On January 11, 2014 When Calls the Heart premiered on Hallmark Channel. When Calls the Heart based on the book series When Calls the Heart written by Janette Oke. The series is directed by Michael Landon Jr. The show is about Elizabeth Thatcher (Erin Krakow), a young teacher accustomed to her
high society life, who receives her first classroom assignment in Coal
Valley, a small coal mining town where life is simple, but often fraught
with challenges. Elizabeth charms most everyone in Coal Valley, except
Constable Jack Thornton (Daniel Lissing) who believes Thatcher’s wealthy
father has doomed the lawman's career by insisting he be assigned in
town to protect the shipping magnate’s daughter. Living in a
19th-century coal town, Elizabeth will have to learn the ways of the
frontier if she wishes to thrive in the rural west on her own. Lori
Loughlin plays Abigail Stanton, a wife and mother whose husband, the
foreman of the mine, along with a dozen other miners, has just been
killed in an explosion. The newly widowed women find their faith is
tested when they must go to work in the mines to keep a roof over their
heads.
When the series first premiered it got high ratings and when the first season finished the ratings were higher than when it first premiered. I like the story telling and the people and that it is a family show. A lot of families shows came on when I was growing up and now to see a family show on when I am an adult it just makes me feel happy. A few years ago I got started in reading Janette Oke's books with the Love Comes Softly series which became so popular that Hallmark made movies out of her books which Michael Landon Jr. wrote and directed and produced but not all of them.
I was so excited when Brian Bird one of the producers of When Calls the Heart said that he would be glad to be interviewed by me. I have full respect for this show and everyone who works so hard on it to make it an amazing show. Before this show I had a number one favorite show on TV now but since watching this show its become my number one favorite show. When Calls the Heart was renewed for a second season. All the fans of the show call themselves the Hearties and its so good to call yourself a heartie because it means you are a true fan of the show.
Here is the interview with Brian Bird:
WTCH Q & A for Kristina Chen
1. What is the best thing about working on WCTH?
For me, and I think for Michael Landon, the best part of
doing this show is that we feel we are serving a far-underserved audience.
Fifteen years ago, all the networks competed for a family audience, but
today nobody but the Hallmark Channel and the Up network are even trying.
While we've all been sleeping (or hypnotized by all the edgy
programming), there is virtually no family friendly programming anywhere to be
found. There are kids' shows and adult shows everywhere, but family TV is
on life support, almost extinct. Some of my best memories growing up were
watching TV with my family. That's not even possible anymore, but with
When Calls the Heart, it still is. We're very proud of that and feel we
are doing something very radical because everybody else is following the HBOs
of the world, like lemmings, over the cliff into dark and depraved.
2. How long did it take to build the buildings?
When we found the Jamestown movie facility, the town was
about two-thirds there already, but we felt we needed to fill it out some to
make it a full “Coal Valley.” Most of the interior locations, such
as the Saloon, the jailhouse, Abigail's Cafe, the Mercantile and Gowen's office
also had to be built or finished. We also built three row-houses and the
exterior and interior of the mine. All told, all of those locations took
three construction crews working full time about six weeks.
3. Was Coal Valley an
actual place from Janette's books?
This is the interesting part about Coal Valley. It did
not exist in Janette Oke's Canadian West series of books, but Janette always
told us she wanted to write about a coal mining town in her novels because,
growing up in Alberta, she always new coal mining was a big part of the
province. So when we were trying to figure out how to do a
multi-generational series involving both the original Elizabeth Thatcher and
this new branch of the Thatcher family, represented by her niece and namesake,
young Elizabeth, we decided to make Coal Valley the world of the show.
And Janette loved it, so much that she decided to write a new series of
When Calls the Heart novels following the events in Coal Valley and young
Elizabeth's journey and love story with Jack Thornton/
4. When you first
starting working on WCTH did you research 1910 and Janette Oke?
Michael Landon had already made a series of movies for the
Hallmark Channel based on Janette's “Love Come Softly” series of books, so
he was well-versed in how to do period drama. I've always been a
journalist first in everything I write, so this an opportunity for me do to a
bunch of homework. Plus we had Janette's great novels to glean a lot of
ideas from.
5. How long does it take to make a whole season?
Season 1 and 12 episodes took a year to make. Usually,
you could do 12 episodes from start to finish in about 8-9 months, but we
wanted to get it just right, so we took our time creating the first several
scripts to try to get the world and the voices just right. It is always a
process of trial and error, trying to find the heart and soul of a new series,
and creating a place where audiences want to come back to week after week.
That's why when you look back at successful series earlier
seasons, you'll often notice that they evolve over time and that the first
several episodes sometimes don't feel consistent with the world the show later
becomes as it matures and finds itself. We hope that process didn't take
too many episodes before people felt the world was all making sense.
6. I know you said
the soundtrack for the show will be out soon but what kind of music will be on
the soundtrack? At this point, we will likely wait until after Season 2
to make a best- of soundtrack with all the best beautiful music cues.
7. Do you know when the whole season will be out on DVD?
Out understanding is that a full Season 1 set will be
available sometime in the 4th quarter of 2014, my guess in November sometime.
8. Will there be any bible lessons on the show?
There are no firm plans yet for Bible lessons, but we have
discussed it with a few organizations, and will probably try to do something as
Season 2 unfolds.
9. Is it difficult to find lessons from 1910 for Elizabeth
to teach?
No, that's the fun part of doing homework for a show set in
1910, and one of the real bonuses of a rich, vibrant internet. Doing that
amount of research before internet databases, would have required a lot of time
and digging. Some science lessons, gravity and inertia, are the same now
as they would have been in 1910, as they were during Isaac Newton's day.
We tried to do be consistent with research of how children were taught back in
1910, such as recreate grade school primary readers that would have been used
during those days. The intelligence test she gave to Beau (and Jack) had
questions from an IQ test back in the early 1900s. Also, her initial
research into Beau's “swimming words” was consistent with very early research
on dyslexia.
10. Can you tell me the proccess you go through to making an
episode?
First comes the story-breaking process, which consists of
writers sitting in a room together exploring themes and ideas. Most story
lines come from free-form associations are are batted around the room like a
hockey puck until they begin to resemble a storyline. Other ideas come
from real life experiences, as was the case with the Beau Grady storyline.
Our writer for that episode, Kim Byer-Johnson, is the mother of a
dyslexic son, and she wrote that storyline from the heart. Then a
10-page outline is written and has to be approved by executives at the network.
After that a first draft of the script is written, and then brought back
to the head writer (me) and I do a polish on the script to keep it consistent
with the world we are created. Then that version of the script goes to
the network for another set of notes. After that, we try to finalize the
script and get it ready for production, although it will usually go through a
few more revision once the director of the episode, and our lead actors, give
their thoughts. That whole process takes about a month to perfect the
script. Then it delivered to production where the art department begins
prepping any special needs such as new sets or props required for that episode.
That process takes a week to two weeks before we're ready to film.
After seven days of filming, the episode, as we say is now “in the can,”
and then goes into our preproduction process. That includes sound design,
visual effects, music scoring and color correction, all of which takes an
additional 3-4 weeks. You might ask how we were able to accomplish 12
episodes in nine months if they each take approximately 2.5 months to finish?
The answer to that is we are working on multiple episodes simultaneously.
While one director is filming one, the art department is prepping the
next one. When that one goes into production, the previous few are going
through the post-production process simultaneously. It's a business of
creative logistics.
11. #hearties might want to know but How did Janette like
the letters and cards from Operation Oke?
She only received them recently and is preparing her
response, so I'm waiting with baited breath like the rest of the hearties!
12. How many retakes are there for one episode?
There's no set number, and there's rarely anything that is
actually a “retake.” That would mean we go back and reshoot a scene that
was already shot. This is not to say that never happens (because we did
go back and reshoot scenes in Season 1), but the goal is to try to minimize
reshooting. During the production cycle, the script is broken down by the
assistant director into a shooting schedule, so that for instance, we shoot all
the saloon scenes in a day or two, and stay in that location until all the
pages are shot. Each scene, depending on its length and how complicated
it is to film, is budgeted for a certain number of hours (they usually average
about two hours). During that filming process, we may do 4-6 takes of each
set up, which is basically each camera angle. Most scenes are shot from
4-5 different angles, so we're saying “action about 15-20 times for each
scene.
13. Do you know how much film it takes to make an episode?
We shoot the show on high-end digital cameras, and no on
film cameras, so it's not a function of how much film, but how much
digital media we need. It's usually going to be about 20, 10-gigabyte
hard drives per episode.
14. How do you determine the title of the episodes?
Some TV series take a different approach.
“Friends” always titled their episodes starting with the phrase “The
One With...” so it would become something like “The One With the Pile of
Cash” or “The One With the Proctologist.” That sort of thing just
seemed like the writers were trying to be too cool for school, so we decided
not to do anything that silly. For us, we just tried to look for a
thematic element, common phrase, euphemism, play on words or a derivation of
some other famous title of a book or a movie. So for instance the final
episode became “Prelude to a Kiss” because that's the title of a famous
movie and it was a good description of what we were trying to accomplish in
that storyline.
I wanna thank Brian Bird for answering these questions and giving great answers that will make Hearties fall more in love with When Calls the Heart!
To find out more about When Calls the Heart
click here!
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