Development Heaven / Live-Action TV

• Babylon 5:
  • With Season 3, J. Michael Straczynski became the first person in the history of American TV to write a full-length season single-handed. And then he did it again with season 4.
  • And because he wanted to flesh out everything beforehand, he took what had to be an unprecedented step of Crazy-Prepared by giving every character a "trap-door" in case anyone had to be written out due to Real Life Writes the Plot, so that every exit made sense within the story instead of having to make it up as the show went along.
    • Which turned out to not only have been Crazy-Prepared but Properly Paranoid, since the actress playing Talia Winters got written off the show when she felt her character wasn't getting enough airtime.
  • Straczynski put so much thought into how Starfuries would work (placement of thrusters for maximum maneuverability, the pilot stands to lower his center of gravity, et cetera) that JPL, who were big fans of the show, asked if they could use his basic design to build vehicles for construction in space. JMS said they could, on the condition that they're called Starfuries.
  • He had the storyline so thoroughly plotted out ahead of time that he refused to let actors ad-lib their lines, for fear it might cause discontinuity, or wreck a bit of Foreshadowing, etc.

• Battlestar Galactica (2003):
  • The series' crew specifically employed people with the job of cutting the corners off of all paper seen on-screen to make them into the series' distinctive octagonal shape.
  • The production of "Someone to Watch Over Me" went to downright ridiculous lengths in order to realistically depict a man playing and composing music on an old and beat-up piano. Having a basic knowledge of how to play a piano was a casting requirement for the character — this enabled the crew to film from any angle without having to hide the actors' hands or use a Talent Double. Because the prop piano was intentionally left out of tune and due to the specific acoustics of the set, any re-creation of the sound in post-production would've sounded incredibly different (and thus rather fake). As a result, composer Bear McCreary sampled every note on the prop so that he could later duplicate the sound of that exact piano in that exact room. Once they actually arrived at post-production, it was pointed out that production recordings of the prop piano were in mono, while any music re-created would be in stereo. What did Bear McCreary do? He rerecorded every piece of music played by the actors down to the last note, syncing his recordings with the actors' exact hand movements at the same time. The final product is just simply amazing.

• Frank Herbert's Children of Dune has the song "Inama Nushif", which is sung entirely in the Fremen language.
  "Unreal. Brian [Tyler] actually searched through Herbert's books and deciphered enough of the fictional Fremen language to write this powerful song. A song that drives my favorite moment of the film."—Director Greg Yaitanes.

• The lead actors of Emergency!, Randy Mantooth and Kevin Tighe, went through the paramedic training of the Los Angeles County Fire Department at the time in order to accurately portray their roles. Had they not skipped the final exam, they would've been fully-certified paramedics.

• A lot of the CGI in Firefly was done to fit in the shots instead of making the shots to fit the CGI. Beyond that, the amount of detail that goes into everything — from backgrounds, to slang, to minor plot points that don't become important until six episodes later is simply amazing. This was Joss Whedon and Tim Minear's baby. And it was killed after fourteen episodes.

• The Joy of Painting: Bob Ross usually painted every painting that appeared on the show three times: The first as a reference, the second being the one he'd paint on camera and a third that included extra details and would be included in his instruction books. According to a documentary by the New York Times, many of these paintings are archived at the headquarters of Ross' business, while his friends Annette and Walt Kowalski also own a complete collection. Some of the paintings from the headquarters were donated to the permanent collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

• Kamen Rider Zero-One: Fumiya Takahashi suffers from acrophobia, which became an issue when a scene from episode 39 required Aruto to be lifted high in the air by crane, with the shoot location being a mountain valley bridge already hundreds of metres above ground level. Despite this, he overcame his fear in order to willingly commit himself to this stunt for the scene of Aruto's defeat at the hands of Kamen Rider Ark-Zero.

• The Orville:
  • A lot of the space shots are done with practical effects on a large model of the Orville, despite the technical difficulty (each shot requires at least six passes with a motion-controlled camera), to give the ship a solid on-screen presence that CGI can't achieve.
  • As seen by his use of Neil deGrasse Tyson as a scientific advisor on Family Guy, and his executive producer credit on Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, Seth MacFarlane has a massive amount of respect for space and the exploration thereof, which comes through in the show constantly.

• Sesame Street invented thoroughly-researched, broadly appealing educational kids' shows. Thousands of studies were conducted to make sure that the show benefits children, and every season updates its' curriculum based on current research. Couple that with Parental Bonuses, Jim Henson's Muppets, beautifully made animated shorts, and the iconic compositions of Joe Raposo, and you have one of the most beloved children's shows worldwide.

• When Andrew Robinson was cast as Garak in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, he actually wrote a detailed back-story for his character, and presented his "character bible" to the series' producers. Apart from some elements that went counter to the previously-written Cardassian history, the producers approved Robinson's efforts, which became part of Garak's character. Many of his notes which didn't make the series proper, went into the Expanded Universe novel "A Stitch in Time".

• The Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Twilight" features a 'blink-and-you'll-miss-it' opening scene of the Earth being blown up. Originally it was simply going to be the Earth blowing up like planets in Star Wars, one minute it's there, next minute, fireball. The effects supervisors just weren't happy with that and so they came in on their days off and re-did it to the final product. Now, you actually see the oceans boil and fault lines actually crack, as if the Earth spontaneously combusts into dust. When asked who authorized the extra work and why, they said they did it for free. Just because.

• Ultraman Decker: Instead of reusing a stage show or refurbishing a existing suit, a brand-new suit was created for Mons-Ahgar, according to the producers there was an overwhelming influx of support from the production team to make it a reality, with episode 1 director, Takanori Tsujimoto, expressing that the suit has potential for future upgrades.

• WandaVision:
  • Kevin Feige and series creator Matt Shakman consulted with Dick Van Dyke on the details of filming classic broadcast TV sitcoms.
  • Crew members came to set in '50s-era clothing and used period lenses and lighting to capture the vintage glow of '50s eras sitcoms for the pilot. Most of the black-and-white sequences were shot natively in monochrome rather than converting color footage. This added a wrinkle to production, as makeup, costumes, props, sets, and set dressing all had to be designed with high contrast in mind to avoid everything blending into various shades of gray. Notably, Vision had to be painted blue because his maroon skin didn't look right in grayscale.
  • Elizabeth Olsen revealed in a press interview that when Wanda uses her powers to levitate things in the first two episodes, the special effects team, a team of people who ordinarily handle things like pyrotechnics and explosions, actually stood on catwalks above the set and dangled props on strings, just like how TV sitcoms from the '50s and '60s would've had to do to achieve that. In particular, it took them several tries and a lot of frustration to figure out how to dry a glass with a dishrag using this method.

• Westworld:
  • Hiroyuki Sanada appointed himself the show's consultant on Japanese culture, regularly going around the Shogunworld set and making little changes so it would be more authentic, while still allowing through the occasional mistake like the leather in his character's clothes so it would still fit as a literal The Theme Park Version of Edo period Japan.
  • Jonathan Nolan admits the trippy sequence of Caleb being under the Genre drug influence which let him experience different kinds of film genres was his idea because he likes to experiment on this approach. He even compares to the three-course gum from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

• Yes, Minister: Nigel Hawthorne, who played Sir Humphrey, was required to perform some of the most convoluted Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness ever brought to screen, big or small. However, in spite of being forced to perform lines like: "The relationship, which I might tentatively venture to aver has been not without some degree of reciprocal utility, and perhaps even occasional gratification, is emerging a point of irreversible bifurcation and, to be brief, is in the propinquity of its ultimate regrettable termination.", he never once resorted to using a cue card, but insisted on actually learning his lines. The writers were shocked and awed.

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