They’re the names that fly by when the credits roll. But every member of the production staff on a late-night talk show is a foot soldier waging a daily battle against time and limited resources to make the show come alive.
Whether the series is a freight train that runs Monday through Friday or a weekly effort to synthesize and satirize the news, production values in late-night have come a long way since the days of overflowing ashtrays on Johnny Carson’s desk.
Today, there are video packages that need to be assembled, stunts that need testing, sketches that need costumes and moments of Zen to conjure. The topicality of these shows also means coordinating a small army to complete an endless series of creative and technical tasks under punishing deadlines. The unpredictability of the President Trump-era news cycle only adds to the pressure.
For executive producers and showrunners,...
Whether the series is a freight train that runs Monday through Friday or a weekly effort to synthesize and satirize the news, production values in late-night have come a long way since the days of overflowing ashtrays on Johnny Carson’s desk.
Today, there are video packages that need to be assembled, stunts that need testing, sketches that need costumes and moments of Zen to conjure. The topicality of these shows also means coordinating a small army to complete an endless series of creative and technical tasks under punishing deadlines. The unpredictability of the President Trump-era news cycle only adds to the pressure.
For executive producers and showrunners,...
- 8/22/2019
- by Cynthia Littleton
- Variety Film + TV
Television production is an area where “Hurry up and wait” is a common refrain. However, for the prop teams that work on late-night talk shows like “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and “The Late Late Show With James Corden,” that’s not an option. They typically have only a matter of hours to deliver what’s necessary.
Lou A. Trabbie III, set decorator on CBS’ “The Late Late Show With James Corden,” is used to working with tremendous time constraints when designing the program’s sets and props. As an example, Trabbie’s colleagues talk about the speed with which he and his team produced a fully realized parody of the Ariana Grande hit song “Thank U, Next.”
Corden turned the tune into “Thank U, Jeff” for a segment with actor Jeff Goldblum. Grande’s song dropped on a Friday afternoon, and the next morning Trabbie got a call about designing sets for the shoot.
Lou A. Trabbie III, set decorator on CBS’ “The Late Late Show With James Corden,” is used to working with tremendous time constraints when designing the program’s sets and props. As an example, Trabbie’s colleagues talk about the speed with which he and his team produced a fully realized parody of the Ariana Grande hit song “Thank U, Next.”
Corden turned the tune into “Thank U, Jeff” for a segment with actor Jeff Goldblum. Grande’s song dropped on a Friday afternoon, and the next morning Trabbie got a call about designing sets for the shoot.
- 3/22/2019
- by Zoe Hewitt
- Variety Film + TV
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