"Touched By an Angel" Set Visit Part 3

After trying several times to adequately describe the way everything was set up, I decided a picture's worth a thousand words, so I sketched it out - I'm not giving up my day job, tho... ;-) This is kind of what the set looked like:

That green screen behind Roma and John was HUGE. There were very bright lights on them, directed through what I assumed was a diffuser or filter of some sort, that made them look like they were sitting in the sun on film, and not inside of a warehouse. There was a fan on the ground in front of them that was blowing very very gently during filming. There was one person whose job it was to turn the fan very carefully during the scene so that the 'breeze' it created was occasional, like real wind. At one point he accidentally tilted it a bit while they were filming instead of just turning it straight, and it squeaked, so they had to do the shot over again. Did I mention how amazing it was to see the amount of work and the number of little details that went into just this one scene?

It's hard to remember the exact order everything happened in, so I'm afraid I'm rambling a bit, and I do apologise if it gets confusing to you.

I think I mentioned earlier that there were tons of camera and lighting equipment in front of the setup I drew up above this. Whenever they weren't filming, people were very busy adjusting and setting up cameras and other equipment for later takes. But whenever they were filming, everyone stopped whatever they were doing and it got so quiet I was literally afraid I was breathing too loudly a few times. I've heard 'quiet on the set' plenty of times in TV shows, but when faced with it in reality, it's almost intimidating.

The very first time they did this was actually a practice. They ran through the scene as though they were filming it, but made little decisions on things like how long John should keep talking at the end, and exactly how gestures like Andrew putting sunscreen on Monica's nose should be performed. This really seemed to me to go fast, but it was right after we'd arrived, and as you may recall, I was still quite nervous, so it probably took about as much time as the rest of the shots did. :-)

The sunscreen in the scene was pretty funny, in fact. The first time through, John got WAY too much sunscreen on his hands for Roma's nose, and wound up wiping it all *over* the place trying to get rid of it. They did so many takes, we were joking that Roma's nose was not in any danger of sunburn for at least the next few weeks. If you notice in the final cut of the episode, John was being very careful to only get a *tiny* amount of sunscreen on his fingers to put on her nose (for some reason.)

When they got to the line, "That's a movie term," John was looking towards where we were standing. A couple of times, when the cameras weren't on him, he made a funny face at us when delivering the lines, and this made it really hard to stay quiet - we almost burst out laughing. I remember, later on, hearing something about John being a practical joker - well, every time that comes up, I think of this. He's definitely got a sense of humor.

In between takes was when John had time to talk to us. This tended to happen in five to ten minute parcels, so the conversation wandered all over the place. John was absolutely wonderful about introducing us to everyone we met, and everyone was very nice. We'd wind up following John about the set as we talked, and because there were a lot of cords and other people to walk around, we were following him single-file - we must have looked just like a family of ducks, and we kept teasing each other about this the rest of the weekend. (Quack!)

There was a horse on the set; John stopped to pet it and seemed very comfortable with it.

He took us out to the snack truck one trip, and just imagine this - the sorts of snacks you usually find in vending machines, just free for the taking. In all fairness to my workplace, they recently started providing coffee, tea and hot cocoa free to everyone, so I can hardly complain, but back then, my mind was boggled at the idea of free snacks at work anytime I wanted. Of course, in all fairness to the TV industry, my *long* workdays usually don't go past 10-12 hours long, and I think theirs are longer than that on a regular basis. So I understand why this was there and I'm not accusing anyone of having it cushy, it was just making me further aware of how different our 'worlds' are. None of us could really eat (especially since we'd had brunch while waiting to go over to the set) but we did have some bottled water from the truck, which was great for our dry, nervous mouths.

We did get to meet Roma and talk to her for a couple of minutes at one point, and she was an absolute sweetheart. She said hello to all of us and chatted for a bit before she was called away for something else. Della wasn't there that day, as she was out promoting her book, but there were lots of wonderful people to meet.

As I said above, the conversation with John turned to a lot of topics. Most of it was private conversation that I won't repeat; it would be hard to remember anyhow, and it was mostly Cybersusan and John catching up and talking about his website. There were a couple of things that were funny and I think are OK to share, though.

Something that used to make me chuckle about John was that, invariably, when giving interviews or chatting with fans, he would slip in the comment, "I'm NO angel!" I'm not criticizing him for this; many of his fans gave the impression that they thought he was some sort of angel in human form (and sometimes still do!) and I think his reaction was a very good, healthy one to that situation. It's just that the way he never missed an opportunity to say it and just the way he would say it gave me the impression he felt he should be wearing a warning label, and I just couldn't help chuckling over it. This conversation was no exception.

Catwoman was recovering from some serious injuries and started to run out of energy after awhile on the set. There was nowhere to sit in there, really. I was starting to get a bit worried about her, but John noticed the problem and thoughtfully offered to take us to his trailer where we could all sit down for a bit. We were glad to accept the offer, of course.

The inside of the trailer was very nice and tidy (for the most part - he WAS storing a stack of papers in the kitchen sink, but other than that the place was quite neat! He introduced us to a very nice person who keeps it clean for him.) It was easy to forget that we were in a trailer, it was so nice in there, until someone came in the door and caused the entire thing to rock. There were little touches of angel-themed decorations, and lots of photos all over it.

For those who are always joking about John eating at Taco Bell, I'm afraid he had 'Wendy's' for lunch that day - and I'm pretty sure it was cold by the time he got around to eating it. You know how the ice in drinks melts to tiny little chips and you can hear that they've melted that far when someone picks the drink up? Well, that's what his drink sounded like. And yes, I think that's an odd detail to have remembered too, but my memory is kinda strange that way.

John did talk about how excited he was to meet the folks he gets to work with on the show; they'd been filming "Charades" that week and were going to be filming "The Comeback" soon after our visit.

Anyhow, John needed to go 'loop' some dialogue (re-record something that was missing or that hadn't sounded quite right on the film) so our visit had to come to an end, but the time we spent there was wonderful. John hugged us all goodbye and left for the sound studio, and we said goodbye to our wonderful guide. The rest of the weekend in SLC was wonderful as well.

Since photos aren't generally allowed on the set and we wound up not having time for photos with John outside (we asked, he said yes, and promptly got called back to film again - and we didn't have time to ask later!) I don't have any photos to share with you of the set visit, but if you'd like to see some photos from the rest of the weekend, click on the link below:

-

Salt Lake City area Sights - Antelope Island (recommended by John) and the Mountains near SLC

-