Just snuck this post in before the end of August. Excellent.
Things changed quite quickly over the last month, which partly explains why I haven’t updated this here space. First off, we moved to a new slightly larger place to accommodate the arrival of a new human later this year. The move happened all of a sudden and took a lot more work than I anticipated, unfortunately, and I just finally put in place my workstation and computer.
The second major change is that my episode of “Law & Order: SVU” got bumped up to October. This is a good thing. January would’ve been fine, too, but it’s also great to be part of the first half of the season as momentum builds heading into the holidays. (Also, New York in October is going to be really beautiful – not to say that January wouldn’t be without it’s charm.)
Anyway, all good things. I had anticipated slowly settling down in this new place and gearing myself up, taking time to get my directing muscles in fighting shape over the next several months (not to mention my actual muscles). Yeah, all of that has to be accelerated. Believe me – I am not complaining. I’m eager to get this show on the road, so to speak. To help with that, I’ve been meeting with the good people at Wolf Films in LA who run the Dick Wolf empire, getting their thoughts on how best to approach directing their flagship show. The New York SVU team has been great, too, giving me access to various things that will help me do my job a month from now.
I’ll try to do a better job of updating the blog as I prep myself before I arrive October 8 to prep for “SVU.” It’ll be fun to update this space while I’m in the thick of it, too. We’ll see if I can pull it off or if I’ll be too overwhelmed with the episode to write about it.
In the meantime, the Sony Diverse Directors program seminars concluded and they were awesome. Each session was broken down into two parts – first a director came in and talked about his or her experience directing television and then in the second hour an executive or agent would come and talk about the television industry or the state of the business. It was great, I really enjoyed it, especially directors Pam Fryman and Lee Shallat Chemel – who I shadowed at ABC on the show “Samantha Who” back in 2008. She is an incredible director who is really truly beloved by both her casts and her crews. She really shared her process and how she prepares to direct a show.
Anyway, Sony is apparently going to announce their selected directors sometime next week. It would be great to be selected, of course, but the other 24 finalists are all so incredible with vast credits, including a few who have directed episodics already. I’d be shocked if I was picked. Who knows – we’ll see. It’s good being in the Sony family, even tangentially. Would be great to get a discount on equipment and electronics, though, if nothing else. So I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
Oh, and here is video of the NBC Talent Showcase I directed in May. Great scenes, lots of laughs. Shows on stages are better seen live, of course, but take a look if you’re interested.
Sharat Raju 