I think the issue is more the production than the release schedule. If you have a cast, crew, and set all put together but you only plan to use it for eight episodes of filming before they disperse, and that’s just the industry model? How long does it take to get the gang back together for the next season?
The old sit-com format, where they churned out 24+ episodes a season (the norm for shows like Full House and Friends), meant continuous production. Once you have everything up and running, churning out that next episode is a marginal cost.
By comparison, to produce a season of Wednesday takes 18 months, from writing to production to filming to post-production to final release. And you only get eight episodes out of it. Rather than immediately rolling into the next season with the people and set you’ve already assembled, everyone is dispersed. And then it takes another 18 months to build it back up again, once Netflix decides to order another eight episodes.
What they’re trying to do with Wednesday is certainly higher budget per episode, with a much higher level of post-production work and movie-quality effects / lighting / etc. But the sporadic nature of the work means you’re losing inertia in the actual film making.
Yeah, hard to believe there were shows where you could literally see kids in them growing up because they were filming consistently. Like Home Improvement, Malcolm in the Middle, and Full House.
These days, having kids in the show means season 2 needs to jump ahead in time because the kids are way older by the time it starts filming.
Though I will also take a step back and acknowledge that the entire concept of child actors on a long running show is dubious, especially with more intense directors/producers.
That’s a great point. I also suspect that the stability of the work led to less expense in hiring because people aren’t having to negotiate with as frequent gaps in employment in mind.
I wonder whether a continuous format would work for modern shows. Like 1 every months. Could develop interesting watching culture if done well.
I think the issue is more the production than the release schedule. If you have a cast, crew, and set all put together but you only plan to use it for eight episodes of filming before they disperse, and that’s just the industry model? How long does it take to get the gang back together for the next season?
The old sit-com format, where they churned out 24+ episodes a season (the norm for shows like Full House and Friends), meant continuous production. Once you have everything up and running, churning out that next episode is a marginal cost.
By comparison, to produce a season of Wednesday takes 18 months, from writing to production to filming to post-production to final release. And you only get eight episodes out of it. Rather than immediately rolling into the next season with the people and set you’ve already assembled, everyone is dispersed. And then it takes another 18 months to build it back up again, once Netflix decides to order another eight episodes.
What they’re trying to do with Wednesday is certainly higher budget per episode, with a much higher level of post-production work and movie-quality effects / lighting / etc. But the sporadic nature of the work means you’re losing inertia in the actual film making.
Yeah, hard to believe there were shows where you could literally see kids in them growing up because they were filming consistently. Like Home Improvement, Malcolm in the Middle, and Full House.
These days, having kids in the show means season 2 needs to jump ahead in time because the kids are way older by the time it starts filming.
Though I will also take a step back and acknowledge that the entire concept of child actors on a long running show is dubious, especially with more intense directors/producers.
That’s a great point. I also suspect that the stability of the work led to less expense in hiring because people aren’t having to negotiate with as frequent gaps in employment in mind.
Don’t think you could hold actors to that kind of schedule. They’d end up with countless delays for scheduling conflicts.
No they still film in seasons or whatever schedule but release is distributed witb larger gaps