An Interview with The Office Creator Greg Daniels - Page 2

You have a 30 episode pickup for the coming season, which seems like a lot of work, and then you do this web stuff on top of it.

The way the show is produced is very informal compared to a normal show because it's a faux documentary. So the lighting shouldn't be perfect, and it's OK if there's a boom in the shot. The actors really like that because it allows them to improv. Every hour of production we spend 50 minutes shooting and 5 minutes lighting, as opposed to most other Hollywood productions that spend 40 minutes an hour lighting and 20 minutes shooting or whatever. So we end up generating a ton of stuff, especially when you consider all the actors are improv-oriented and we have such a large cast, so we have a lot of extra stuff. So we've put a lot of stuff up on the web as deleted scenes which is really fun. To me, the show should be about 28 minutes, that's it's natural length, and we don't have 28 minutes to air the show at that length, so I have all this extra stuff. That's why it's on the web, not for any strategic reason. But we'll see with the 30 episodes if we have the energy to do all that extra stuff or not.

The thing is, you have to come up with a story, and then you come up with subplots. By the time you're done, it's much harder to get it down to time than it is to generate the material. The show has a certain shape and you come to expect there's a certain number of twists and turns you expect in the story, and surprises, and some of the other cast that you've come to like have to get their moments. And the cast keeps growing. We've added Craig Robinson and Ed Helms and Creed Bratton just recently. That's another three fantastic performers who are now regulars.

There's a lot of different layers and tones in the show, with the Jim and Pam romance, and the crazy boss, and all that. It must be hard to mesh that all into one.

It is hard, but I think it's good. I think different people are interested in different aspects. Some areas of the web that are so Jim and Pam centred that they don't even mention Steve (Carell), and there's others that say "enough already with the romance, we want more comedy." So we need to balance the different aspects. Which is why sometimes I get irritated by the promos, because sometimes they have a strategy. They'll decide to hit the Jim and Pam romance, and it looks like there isn't a lot of humour in the episode when they pull out the violins for the promos. All the episodes have about the same proportion but it's mostly humour. And the romance is in there too but I think the romance is less effective when it's more than half of the screen time.

Article Author: Diane Kristine Wild

Diane writes about boring things by day, pop culture things by night. She also runs the TV, Eh? website, a compilation of news about Canadian television. Follow her on Twitter @deekayw for more random thoughts.

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