I have a question about the logistics of making a show like this. I’m currently watching Stranger Things, so lets use that as an example. I assumed that Netflix bought an 8 episode story, I assumed that the entire season was filmed all at once, and then was edited into episodes.
That said, each episode seems to have a different director. Do they film one episode at a time, like they would your average sitcom. It would seem like it would be more efficient using one director. Maybe a second unit for the scenic shots.
So, how do they film this type of show and more importantly why would they not film making the most efficient use of actors and sets.
Why do you think the current system isn’t already efficient?
(And ‘edit it into 8 episodes’? That’s a recipe for totally bolloxing the pacing. Writing, filming, and editing each episode as a single unit, which happens to be a piece of a longer story, is much better.)
Assuming the scripts are written beforehand, TV series do things the same way as movies: They pick out all the locations used for that particular episode then shoot all the scenes at each location. Thus if there are three scenes in a particular location, they’re shot one after another until they’ve finished with the location. Then they move to another.
While they’re doing that, another director may be doing prep work for the next episode. Usually, it’s pretty straightforward: the director shoots all the scenes in any one episode, though they are not shot in the order they are shown in the final version.
The big exception is Sense8, which took place in nine different cites all around the world. The logistics would be a nightmare if there wasn’t a complete script. They basically shot all the scenes in each city (say, Seoul) with one director. There were four directors (counting the Wachowskis as one, since they work as a team); I assume they would finish all the scenes in one city and then the director would move to another. In any case, credit was given to the director who directed the most scenes in that episode. But that’s very difficult to do and most series don’t work that way.