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Post by Kurai on Sept 18, 2012 11:44:22 GMT -5
Sorry guys, Chloe Sevigny can't make it today as she is far too busy (also, I'm tired)... Nevertheless, the show must go on... And I think we can all agree that this show is a great little gem. TEACH
ChilledDC Presents: Teach Booth All-new episode! Teach Q+A session! Ask anyway, guys and gals!
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Jester
Masterful Wordsmith
Guys... Where are we?
Posts: 1,360
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Post by Jester on Sept 18, 2012 12:05:07 GMT -5
1. Who is your favourite character to write for and why?
2. Who is your least favourite and whyy?
3. The show hinges on some great character relationships. Were any of them modeled on your own friendships with people?
4. will the students ever become a bigger focus?
5. Where on earth is this school?!
6. Will Ofsted ever make an appearance?
7. What'd you feel about this years GCSE scandal?
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Post by ChilledDC on Sept 18, 2012 12:20:51 GMT -5
“What’s up RU-Con!” It was with those words that show runner Dale ‘ChilledDC’ Clarke kicked off Tuesday’s Teach booth, and it was with that same enthusiasm that the booth continued. Clarke revealed that the pressure of doing things right really gets to him – “I’m a nervous wreck from writing for RU, I mean it, don’t laugh.” He said, getting a good reaction from the audience. “We’ve got some great writers on this network. You’ve got guys like Johno and Jester knocking it out of the park every time they bring out an episode, and then you’ve got me just coasting along. I’m like that slacker every office has who you’re not quite sure how they still have a job.” He proceeded to bring out the entire main cast of Teach to talk about the release of episode three and the series as a whole. Scott Michael Foster (Erik), Aubrey Plaza (Alexis), Jake McDorman (Luke), Jim Rash (Christopher), Bill Hader (Richard) and Jessy Schram (Holly) all joined the panel, which Clarke joking that he wanted them to leave – “Seriously, a second ago I was the most famous person in the room, now I’m like seventh. Eighth if you include that stagehand who just brought me a bottle of water. He was once in the audience for Ellen once.” However, Clarke quickly backed the statement up by saying that he couldn’t be happier with his cast – “I’ve pretty much gotten the chance to assemble an all-star cast for this show. We’ve raided the casts of shows like Parks & Recreations, Greek and Community and then thrown in some Saturday Night Live and Daily Show in there for good measure and gotten one of the best comedy casts I could ever have had the chance to work with.” Clarke continued by saying that there was a downside to the cast – “I’m trying to write comedy for a group of people who are hilarious, and that kind of puts the pressure on.” Aubrey Plaza butted in, saying in her signature deadpan style “It’s true, we’re funny all the time.” The cast took a few moments to talk about what we’ve seen and what we can expect going forward. On the Erik / Alexis relationship Scott Michael Foster explained that “It isn’t something we can rush. It’s obvious to us and clearly to all of you watching that there’s a spark there but if we just got together in the first episode then you really wouldn’t have any reason to keep watching.” Aubrey added that people not watching would be a “real shame.” Clarke expanded on Foster’s statement, saying that when he pitched the show it was in a two season arc – “If we get a second season then you’re going to see a lot of storylines move forwards into it, because that is the way I imagined it, as a two season structure. So there’ll be some storylines you’ve seen, like the Erik / Alexis relationship, and a few that come later in the season that will be resolved throughout a possible second season.” Clarke was quick to back up that they could easily go beyond two seasons – “I’ll write this show as long as it stays fun to do so, and I don’t see that being a problem any time soon.” Jake McDorman spoke about some of the criticism given to his character in the first two episodes. “I think coming into the show we knew we needed a sort of straight man, but when you’re surrounded by unique and really out there characters like we are in Teach it’s kind of difficult to leave a mark.” Clarke agreed, bluntly stating that “My idea was for Luke to be the audience’s perspective, but I failed to realize that a show like this really didn’t need that, it thrives on over the top personalities. It was just poor writing on my behalf.” McDorman said that he thinks Clarke caught that early on because his role is much more in tune with the rest of the cast in the upcoming episodes – “Luke gets his own identity and that starts in the episode you’re about to see. He’s not the damsel in distress anymore.” Jim Rash praised the ensemble nature of the show and said that it really comes into its own in the next few episodes – “You know that with a show like this you’ve got to have your leads,” He started, referring to Foster and Plaza’s characters. “But the great thing is that it’s an ensemble cast, every time you get a new script you open it up and try to see what new thing your character has got this week. It’s exciting.” Bill Hader agreed, saying that “Teach works in that each character gets focus throughout the series. Episode three has a lot of Christopher and Luke stuff going on while episode 4 is all about Richard, Erik and Holly.” When asked whether any of the supporting cast gets a big feature this season Clarke pointed to episode three – “You get a lot of Kayla and Nicholas in that one, and then episode seven’s main plot revolves around Jason, so yeah, you have to give the supporting cast time to shine.” Jessy Schram brought up how Holly isn’t actually a member of the English department, stating “I think it’s fun that Holly isn’t an actual teacher. I’m always sitting around with Dale trying to come up with new reasons for her to be in the staff room and they end up getting carried away.” Jim Rash said that was basically the story for the entire filming process. “It’s like playtime instead of work, we just end up sitting around and messing about.” Clarke then asked the audience if they wanted to see the debut of episode three, getting a resounding response. He said that following the screening he’d be opening the floor to any and all questions.
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Jester
Masterful Wordsmith
Guys... Where are we?
Posts: 1,360
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Post by Jester on Sept 18, 2012 12:25:48 GMT -5
What an amazing poster. I actually love it.
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Post by ChilledDC on Sept 18, 2012 12:28:00 GMT -5
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Post by Kurai on Sept 18, 2012 13:54:27 GMT -5
What an amazing poster. I actually love it. I can't see it! Am I the only one? ;;
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Post by Kurai on Sept 18, 2012 13:56:07 GMT -5
What an amazing poster. I actually love it. I can't see it! Am I the only one? ;; Never mind I can now! Weird!
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Post by ChilledDC on Sept 18, 2012 14:00:37 GMT -5
I'm glad people like the poster, I wasn't sure how it'd go down because I didn't want it to be flashy, it needed to convey the tone of the show while at the same time having some humor behind it.
Now, onto Jester's questions.
1. I should lie and say that I don’t really have a favourite since it’s a big ensemble show and I’m meant to love them all equally, but I’ll be honest and say that it’s probably either Erik or Alexis. I knew going in that they’d be these two sarcastic, slightly jaded teachers and I knew they’d be a lot of fun to write for because of that. Because of that I can cut loose with them and just write some really bizarre, really over the top lines because they’re just not serious about anything. I can be there writing an episode and just going through the motions when I suddenly think of a line and think “well nobody is going to say that”, and then I’ll think “no, Alexis wouldn’t definitely say that” because she just doesn’t care. It’s a lot of fun to have that freedom.
2. For the first two episodes it was definitely Luke. I came up with the character because I wanted the straight man, that kind of normal character who is just stuck in this weird, wild school and has no idea what he’s doing there. But I think I kind of went too far on making him normal and he just ended up bland. I’d have a lot of fun coming up with lines and situations for other characters and then I’d come to Luke and I’d have to go back to being normal and it kind of bored me in comparison. So I was faced with a decision pretty early on – either find a way to distance the character from the main plots, which I feel like I did kind of without noticing in the second episode, or find some other way around it. So with episode three he kind of comes into his own, I added a bit more personality and tried to bring him in line with the rest of the characters. He’s going to become a bit more wacky but with his own twist and hopefully that’ll make him a much more entertaining character. He was definitely more fun to write for this episde.
3. First off, I love that you’re enjoying the character relationships, that was always going to be the core of the show for me and the difficult task is keeping the focus on them while trying to be funny at the same time. But onto the actual question, I did take aspects from people that I know. The Erik / Alexis relationship is modelled after me and my housemate, just without the whole sexual tension thing in there. When we’re together we’re basically just an impenetrable barrier of sarcasm, so I took that and that’s where the friendship came from, and then the next logical step as I was planning it out was that there’d be this underlying romantic tension going on. Christopher is modelled after a guy I used to work with who was just far too happy and enthusiastic about everything. He was a nice guy and was just genuinely cheerful all the time, but at the same time he was pretty annoying, so Christopher is basically him in teacher form.
4. There are so many shows based on teenage strife and problems on television right now that I didn’t really want to add to that, which was one of the problems back when I was writing Generation Lost, there’s only so many new things you can do nowadays with kids in school, but I always wondered what was going on with the teachers while all these annoying kids were going around being, well, annoying. That’s the strong point of the show in my opinion, that it’s focusing on a group that don’t get a lot of love in comedy. There are a few students who get some focus, mostly ‘of-the-week’ types and Kayla, who is the student council president and basically an antagonist for the department, but I think that it’d lose that special spark if I brought them in. For the time being, it’s all teachers all the time!
5. This is really something I should have known when I started the show, isn’t it? When I was developing the show I didn’t know whether I wanted it to be set in Britain or America, because obviously I know the school system in Britain better but I also think American culture is a lot easier to make fun of at the same time. Because of that I didn’t give a location during the first episode. In fact I came up with a fake town and everything, and I haven’t really rectified that at this point. In my mine it’s an American school somewhere in North Carolina (likely Wilmington, just before Amongst The Dead’s zombie apocalypse), but I’ve kept it open until I actually need to address it.
6. Since it’s an American school Ofsted won’t be making an appearance, however that doesn’t mean that the US Department of Education won’t turn up somewhere down the line. In fact, if the show gets into its second season, and I fully intend to make it there, then DoE will definitely be showing up. Oops, spoilers.
7. Okay, gonna try and keep this one short because I could talk for hours on it. The biggest issue with the marking scandal was that it could very simply have been avoided. From what I understand the grade boundaries were changed to ensure that there was no grade inflation, but because they were done midway through the year that meant that the June exams were more harshly marked than those sat in January, which surely goes against the expectation that all children are treated fairly and equally? For me it’s a very simple problem, the education board put far too much focus on the idea of ‘grade predictions’ rather than focus on the idea that GCSE’s are not intended as something that the government can say – “look, we got it right” but rather about ensuring that students work hard and get the grade they deserve and have worked for, and this time round it is apparent that that has not happened.
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