"On an eight-day schedule, the first idea that jumps off the page is the idea that you'll do, because you don't have a lot of time to do anything complicated. For this one, I'm still sitting on the couch thinking about what I want to do. I'm still working on what I feel visually and tonally the show is."
He plans to inject his own sensibility on the look and feel of the series as well as influence the casting decisions, only about half of which had been finalized when we talked. The cast now includes Christina Cox, Laura Harris, Zahf Paroo, and Florentine Lahme in addition to Livingston.
"That's the ongoing challenge of any pilot. We all have our opinion on what the show should be. Whether it's just a pilot, or whether it's a pilot going to series, we all have our beliefs on what we think the characters should be like."
He makes the process sound like a win/lose proposition. "I think it's about battles that you lose and things that you have to accept. I'm not sure I believe that television is a collaborative medium. A lot of times you're working for people who have strong opinions. I'll work on House, for example, where you'll have a lot of say on stuff, and at the same time there are things that happen that you don't have any control over because you're a guest in someone else's house." No pun intended, I'm assured.
While pilots allow more time to plan, the pace of TV production doesn't generally allow for a lot of reflection. "Television is like gesture drawing," he said, explaining for the benefit of my art school ignorance the process of making quick sketches of a model's series of movements. "You never have time to fully absorb a script or get heavily intellectual with something because it's go, go, go, and then it's gone. A lot of your decisions are instinct and survival."
Canada versus US
Initially a commercial director, Straiton got his longer-format television break on Traders, where he worked for three seasons. His early series work included Da Vinci's Inquest and other Canadian shows at the same time as he was establishing himself in the United States.
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