I stopped at a favorite restaurant tonight to sit at the bar and have a couple drinks. Quite often I’m the only one at the bar and with the exception of a bit of banter with the owner and a few waitresses I don’t do much talking while I’m there. This is fine me with as I’m not much of a talker around strangers. I despise small talk (though I do occasionally partake) and generally I don’t speak unless I really feel like I have something worth saying. So quite often I find myself gazing at the television above the cooler. The interesting thing about this is that there is usually music playing, so the TV is muted. This gives me a chance to watch the shows and commercials that come on and really analyze the visual aspects of them: how sets are laid out, how the lighting is setup, what is real and what is probably computer-generated, etc. I find it quite fascinating.
It amazes me when I do this just how many things I find that I would normally take for granted. Tonight I watched a scene in the show House where two main characters are standing in an elevator. I noticed that there are semi-transparent frosted glass panels above the characters, and lights are run bottom-to-top behind the panels to create the illusion of the elevator moving. As the elevator “stops” and the characters both step out, the camera pans out and we see an extra enter the elevator and the doors close behind him as he enters. Of course, most of us are paying more attention to the two main characters who are now walking away from the elevator. It is incredible just how much goes into making this scene so it feels believable, just so we can barely notice 10% of what’s happening!
During the commercial break I saw an advertisement featuring famed golfer Tiger Woods. He is checking out at a store, and a rather beautiful young woman with long brunette hair is the cashier. And I thought, who is this girl? I mean, who is she really when the director yells “CUT”? She’s probably an aspiring actress, maybe still in college, taking whatever gig she can get for experience. Now she can say she was in a commercial opposite a famous athlete. Will she go to bigger and better things, maybe someday playing an extra in a television show, stepping onto an elevator? And then from there, maybe working her way up to bigger and bigger roles, until she finally becomes a household name? She’s rather pretty, could she be another Julia Roberts? Or maybe at some point she’ll decide acting isn’t really for her. Maybe she’ll start a family, settle down, and work evenings teaching drama classes at a local community college. Eventually she might return to school, get her masters and look towards teaching at a university. Will we ever see her on television again? Who knows. For now, it doesn’t matter, and we can safely take her presence on TV for granted.