Walter White writes…
Thanks for sharing that Seinfeld video. I've not kept up with the series, and would probably have missed it otherwise. That particular episode was filmed where I live, in New Milford, CT, and I can verify that things seem chronologically done.
They start off near what used to be the Marcus Dairy site next to the Danbury Fair Mall…a frequent site of car shows, as it appropriately turns out. They then travel north on 84/route 7 to New Milford — a 25 minute drive at most. Unless they drove over the same stretches again and again, I don't see that many takes of any dialogue. Once they hit the highway, it's a four-lane road until they reach the bridge that crosses the river into the "historic" section of New Milford, where they ended up going. One part that was missing from that stretch (very identifiable because it is new highway they had to cut mountains apart to pass through) ended up tacked onto the end of the piece. That's for the shots taken by the cameras mounted inside the car. It does seem like they've mixed and matched a bit on the exterior long shots.
For instance, a long shot shows them pulling from Main onto Bank Street, with dialogue…but then it's followed by an interior shot where they're speaking the dialogue, and they're just passing the town hall on Main Street, before that turn.
Watching it again, it does seem like they edited out silent spots for tempo, causing background to disappear that I'm expecting as the angles switch. But the background I see is always just a little further down the road…a matter of a hundred feet at most, not an entire retake of dialogue. It manages to add to that disjointed feel, almost as if a person was interrupting himself.
Anywho, I work in a photolab here and the day they arrived, I knew pretty quickly. People started coming in to print off snapshots they'd just taken of David and Jerry walking up and down Bank Street (where they park the car, and also the street that doubled for a town in Maine in Adam Sandler's Mr. Deeds.) We've tended to pride ourselves on giving people their space here (Dustin Hoffman always liked going to the Bank Street Theater, which Jerry and David walk past when they seem to be walking down a hill, because no one would bother him, even if they recognized him.) Still, I imagine it's hard to remain nonplussed when suddenly faced with Seinfeld and Letterman at the same time. That was filmed on April 19th. The local paper ran an article with photos you can see here.
I remember hoping they got the heck wherever they were going. We had a major front come through that night, which dropped temperatures about 15 degrees and caused power outages and some minor flooding here, hence all the grey clouds about in the background.
Thanks again for sharing that, and my best wishes for a speedy recovery.
I'm doing better today, thanks…and thanks for the info. I'm kinda curious how much they're spending on these videos, above and beyond whatever Jerry and his guests are getting. They're trying real hard to look simple but someone's putting serious coin and a helluva lot of work into them. Just planning locations, getting permissions, working out shooting plans…jeez, there's a lot of money and effort in capturing something like Jerry and Dave going out for coffee. I guess the money's all coming from Acura and I wonder if they think it's worth it, especially when half an episode is used to extol the glories of cars they don't make. But like I said, I like 'em a lot.
In other news: The fine artist-animator Mike Kazaleh thinks those Hanna-Barbera commercials were done in the late sixties with animation and posing by Art Babbitt, and Irv Spence worked on the Bardahl spot. Mike thinks the voice of the boss is Lennie Weinrib (he's right) and that the Frenchman is Alan Reed (yeah, probably). He likes my theory that the engine sputters were something Mel Blanc recorded for another project and they were used here.
I have not forgotten about the whole Ray Middleton mystery and will get back to it this week. I also hope to soon bring you our discussion of what exactly it is that people think Jay Leno did, in reclaiming The Tonight Show, that was so unethical. This bum knee of mine has thrown a lot of things off-schedule…