Just curious...............

[murph]

I was looking at my 2003 DS Calander this morning and what it says for October 27 is "Barnabas, who was a young man in 1795, says he was just a boy during the witchcraft trials in 1692!!" (1970)  By the way the above episode happens to be the very next one shown next week on October 20.

My question is this.  Obviously the reason Jonathan Frid stated the above was because that is what the script called for.  But by October 1970, he had played Barnabas for 3 1/2 years and certainly knew his character couldn't possibly have been alive in 1692.  Did he not have the freedom as an actor to advise whoever wrote the script that there was no way Barnabas could have been alive in 1692 and that the script should be changed because of this.

As I pointed out in another post there is no way Barnabas could have made Roxanne a vampire in 1840 because he was chained in his coffin then.  I would think Mr. Frid should have had the freedom to point this out to the writers so they could adjust the storyline.  I remember another gaffe by the writers when Jerry Lacy first joined the cast as Tony Peterson.  The first time he talks with Carolyn he tells her he had seen her many times at the Country Club where he worked while she was growing up.  In the very next episode he tells her he had never seen her before they met at her house just the day before.  I can understand that maybe Mr. Lacy would be hesitant to point out this gaffe since it was only his second or third day on the show but certainly Ms Barrett (Carolyn) should have been able to point this out to the writers since this was such an obvious goof.

This makes me wonder how the actors were treated on the set.  I've heard that many times Management considers the actors as nothing more than cattle and I wonder if this was the case on this show since the actors say lines they have to know are not consistant with the character they are portraying.

Please know I am not faulting any of the actors at all because only they know the circumstances and how free they felt with making suggestions.  I say this because I've seen some interviews with Jonathan Frid and he seemed somewhat exasperated with the inconsistencies of his character.

I hope the actors were not treated badly on the set.  I know some of them have stated how much they enjoyed working there.  I know KLS has said there was never a day when she didn't want to go into work.

If everyone liked working there it would seem that there would have been more input from the actors as far as the script is concerned.

Murph

[Raineypark]

The reason there is a position in production companies known as "continuity" is because continuity is, in fact, a very difficult thing to manage and maintain.  The writers don't commit every word to memory.  The actors remember their lines and then forget them the instant they can because they have to learn new ones.  The set decorators won't remember what was where unless they take pictures of every set every day, and the costumers need to make detailed lists of every article worn by every performer in every scene.

Dark Shadows was NOT a high budget production.  They did very well with what they had, but no one on that set had the luxury of worrying about continuity in the face of a rapid-fire production schedule, actors who came and went like the wind, scripts that were being handed to the actors as they left one night, and marked up before they arrived the next morning.

And never, ever forget the single most significant factor in all this.  NO ONE EVER thought people would be watching these episodes over and over and over again 30 odd years later.

Were there gaffs?  You bet.  Did the actors notice them? Almost certainly.  Was there time in the shooting schedule for them to request meetings with the writers to correct historical errors?  Not on your life. Once the floor manager yelled for quiet on the set, and the technical director indicated tape was rolling, it no longer mattered.

[mike81859]

All good points. I read a small paperback book about DS when I was in 5th grade (DS was alive and on the air then) and in this book there was a scene where Mr.Frid forgot his fangs and he was to bite a pretty young woman....the shooting schedule was so tight that they shot the scene anyway without the fangs. Apparently they let the audience think that the fangs would soon grow. Whether this is true or not..I do not know, but I suspect that the production schedule was very tight and fast....there was not much time for re-takes. Even today soap opera actors say that the shooting schedule is tough and is a lot of work.DS was no different.

mike81859

[Stuart]

It's a combination of a lot of things...

There was no script department on the show as such, so aside from old breakdowns and synopses, there was very little written material to refer to. With no process of keeping records, it meant that things that were changed after the writing - either by accident or design - would often go unrealised by the writers. There were no tapes to refer to, and locating specific stuff for cross-reference was incredibly difficult. So it all hinged on people's day-to-day memories, which were patchy and incomplete - certain writers would drop out for months at a time, be replaced, etc, too...

Similarly, with sometimes just hours to learn a script, the actors rarely had time to worry about the minutae, and would assume that the stuff was correct. This is still the case on soaps today - it's another issue of time. Assuming someone did spot a gaffe, it depended on whether anyone was sure of what *exactly* was wrong to correct it, if there was time to fix it, and if it didn't impact other scripts.  In most of the cases, it's unsatisfactory, but the conditions made it almost impossible to prevent most of the time.

Most of it comes down to simple hours in the day. With very little time to get massive amounts of footage onto tape, unless it was a major, major issue, everyone probably went with the flow and hoped that nothing too bad would get through.

Sure, there are things that seem super-stupid to us today, but remember they made it past a writing team, around 20 production staff, and the actors themselves. Human error, pure and simple.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I was looking at my 2003 DS Calander this morning and what it says for October 27 is "Barnabas, who was a young man in 1795, says he was just a boy during the witchcraft trials in 1692!!" (1970)  By the way the above episode happens to be the very next one shown next week on October 20.

My question is this.  Obviously the reason Jonathan Frid stated the above was because that is what the script called for.  But by October 1970, he had played Barnabas for 3 1/2 years and certainly knew his character couldn't possibly have been alive in 1692.

Granted, I haven't watched episode #1131 in a while so I could be off, but I seem to remember Barnabas telling Julia that he remembered discussions about the witchcraft trials. Is it possible that Barnabas actually meant that he was a young man when the family was discussing the witchcraft trials rather than during the actual trials. If so, this would hardly be the first time a piece of DS merchandise had actually contained something that had misinterpreted/incorrectly reported what had been said or had happened. [spoiler](One of my all-time favorites being that Lamar Trask was stabbed when he'd actually been shot in the 1840/41 finale episode.)[/spoiler] 

[Miss_Winthrop]

These inconsistencies in story line while at times,  frustrating do in the long run, add charm to the whole Dark Shadows experience in my opinion.
I have two ideas regarding this particular gaff: (1) Barnabas was reincarnated from an earlier era and he did remember or (2) Barnabas has a vision if you will from the past that was so awesome that he literally believed it had happened.

[Raineypark]

I think if you read that bit of dialogue in the "Robservations" posted today, it sounds like MB's interpretation....Barnabas was saying he remembered hearing family talk of the Witch Trials.....and that he was a young boy at the time.....not that it was during the trials themselves.

I remember my parents discussing the Great Depression...but I didn't live through it!!

[Accomplice_To_Cass]

Maybe Jonathan Frid didn't care about inconsistencies..or maybe he didn't think about it . I bet they were treated just as well as any other actors on soaps at the time.

[Joeytrom]

[spoiler]I though Lamar was stabbed.[/spoiler]

P.S. The original last name for LaMar was "Cramer".

Mysterious Benefactor wrote:
[spoiler]One of my all-time favorites being that Lamar Trask was stabbed when he'd actually been shot in the 1840/41 finale episode.)[/spoiler]

[Mysterious Benefactor]

[spoiler]I though Lamar was stabbed.[/spoiler]

Oops - it was the other way around. It said [spoiler]Lamar was shot, but he was stabbed.[/spoiler]