We love learning about how True Blood is made and have reported about it before. We have provided interviews with those involved in the making of the series such as Production Design by Suzuki Ingerslev, and Director Michael Lehmann. The article below by Steve Pond of DGA Quarterly further delves into the intricacies of the vampire series development and creation.
Beginning with Alan Ball’s vision there is now an ever increasing team working on the production to insure that it will continue to be quality television and remain the hit that it is today.
On a movie lot tucked away in a nondescript area of West Hollywood, the director of True Blood huddles with actor Alexander Skarsgård on the soundstage where a vampire bar called Fangtasia sits. At the same time, on an adjoining stage, the director of True Blood walks through a basement set with his production designer and AD, trying to decide if a set of shackles should hang from an overhead pipe or be secured to pillars. No, True Blood hasn’t found the secret to putting a director in two places at once. Instead, this is simply business as usual on the lot that’s home to the HBO series about vampires, shape-shifters and other assorted denizens of the night who make their homes in a fictional little Louisiana town called Bon Temps.
“Every year, the show gets progressively more complicated,” says the show’s executive producer, Alan Ball, who directed the first season’s pilot and finale episodes, but now delegates those duties to a relatively small group of directors. “You’re doing what is essentially a 60-minute movie with a lot of special effects, action sequences and storyboarding. The only way to do it in our schedule is to overlap, to schedule three different episodes at one time to best utilize locations and actors.”
Lesli Linka Glatter (center) with Brit Morgan (left) and Anna Paquin directed her first episode this season. Photo: John P. Johnson/HBO
For much of its November to July production schedule, True Blood, which began its third season in June, works on a couple of episodes simultaneously: one director will shoot with his team while a different director works on another stage. The show employs two first ADs and two DPs who alternate episodes. “You keep the same DP and AD on your episode, but this crew is so good the rest of the people are pretty interchangeable,” says Michael Lehmann, whose eight episodes make him the most frequent True Blood director. “We share props and wardrobe, and with the script supervisors we try to make sure the actors are comfortable.”
Today, Scott Winant, a veteran of seven episodes, is directing a barroom scene for the season’s ninth episode, in which Skarsgård’s vampire character, Eric, is interrogated by a severe, black-clad female vampire. Meanwhile, Lehmann is taking a tour of his sets before he starts shooting episode 10 tomorrow. “We’re overlapping a lot,” says Winant. “This last episode, I think I’ve only done three days that haven’t been doubled up with another episode. Frankly, we’ve become dependent on the ADs’ ability to schedule, and to make sure we’re in the right place at the right time.”
The director is talking as he takes his lunch break; while he and his crew are eating, the actors walk across the lot for the table read for Lehmann’s episode. In addition to Lehmann and Winant, John Dahl and Daniel Minahan have also handled multiple episodes. This season, Lesli Linka Glatter and David Petrarca were hired to direct their first episodes; Ball says he expects to invite both back next season. So what does it take to be a good fit for the show? “I think you have to appreciate the sensibility,” says Ball. “It’s less about shots and more about characters. You have to be okay being efficient in a very laid-back atmosphere— people who need pressure and chaos don’t really work here.”
To read the rest of this article, please go to dgaquarterly.org
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Joe Manganiello, who plays werewolf Alcide on True Blood is getting lots of attention these days, but with this attention comes some crazy stuff. One woman has already asked him to lick her, and a FedEx driver jumped out of his truck to snap a picture of him. 
