College Students Dissect True Blood Script
Film and television students at Boston University had a unique opportunity last week when True Blood producer Gregg Fienberg dissected a script from season 2 with them as a learning exercise. The university’s newspaper, The Daily Free Press, reports that more than 300 students attended the session where they first screened the episode, “New World In My View”, then compared the first and last drafts of the script.
To offer a particularly interesting look behind the scenes, Fienberg chose to screen an episode he said underwent extensive revision before being broadcasted – the 10th episode of the second season entitled “New World In My View.”
Attendees were asked to read both the first and final drafts prior to the screening of the episode, which centers around the growing chaos that falls on the residents of Bon Temps, the Louisiana town in which the series is set, by a Dionysus-worshipping “maenad” named Maryann.
Fienberg said the episode needed a dramatic revision because of its original writers’ inexperience.
“A lot didn’t make sense to me, and there were a couple of things that weren’t really working,” he said.
Fienberg and the series’ creator and co-executive producer Alan Ball sat down and rewrote the script after carefully mulling it over in Ball’s office for two consecutive days, Fienberg said.
“I hope it provided them with insight into the evolution of the show,” Fienberg said at the event’s conclusion.
“It was fun to see… and hear the reactions, and watch an episode with them,” he said, adding that producers normally only get to watch the first one or two episodes of a season with an audience.
