Oceans 11 Part 4
Added 2020-05-28 09:37:30 +0000 UTC
Oceans 11 races on. Part 5 will be the last one. I don’t know why, but it feels wrong to me that a reroll should ever be longer than five parts, although I would make an exception if it was something truly epic, like a Lord of the Rings. Anyway, Oceans 11 won’t be the first to break the 5 parts limit.
I guess the main thing I should talk about is the elephant in the room: this is the first episode released that was recorded remotely. In truth I had long been resistant to doing rerolls remotely. I felt that being in the room together was an indelible part of the energy of the show. In a sense I wasn't wrong, the energy is considerably different, but that doesn't mean we can't find a good show in the new energy that emerges. And with the disadvantages and awkwardnesses of distance, there are some natural advantages. Other movies that we're doing remotely were specifically chosen with this format in mind.
Though in truth, even before quarantine forced our hand, I had talked about finishing Oceans 11 remotely because with the conflicting travel schedules of our performers meant we would not get the whole cast together to finish it for a long time. And Oceans 11 (at least the climax of Oceans 11) at the time seemed like the natural movie to do remotely since the characters in the movie are mostly talking to each other on comms, while their characters are in different places, executing different parts of the plan.
Overall, I think we did admirably under the circumstances. It was a bit frantic trying to figure out how to record and get mics to everyone while quarantine was already upon us. This first episodes provided me with a lot of lessons, both technical and narrative on how to handle remote play. I think you hear it getting better throughout, and it provided valuable experience to make the format work in future episodes.
