The Making Of
Rick Steves' Europe
The Making Of
[1] Hi, I'm Rick Steves, back with more of the best of Europe. This time we're in Italy. Not yesterday's Italy, but today's Italy. We're…where are we this time?
[2] Simon: Milano Rick. This time we're going to show you how we actually make Rick Steves Europe. Thanks for joining us. Ok, let's try it again Rick.
[3] Ok
[4] Milano is today's Italy and no Italian trip is complete without visiting this city.
[5] When I cross the border and people ask me what my occupation is I say teacher. And for 20 years I was a tour guide. And I still fancy myself as a tour guide. I'm just taking a lot more people than ever traveling vicariously through public television.
[6] Since 1990 we've produced a new series every two years. So that's an average of 13 shows every two years.
[7] Simon: There's really three phases. There's pre-production, field production, and post-production. And the pre-production can be extended over a few months, making all the arrangements, getting all the permissions, making all the contacts.
[8] Simon: It's a tiny team. It's basically Rick, a shooter like Carl, and myself in the field.
[9] Some people would say well shouldn't you have a sound man? Well the cameraman wears the soundman's hat. What about your grip, the guy that carries all the gear. Well Simon carries it or the producer, occasionally I'll carry it. It is so important we are able to turn on a dime. We're a small crew, we fit into one car. I really like that.
[10] Simon: We have really got a system down. I mean we really travel extremely lightly. About as barebones I think as any television crew goes and especially now that we are shooting in high definition. It's stripped down production. We pack lightly. Personally we pack lightly, professionally we pack lightly. But we try to be prepared for most situations.
[11] Carl: Part of the reason we can product this show in six days in the field is because it's super efficient production.
[12] Simon: The way this production works right from the beginning, well all the way through the whole entire process is very collaborative.
[13] Simon: Rick has a vision, he knows the content, he knows the location and the show that he wants to produce. But then it's very much a team effort.
[14] To me the exciting challenge from a creative point of view is the collaboration here. And over the last decade I have gained such an appreciation over the commitment of everyone on our team for making this show as good as it can possibly be. I mean it's reasonable that I would work really hard because my name's on it. But what's really impressive is how both Simon and Carl will work every bit as hard as me beginning to end to make this show as good as it can possibly be.
[15] I wouldn't trade my TV crew for all of CBS, ABC, and NBC. We rock.
[16] Carl: It's highly collaborative. And I really appreciate that it's both a pleasant experience to be part of a collaborative team where the whole is more than the sum of it's parts and there's this I think very fruitful creative tension that sustains us and that comes from the fact that Rick comes from a guidebook perspective and he tends to equate value with content.
[17] Carl: So in Rick's eyes the more content that fits into the show, the more value the show has.
[18] To me it's the responsibility to take air time with the show and I don't want to just give a bunch of what some producers call eye candy. I'm committed to the content.
[19] Carl: And from our perspective, part of the value of the show is in conveying the emotional impact of the places we travel to, which is reflected in having these beautiful images that aren't necessarily accompanied by dialogue, but just music and the beauty of the place.
[20] Simon and the cameraman are committed to the beautiful aspect of it and how viewable it is. I'm committed to the content.
[21] I want to put that script into a centrifuge and have it spin around and still have there be a lot of content there when it's all done.
[22] Simon: As a producer, especially in the field, I was sort of torn between these two needs because Rick on one hand has so much information. He's just a walking encyclopedia of knowledge of all these years in Europe and then his love of history and love of art and he just wants to tell it all.
[23] If I got my way all the time on the script, the show would be a wonderful guidebook.
[24] Simon: But yes certainly in terms of television it's not a guidebook and I like to say let the images tell the story.
[25] I'm a history student. All my friends at my work say I'm so into dead things, but we've got to make Europe live.
[26] I'm the tour guide and I really know travel, but these guys are the artists and they know the art of composing the shots and getting the very best photography. And of course Simon knows how to take all of this and make it into good television.
[27] It takes us six days to producer a half hour episode. And that's scrambling. I hesitate to say that because by industry standards people wonder how can you do that.
[28] We usually come over here to do two or three shows during a shoot. That's 12 or 18 day, occasionally we try to do more shows on one trip.
[29] Simon: The job certainly has its rewards, but it is a lot of work. It's certainly not just like going on vacation with a video camera. The work load is pretty substantial.
[30] Carl: One would think it's this fantasy kind of profession. And in some ways it is, but it's exhausting. It's not a vacation by any stretch of the imagination.
[31] Simon: It is hard to keep up with Rick's pace.
[32] Carl: It's safe to say he works harder than anybody else I know.
[33] Simon: That's true.
[34] I'm pretty disciplined when I'm working. I'm away from home a lot and I feel like I sort of owe it to my family that if I'm over here I'm going to be working all the time.
[35] Simon: It's extraordinary how much energy he gets from the process. He loves it; he's so passionate about it.
[36] Simon: He could just go at it day and night. And I think his tendency is to try to go day and night. Now we try to keep up, but it's awfully difficult because he just seems to get refueled, the more the better.
[37] Carl: It's a bit like holding onto a bull by the tail. You just hang on.
[38] When I'm producing TV man I just charge out of bed every morning and I'm also inspired by how hard our crew works.
[39] Carl: Rick's the energizer bunny of travel and he will just go and go and go. And another role Simon plays is that he can kind of rein him in. He'll say now Rick it's time for a coffee break. Or even better, time for a glass of wine and a meal. So I'm very grateful to Simon for putting on the breaks at those important moments.
[40] If the crew is performing we allow a short break for lunch.
[41] Carl: 30 seconds
[42] Simon: I have to say he's not lugging the gear around.
[43] Have you ever seen a producer/director who carries the tripod? This is a very unusual man.
[44] Carl: Simon is the producer, but he's also enormously strong and he carries, like a mule, way more than his share. And I've got the camera and I sometimes carry the tripod, but basically Simon is the pack horse of the operation. For which I'm eternally grateful.
[45] I work all day with the crew and then I'm glad that the crew has a little better pain to pleasure ratio than I do. I go to my room after dinner and I pretty eagerly make that script up to date so Simon gets a fresh draft the next morning.
[46] Simon: At the end of the day, and it can be long days, the cameraman and I are ready for a break and Rick we know is still up in his hotel room and he has his computer out, has a glass of orange juice and he's just banging away. He's writing e-mails back to the office, he's rewording the script, he has his little printer and he's printing new versions of the script.
[47] Simon: And I have the pleasure of sometimes not hearing and other times ignoring this little script coming underneath my door and Rick will ask me at breakfast time if I have reviewed the script yet. And I'm just astounded. He just has phenomenal energy and it's difficult to keep up with it at times, but we try.
[48] I write a lot of things and I think that maybe the most challenging and most rewarding writing I do is for the script. I used to think the script should be all set in stone before you left home if you're well prepared and I have really learned after the last 15 years of producing these TV shows that the script is a work in progress.
[49] Simon: Most of the segments have been planned and certainly in terms of appointments and arrangements, they've all been made. But we're always always open for change.
[50] You get your positive serendipity and you get your negative serendipity. And if something doesn't pan out. That's fine. Something else will fill into something that you didn't expect. So we really run with what works over here.
[51] I love being a tour guide, and when you're tour guide one of the fundamental issues is how you do get the most out of your time? And when we're traveling as a film crew, I enjoy the responsibility of being the tour guide as far as how we are going to get the script covered in five or six days.
[52] Carl: Rick is an amazing organizer. Every morning at breakfast we get together and he pulls out the script that he's rewritten the night before. And we go through the day. We start with the appointments that are unchangeable and then fill in the gaps.
[53] It's an interesting challenge because you've got so many issues out of your control, most important the weather.
[54] You kind of get your bad weather cards. If it's bad weather you do your indoor sights, but you don't want to spend all your bad weather cards in the first half of the show because then you're out of cards and if the weather's bad the last half of the show you are shooting stuff that is weather critical.
[55] When it's sunny we've got to be shooting exteriors because it's vital to have that sunlight helping the colors pop and that shadows to be great and the people to be out and it's all just more lively and vibrant.
[56] Simon: When it's sunny you can just get shots much more quickly and it's just so effortless.
[57] Carl: Working with the weather and the weather working with us makes a great day.
[Rick's voice: Seeing the Last Supper, one of the greatest works in art history, is well worth the hassle. Leonardo portrays the last dinner Jesus had with his disciplines before he was crucified.]
[58] One of the great challenges and one of the great opportunities we have in producing is to film the most beautiful art in western civilization and bring it home so people can enjoy it in their living rooms and not have to go all the way to Europe.
[59] Simon: One of the great strengths of the show is not only what we shoot, but how we shoot it and also Rick's way of discussing it and talking about the art.
[60] Carl: You find yourself in front of some of the most beautiful masterpieces of art in western culture and although most of the show is shot absolutely from the view of a tourist, one of the exceptions to that rule can be with museums.
[61] Carl: Often museums like the Louvre or the Uffizi in Florence won't allow us to go in with our camera and tripod when the museum is open to the public and instead we pay a significant fee and go in on the day the museum is closed to the public. And we go and shot the art alone and it's a great privilege to be standing in front of the Mona Lisa or Botticelli's Venus or any number of unbelievable masterpieces.
[62] Simon: It's one of the perks of the job I have to say.
[63] Carl: In the case of the Last Supper you have this essentially spare room with this incredible large fresco that everyone knows but that I'd never seen in person adorning the end of it. So you stand there and you're dwarfed by this thing. I like to take and personal moment amid the flurry of production and just appreciate the magnitude of the work, whatever it is.
[64] Carl: Our challenge as cameramen is to address a piece, with a camera, in such a way that we bring back to the screen its power and its beauty. And that we can focus on the details that Rick's talks about in the script because a lot of the coverage of fine art is in the details and groupings and composition and color and perspective.
[65] Simon: He works with us to make sure Carl's getting some little detail that you may not even be aware of, but at the time the cameraman is focusing it in the frame, you really get to appreciate the art at a different level.
[66] It's interesting to me that we have to factor in what kind of art can we actually show back home? We go to churches we go to galleries where gorgeous art, classic art has been enjoyed for centuries and because it's too fleshy for early 21st century American taste we have to wonder can we actually show this on TV in the United States?
[67] Simon: It's a very odd situation to find yourself in. You're looking at all this incredible art that can span 2,000 years and for 2,500 years people have enjoyed this art. Then suddenly somehow here in the 21st century in the United States it's being deemed inappropriate.
[68] Each of our 30 minute programs comes from a seven page script. And each script is made up of voice-over and on-cameras. The voice-over is when you hear my voice behind the beautiful pictures and when we have a tough time covering something with beautiful pictures, a concept or some kind of history or something like this, it's more appropriate for me to stand in front of the camera and say it. Those are called the on-cameras.
[69] Simon: When we do Rick's on-cameras, which is another place I really respect Rick's ability first of all to memorize his lines. It's usually right on location where we are looking at where we are going to shoot, we retweak the lines to make sure that it's what he wants to say and how he wants to say it. Then he goes off on his own and he memorizes these lines, he's extraordinary at it.
[70] It is such a fun challenge to do these on-cameras because number one I have to remember my lines.
[71] Simon: I usually know what Carl has planned or really close to what he's seeing. And then I listen and let Rick do a few takes.
[72] And for me, just learn your lines Steves.
[73] Carl: Those (on-cameras) involve all kinds of challenges from those we can control, such as the framing and what kind of move we are going to involve. Whether Rick is going to stand in one place or whether he's going to walk toward the camera, how much of the background we want to show and what part, to the elements we can't control.
[74] We have audio problems, we have a jackhammer, we have a street singer, we've got people staring at us from behind.
[75] Simon: Usually I get him to sort of lighten up because it takes some concentration to get his lines and when it feels like we hit the right tone and it worked for me then I look at Carl to make sure it works for him because of his framing. And if he gives me the little head nod and is happy with the tone that Rick seems to strike then I usually say that's good, that's a keeper.
[76] Simon and I have developed a wonderful little extra stage of the production called scrubbing the script. Just scrubbing every sentence in that script to make sure every word earns its keep.
[77] Simon: It's a really dynamic process and it's very organic, we just sit around and watch it form.
[78] Carl: Speaking from a cameraman's perspective, it's wonderful for us as cameramen to contribute to the script at a verbal level. Part of the scrubbing of the script is correlating what we've got with what's being written so we know we have footage to cover what the words suggest. And then part of it is just a verbal process where we're batting verbal vocabulary back and forth.
[79] Rick is famous for his writing style. When he writes something you know he's written it and it's usually informal and it's usually funny. He's a master at convincing history and art and religion and weaving them into a cohesive whole in very few words. And yet sometimes we feel like we need to rein some of the verbal excesses back a little bit.
[80] I'm so thankful that Simon and Carl are really strong with me when it comes to debating.
[81] Carl: He loves alliteration, where three or four words in the sentence start with the same letter for instance and sometimes it's great and sometimes we like to pull the breaks.
[82] It's a wonderful creative process and we go head on head to debate these things in the script.
[83] Simon: You almost don't recognize the script we come up with in the end. It's definitely a much much stronger show from where we began.
[84] One of my favorite things about working over here in Europe to produce the shows is meeting people who watch the shows and then are traveling because of the shows.
[85] It lightens our day as we are doing our work to see people constantly say Hey Rick we love the shows. Whether they're from Houston or Delaware or Mississippi or California, all over the United States people are watching the show and being inspired to travel, picking up some valuable tips, getting an idea of where they want to go.
[86] And it comes in very handy too because sometimes we need a little help to have somebody walk around a corner or have somebody eat an ice cream cone or enjoy a piece of art in a museum and many times we have our viewers making little cameos that way.
[87] I've never run a marathon and I don't think I ever will, but I have a little feeling of what a marathon runner feels when they finish the race successfully because after my crew and I have finished one of our shows, the script is covered, the last on-camera is in the can, it's a very gratifying high-five moment.
[88] I realize that this show brings the world into people's living rooms who couldn't otherwise travel and to me that's a beautiful thing.