Shooting an episode broadcast live: this is a real challenge for any actor and any series. A risk that Emergencies nevertheless took
This is the first episode of season 4 we are talking about here, a special episode for all ER fans. Besides being where Dr. Elizabeth Corday (Alex Kingston) first appears, it’s mostly a daring episode, filmed live. An original idea of Dr. Doug Ross and Mark Greene, or rather their famous interpreters, George Clooney and Anthony Edwards. The two actors were indeed interested in this challenge which could only put their acting skills to the test. A real theatrical performance that would require precise preparation and execution.
Shoulder camera
Written for the occasion, the episode Ambush features a film crew arriving in the emergency room to film a documentary. So, to give it a more genre-appropriate style, Ambush breaks with the usual style of the series. Hand-held cameras – and no steadicam, the show’s hallmark – were thus used.
It is also the only episode in the entire series that was filmed in 4:3 format, the others having been shot in widescreen format and then cropped to 4:3 for the television version, before reappearing in their 16:9 aspect ratio. complete on the series DVDs and in reruns. For broadcast purposes, the special episode is then filmed twice: once to be broadcast live for prime time viewers on the US East Coast and a second to be broadcast live for those on the West Coast. .
THE SHOW MUST GO ON
As in any live performance, errors are real probabilities, which otherwise cannot be erased. And one of them did slip into one of the “live” episodes. However, as they say in the industry, “the show must go on”, and that’s exactly what happened. According to Mental Floss, the first version of the episode went off without a hitch…unlike the second!
The scenario indeed features an HIV-positive patient who threatens the hospital staff with a syringe. In the second show of the evening, however, the actor playing the patient dropped the syringe before the threat was made. While a special cast of actors were on hand to improvise a scene in case of technical difficulties, this contingency was not utilized as the show’s original cast knew how to remain professional and simply carried on as if nothing had happened. So most viewers didn’t notice anything!
Other small details differ from one version to another, such as when a patient vomits on Dr. Carter. In the East Coast version, he wipes his hand on a curtain. West side, it does not. In syndication, the East Coast version of the episode is shown. There is also a merged version that we could see in the DVD box sets, depending on the region. Even though 25 years have passed since the experimental episode aired on September 25, 1997 in the United States, originality and feats like this have helped makeEmergency room a series apart, a giant of the small screen which marked more than one generation, as evidenced by the Emmy won by “Ambush” for the best technical direction/camera/video in 1998.