Free Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: The Unofficial Companion by Susan Green, Randee Dawn

when actors have ideas.”

    David Platt
    His experience doesn’t necessarily mean it gets any easier, Forney admits. “Every day as a director, you’re always nervous, your stomach is growling.”
    Thank goodness for the support system. Two teams each of first and second assistant directors invariably are at the ready. Ken Brown and Howard McMaster were in the former category during season nine.
    “I’m always with the same team—I work with Peter Leto, my producer,” explains McMaster, who hitched his wagon to SVU in season three after working on features and a succession of TV series for about ten years. “My biggest responsibility here is the schedule. I break down each scene into its elements: sets, locations or (sound) stage, actors, stunts, costumes.”
    He must constantly consider “the overview of an episode” in collaboration with the location manager, the producer, and the production designer. “Where are we going? What sets do we need? We have to come up with answers pretty quickly. We break down the number of extras needed and what kinds per day,” McMaster says. “I’m responsible for logistically managing it all.”
    When an episode is shooting, he’s required to be in the fray. McMaster conveys the director’s commands—“Cut!” and “Roll!”—and issues what’s known as a “will-notify call” that summons actors to the set.
    “A lot of my work is instinctual,” he theorizes. “I’m like a stage manager in the theater. We do six to eight pages a day, so the pace is fast. In TV, it’s very important to keep a rhythm going.”
    All the more reason for artistic precision, presumably honed in his early years as a New York actor. McMaster feels flattered that a costume designer once told him, “You schedule like a poet.”

CHAPTER TEN
    ESTABLISHING THE VISUALS
    E xecutive producer Ted Kotcheff was concerned with how SVU could distinguish itself. “I wanted more cinematic storytelling,” he says. “The (Mother Ship’s) jiggly camera is documentary.”
    Episode director Peter Leto, now SVU supervising producer, agrees. “We started to move away from the tried-and-true Law & Order style. We’re not really hand-held. I like to think we’re a bit more cinematic. Ted was always pushing us in that direction.”
    Creator Dick Wolf embraces all his broadcast babies as equal yet different. “I think each of the individual Law & Order-branded series has its own unique feel,” he says. “But they are cousins, so you can see the family resemblance. Any documentary-like comparisons are not really germane.”
    SVU ’s emphasis on less “jiggly camera” ushered in a big difference in terms of storytelling. “This show has very graceful shots,” Producer/episode director David Platt says of an approach that enhances the ability “to get into the character’s heads.”
    The Kotcheff-inspired shift toward Steadicam and dolly work evokes wistfulness in some L&O loyalists. “I’ve always loved the 16mm, gritty stories about this city,” producer David DeClerque explains. “But for SVU , Dick (Wolf) says, ‘I want to show the city as it really is. The colors. People on their way to work. But our subject matter is dark enough, we don’t need a bleak look. Bad things can happen to good people in a nice environment.’”
    The responsibility for conveying that nice environment was inherited by George Pattison after the departure of SVU ’s original director of photography, Geoffrey Erb, during season eight. “We use a Panavision camera, same as in features,” he notes. “We shoot a 35mm negative. A lot of shows are moving toward digital, but I still feel 35mm is the most reliable, best-looking, and fastest way to go. Ours is one of the last programs doing that. . . . Despite pressure from above to save money, Dick Wolf and our creative producers insist on sticking with a proven formula. Whether it’s 100 or 0 degrees outside, these cameras work. And they give beautiful latitude