A Quote by Justin Hartley

On a soap opera, you'll do an episode and a half a day, and in prime time television, you're hustling to get an episode done in eight days. That's a little bit frustrating sometimes. But there's also something exhilarating about it. It's kind of like live theater in a way, where you get one crack at it.
It's just immensely frustrating that things like Breaking Bad get made that are kind of perfect! There's not even a bad episode of Breaking Bad, let alone a bad season. I want to be able to say, "Hey everybody, it's impossible to make a show where every episode is great!" No it's not.
In a film you only get two hours to do this big arc and so you have to pick and choose your moments carefully, but with television you get to take your time and just take it episode by episode and discover new things.
We do want the freedom to move scenes from episode to episode to episode. And we do want the freedom to move writing from episode to episode to episode, because as it starts to come in and as you start to look at it as a five-hour movie just like you would in a two-hour movie, move a scene from the first 30 minutes to maybe 50 minutes in. In a streaming series, you would now be in a different episode. It's so complicated, and we're so still using the rules that were built for episodic television that we're really trying to figure it out.
I think what people watch television for is the emotional continuity, from episode to episode, and feeling that the experience that they had, four episodes ago, has actually been building to an episode that comes later, and knowing that the characters are growing, as a result of that, and making mistakes, is really, really important to the way people connect to television.
In daytime, you're shooting an episode a day, which is on average about 90 pages of script a day. That is very hectic. On '90210,' you get to work through it a little more. You're not just flying through it just to get it done.
'Party Down' is the most fun I've ever had working in my life. We shoot 10-episode seasons and we shoot it in 10 weeks, so it's very brief: 4-day episode shoots. You never get sick of anybody, and it never feels like a drag. It's way, way, way too short.
In television, you make an hour-long episode every seven days; we used to make 'Party Down' in four days per episode. It's quick and with independent movies is the same: you gotta keep moving. It's very similar.
Having the games on TV, I've always believed it's like watching a soap opera - fans can't wait for the next episode.
I'm still learning. It's all a learning curve. Every time you sit down, with any given episode of any given show, it is a learning curve. You're learning something new about how to tell a story. But then, I've felt that way about everything I've ever done - television, features or whatever. Directing or writing, it always feels like the first day of school to me.
I was talking to Shonda Rhimes the other day and I said, "I. Do. Not. Know. How. You. Do. This." While we're writing episode 10, episode 6 is shooting, episode 3 is in the edit, and episode 2 is in its color session...You've got seven episodes in different parts! It's a wild, wild, wild ride, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was badass and amazing.
The great thing about television is that most things get resolved by the end of the episode. So I think a lot of people watch TV to see something of their real lives reflected on the screen, but also they're hoping for that happy ending.
The Netflix brand for TV shows is really all about binge viewing. The ability to get hooked and watch episode after episode.
If you do an episode about something like transverse myelitis, it's a real disease that's out there, there are a lot of people that have it, and it's hard to get funding for them because people don't know about it. There are actually a lot of doctors that don't know about it. But if you do an episode of House, all of a sudden 15 million people are hearing the words, and it's an opportunity.
I would definitely say the last episode is as epic as probably any episode that 'Once Upon a Time' has ever done. I mean, it's massive; it's huge. It's like taking the best of all seasons and jamming it into one - literally.
I love my situation as a spectator. The actors are only a little bit ahead of the audience. The audience discovers the episode when it's screened, but we actors only discover the episode when we get the script, two weeks ahead of shooting. Until then, we know nothing of the evolution of our characters.
Sometimes animal exercises can help you get in touch with parts of yourself that you don't access day to day. In my day-to-day physicality, I'm a little bit like a terrier. I've always been described as a dog. I'm kind of goofy and a little dopey looking sometimes.
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