Rocky Carroll, NCIS: Living in a T.M.I. Society
Hello again,
I want to thank all of you who have read and responded to my blogs. I thank you for the quality of your comments and questions. It makes it a very enjoyable experience for me. I love the direction we're taking this blog, and I hope you do, as well.
As I've mentioned before, I got my start in the theatre, so the relationship between performer and audience is absolutely vital to me. The ability to connect with an audience is the key to a performer's growth and success. We don't film NCIS in front of an audience (though I wish we did). In fact, that style of television is fading rapidly.
There was a time when every half-hour show was filmed in front of a live audience. The feedback to the material was instant. If a scene worked, you knew it immediately because the audience in the studio would tell you. If a joke or punch line fell flat, the writers would rewrite or "punch up" the material there, right on the spot, and keep shaping the script until the audience would laugh. That's the world I come from. Writing this blog gives me a chance to connect with the audience, so thanks again.
I've been thinking about this a lot since my last blog entry. We live in an instant-access, 24-hour media world. We are inundated with information. There's Access Hollywood, The Insider, Extra, TMZ, etc;. As an actor presently working on a very popular series and writing a weekly blog, it would be very easy to fall into the "tell all" world. You may have figured out by now that's not my style and based on your comments/questions, I'm delighted to see that it's not this audience's style, either. That being said, there's still a whole lot for us to talk about.
I love reading your comments, your likes/dislikes. I love reading your personal quirks about the characters. When someone writes that they "hate when Vance has a toothpick in his mouth," my response is, "So do I". When I watch the show on Tuesday night (I never like to watch the show before it airs, as I don't really like to watch rough cuts or look at dailies), I'm a audience member. The last episode, "Cloak," had me on the edge of my seat. Yes, I'm a part of the episode and I know how it's going to end, but all that seems to go "out the window" on Tuesday when I'm watching the show. I respond viscerally, as an audience member, not as a member of the cast. I will then read the blogs and see how you respond to the episode.
We live in a T.M.I. (too much information) society. I want to be informative about NCIS, but I promise not to spoil it for you. I enjoy the relationship I have with the show's producers. I don't know what's going to happen to Vance until I read the script. To answer Heather Hughes: I love the direction that the writers are heading with the show and with "Vance". It keeps me on my toes.
During a 14-hour shooting day, there are peaks and valleys. Our working environment is intense, but very good-natured. We feed off of each other's energy. There's a lot of laughter on the set. The thing I'm most proud of is the relationship between the cast in front of the camera and the folks you don't see, the crew behind the camera. When I'm not working on an episode, I miss being with cast but I also really miss being with the crew. I'm fascinated by the stories and the history these guys bring with them. I learned that the director of photography (Bill Webb) in his early days worked on the film Born on the Fourth of July, starring Tom Cruise. Why did I find that so interesting? Because the first film I was ever in was Born on the Fourth of July, starring Tom Cruise. He forgave me for not remembering that 20 years we had worked together for about seven days!
More soon,
R.C.
