Tight Deadline Quotes

When you're the lead actor in a drama, you have 2 1/2 months at the end of a season to do other projects, and everything has to get done in that time.

At 21, right out of college, I had two producers, about my age, who had never produced a show before, and they wanted me to write and produce an hour-long show before I turned 22. Which is a whole lot of work for someone who's just an 'airhead.'

Most film teams usually come with a tight deadline, which doesn't leave us much time to compose.

Combine that with the fact that we only had one week to get everything taken care of and to get to know one another, whereas most shows get two weeks. It looked like we would never have a chance.

I did a network show in the U.S. before, and I loved it, but you have eight days to shoot an episode, and it's just a ridiculous pace.

TV series, there's a lot of everybody talking to you and giving you input for the first couple episodes, and then they're on such a crazy schedule that you get another episode on a Monday, you have to have it done by Friday and it becomes very solitary work usually, TV shows.

When you're shooting a TV show, there's not a lot of time to build character.

I was notified on July 17 to be ready to start August 7 for an October air date. When we reached the screen we did not have a single segment ready. It was done so fast the writers never got a chance to know what it was all about.

We've rewritten entire scenes and had them animated twelve hours before the show goes on the air. It's not fun.

Venom,' we worked all the way up until the release. It was one of the latest things you could possibly push the schedule to. We actually finished it two weeks before it had to go everywhere throughout the world.

'Days of Our Lives' was an insane schedule. You're doing a whole one-hour show in a day. You do a very cursory run-through with the director telling you where you're going to be standing, then you do a quick rehearsal on camera and you shoot it.

I went back-to-back from 'Paperboy' to 'Butler,' literally with no break.

Acting in TV as opposed to films is really difficult. What a film gets two months to do, we get eight days to do.

I love making cheap films. I really do. What I've found is that I work better when it's both a fairly low budget and a short schedule. It focuses the mind, and it's a better atmosphere.

If I'm going to the White House, my alarm goes off at 5:00 A. M. Typically there is no snoozing; jump out of bed, text my producer, often start texting with sources if there's breaking news that's happened overnight, and I'm off and running from that moment on.

With TV, you just have to finish the days and get the episodes out. And it's always going to be an impossible schedule. That's the funny thing with TV that not a lot of people realize.

Indies are always an extra challenge. The time is shorter because you have less money to spend and fewer days to shoot.

It's hard to make a good movie in four weeks. It's hard. I've done it, but it's not easy.

The four of us couldn't have made a record with the time left over when we were shooting the show. We were on stage from 7.30 in the morning 'til 7 at night. Later on, when there was a break from filming, and we were sick of doing it the old way.

Dictum on television scripts: We don't want it good - we want it Tuesday.

With the TV stuff, we usually hand in final, finished tracks. The turnaround time is so tight that there's no time to demo anything; you just do it.

We shoot double episodes in 15 days in Los Angeles.

It's a very long and difficult schedule on a single-camera show.

The black community in Hollywood is very small and close-knit. Everyone has a common goal: to make a two-hour movie in 30 days.

Even when a pilot goes, you shoot it in March or April, and then you have to rush it through post-production by May. If they greenlight it, then you go and there's no time to think about it. And then, you've gotta start shooting in July, so you're off to the races.