total slice of Liz Heaven. What we have here is Living the Dream, my friends. Here's me and Director/Executive Producer Nancy Hower:
This was my first time on a professional set with a female director, and maybe it's silly, but it was really inspiring.
And here's me and Star/Executive Producer John Lehr:
His energy rocked. He really seemed like he was in geek heaven, and I was glad I wasn't the only one. Because people, check out what was going down:
You absolutely have to check out my Flickr from my set visit to "10 Items or Less" OMG. The costumes and the art were hysterical. At one point in the scene they were taping, Kirsten Gronfield (in black and Vulcan ears above) made the "red alert" sound, and I thought I was going to die, it was so funny. Seriously, I don't even feel bad about telling you, because seeing her do it, even if you know it's coming, is going to seriously slay you, I promise.
So the show is filming episodes now that will air in January - Which explains why it's not available in my Tivo at the moment. You can watch some of last season online at TBS if you have Windows. Lucky for this Apple user they sent me some disks. (Although, how have I never heard of this show?) Funny, funny, funny.
Dude, the supermarket is open while they're filming. They help customers get to stuff and walk through set. I asked if they have issues with people gawking or coming specifically to watch the filming and they said no, that people mostly just go about their business.
Los Angeles: Company Town. Gotta love it!
They have all these offices up above the supermarket, which is a totally sweet set-up. And OMG the sound! Like, you can not image how noisy it is. I asked the field mixer if it felt totally surreal to just roll on all that background noise. He said it was different, for sure. Everybody is body miked because there's no way they could use a boom.
They walked us all around and everyone who talked to us was really great. Awesome producer peeps. The production designer showed me and Mekeisha from The Detroit News his sketches for the episode so we could compare them to the finish set pieces, which rocked.
Aside from the regular, most awesome cast, I did run into a couple of other celebrities. The first was none other than fellow BlogHer and SoCal Mom Donna Mills. Here's her post on the set visit and here's her Flickr set.
And we met guest star and former Star Trek Enterprise cast member, Jolene Blalock! She was really nice, accepted one of my "Living the Dream" stickers, and graciously listened to my silly story about how the hit counter on my old website circa 1998 was in Klingon. And we were all too polite to all ask her for a picture. Which kinda makes me laugh. But you know, sometimes I'm in experience mode more than blogger-take-picture mode. There was so much to adsorb in such a short time.
Matt from IGN asked Jolene if she gets invites to small fan "conventions" (great question!), and she said yes, that people have things in their homes and she gets invites. How do I not know these people?
Finally, it was really interesting to watch them work through the scene. They have it outlined out, and they have three cameras going and they just kinda work it through and improvise and experiment. It was fascinating to watch and to listen to how they all worked together; I could have stayed all day. I can't wait to see what pieces they put together for that episode.
So, in case you missed it, OMG I had the best time on the set of the very funny "10 Items or Less." Thanks so much to TBS and Sony for inviting me! And to Teni from Sony and Cassie from TBS for hanging out with Mekeisha and I so we could stay another hour.
Bob Clendenin was super nice and had the most hysterical costume:
