Sunday, January 31, 2010
Tuners tubthump on TV
Variety: "It's expensive. It's labor-intensive. And it may or may not lead to a quantifiable box office benefit. But Broadway shows still push to get musical numbers featured on TV talkshows and other smallscreen outlets."
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3 comments:
I never really thought about the amount of work that goes into transforming a musical number into a promo on a TV show. I guess it makes sense. Along with all the issues with AEA and recording, which they're constantly revising, payment, extra rehearsals, paying the director and/or choreographer to restage the number, and all the other effort that goes into that. Now that I think about it, it's not surprising that one of those clips costs around $30,000 on average.
I can see why Hosts and Producers would not want to have theatre on their shows. It is just as it is said in the article that there is so much competition. These advertisements might raise ticket sales but it is not 100% and Theatre doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would draw people in to watch what would be happening tomorrow on Oprah. The difference is that I myself don't watch Oprah but if I were to be flipping through channels and came across that A Chorus Line would be performing the next day. I would watch the show then but I am a theatre person. The politics and competition for these time slots is just ridiculous.
While reading this article I couldn't help but remember watching Legally Blond on TV when it was aired. It really solidifies how different the aesthetic and media is when you have to watch it on a screen. It's interesting that the resistance is more oriented towards competition than that it doesn't really function as intended on a television without monumental editing and removal of things inherent to theatrical productions. It's expensive and probably exhausting to make something that looks great on stage look good on television. Even movies like Hairspray are radically different on stage than on film. It's not easy to do and I don't think it's successful most of the time.
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