Robert J. Sawyer

EXT. LOS ANGELES - DAY

ROBERT J. SAWYER, a bald, bespectacled novelist, and CAROLYN CLINK, his beautiful poet wife, survey the dozens of trucks, the hundreds of people milling about, and all the general chaos.

               CAROLYN
    Just think -- all of this
    because of you.

               ROB
    And it isn't even a crime
    scene!

As I said back on Thursday night, I was too tired then to blog about our first day on the set of Flash Forward, so let me play catch-up here.

We arrived at the Flash Forward base camp (where all the trailers were parked: director’s trailer, actor’s trailers, make-up trailers, etc. etc. etc.) at 8:00 a.m. and were met by executive producer Jessika Borsiczky Goyer‘s terrific assistant Katie Greisiger, and then a little later by Jessika.

(Jessika, by the way, is from Montreal: although this is literally as big as a Hollywood TV project can get in terms of scope and budget, we have a Canadian executive producer, a source novel by a Canadian, and four UK actors in leading roles).

We took a shuttle over to the actual shooting location (which was really quite close; I never took the shuttle again, and instead just walked back and forth). As soon as we got to the location, we were warmly greeted by David S. Goyer and Brannon Braga; David is directing and David and Brannon co-wrote the pilot script.

Brannon had to leave mid-morning to get over to the offices of 24, the other show he works on. But we had a great chat before he left; he is such a nice guy.

It was an incredible day to be on set: we had 152 extras and background players, making the chaos even more elaborate than usual. (I chatted with a bunch of the extras during the day; it was fascinating that most of them had no idea what project they were part of, or that “David” the director was, in fact, David S. Goyer of Batman Begins fame.)

We were shooting in an existing building, and David (and Rebecca Poulos, his incredible script supervisor) actually didn’t watch from the room the filming was happening in, but from another nearby room, where monitors were set up to show what the cameras were getting. Carolyn and I were given headsets so we could listen in to what the microphones were actually recording, and we bopped between sitting in director’s-style chairs behind David and standing discreetly out of shot watching the actual filming.

Everything was ramped up to the highest level: long dolly shots, Steadicam shots, etc. etc. The look is amazing.

It’s said that a director sets the tone for the entire production off-camera as well as on. David is so approachable, and he has such a great smile, and he was funny and warm with the actors and crew; despite the incredibly long hours and the endless takes (our first day on the set was the ninth day of shooting), everyone seemed loose and relaxed and upbeat because David himself was all those thing.

Lunch was wonderful; David said he’s used the same caterers (Mario’s Catering) on other projects, and we could see why — it was a banquet … that had to be consumed in just 30 minutes, including time getting between the catering tents and the set! We sat with David and the person who is developing the official web site for the series.

After lunch, I was interviewed for the “Making of Flash Forward” featurette — cool!

We met Jack Davenport, who plays Lloyd Simcoe; I’m a huge fan of the BBC sitcom Coupling, which starred Jack. He is much taller than I would have guessed, and very, very funny (not all people who play in comedies are actually witty without a script, but Jack really is). Today Jack had only 13 words of dialog — which caused him to quip that at least for one day, he was the highest-paid-per-word actor in Hollywood. :)

I also had a nice chat with Sonya Walger (who had read and enjoyed my novel Flash Forward) and her agent, and I spent a lot of time with actor Zachary Knighton, who is a great guy (and I don’t say that just because he’s huge fan of my novel).

Near the end of the day, I was introduced to the charming and brilliant Nne Ebong, the vice-president of dramatic programming development for ABC Studios, and she immediately suggested putting me into one of the scenes, and so I got a little cameo as a man on a cell phone (and the super-nice Jennifer Dunn, who was Sonya Walger’s stand-in and also a background player, coached me to hold the phone in my other hand, because I was covering my face with it in rehearsal).

Filming the scene I was part of delayed my departure from the set, so we ended up having a later dinner than planned with my terrific Hollywood agent Vince Gerardis and his associate Eli Kirschner; we ate at Luna Park, and I had a great steak. Of course, we’re all thrilled with how Flash Forward is going, but we also spent time talking about various other projects … ;)

All in all, it was a terrific first day on the set, and I am so glad I decided to come down to Los Angeles. I’m way busy with other things, and had been vacillating about whether I should really clear the days to take this trip but — man! — it totally, totally has been worth it. :)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site