Does anybody watch FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS?

Most realistic show on TV.

Did you know Friday Night Lights takes its inspiration from a book titled 鈥淔riday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream鈥?and the 2004 film based on it. The book, published in 1990 and written by H.G. 鈥淏uzz鈥?Bissinger, details the 1988 season of the Permian Panthers, a high school football team in Odessa, Texas. The book itself was intended as a work of journalism and is assumed to be completely factual. The characters in the book are not renamed and the book makes no attempt to conceal their identity.

The Universal Pictures film stars Billy Bob Thornton and was directed by Bissinger鈥檚 second cousin Peter Berg. The film's characters are again based on the real life residents of Odessa circa 1988. The film is known for staying almost completely true to the source material.

Once filming on the movie was completed, Berg turned his attention to adapting the story for television. Berg expressed in various interviews following the film how he regretted having to jettison many of the interpersonal topics covered in the book from the film because of the time constraints of a feature film. Creating a TV series, particularly one based on fictional characters, allowed many of those elements to be brought back in and addressed in-depth.

The show鈥檚 producers decided at the outset to allow their performers leeway in what they say and do on the show. Though scripted like any hour-long television drama performers are given great leeway in the delivery of their lines and the blocking of each scene. If actors feel that something is not true to their character or that a mode of delivery doesn鈥檛 work they are free to change it provided they still hit the vital plot points.

The freedom that producers have extended to the performers is complemented by the fact that the show is taped without rehearsal and without extensive blocking. Camera operators on the show are trained to follow the actors rather than actors standing in one place and having cameras fixed around them. This allows performers to not only feel free to make changes but to feel safe in making those changes because the infrastructure will work around them.

Executive Producer Jeffrey Reiner described this method as 鈥渘o rehearsal, no blocking, just three cameras and we shoot鈥?/div>

• 2 weeks ago

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