The Studio's Seth Rogen Details 'Crazy Energy' Of Shooting The High-Stakes 'Oner' Episode — Watch
Seth Rogen's Matt Remick may fancy himself as a champion of filmmakers, but in The Studio's second episode, the newly minted studio head proves to be his own worst enemy. When he visits the set of a high-stakes shoot helmed by guest star Sarah Polley, what should have been a seamless cinematic "oner" — a scene that's filmed in one continuous shot without cuts or edits — turns into a chaotic comedy of errors.
"The original idea was just how disruptive it can be at times when studio executives come to visit the set and how much the filmmakers often don't love it when the studio executives come visit the set," Rogen tells TVLine in the video above. "And how sad it is for the studio executives because it's genuinely their favorite part of the job. It's why they got into the industry in the first place, to be on the ground floor of all of it, and to see the magic happen."
While the Apple TV+ comedy often focuses on Matt's precarious position as he entangles himself between highfalutin creatives and self-involved actors, Matt quickly finds himself to be the only thorn in Polley's side as she and her team race to shoot her film's climax during magic hour.
Rogen says the idea to make the episode itself a oner became a funny meta joke-on-the-joke during the installment's conception. "As we were doing that, we were like, 'We should just do every scene as a oner, because we're gonna do this episode and we're gonna feel like it's the best one. We're probably gonna love shooting like this.' That was actually where the idea to do the whole show like that came from as well."
Despite looking and feeling like one elongated shot, the episode was actually filmed in four chunks since production could only shoot for about 90 minutes a day. Plus, the cast and crew were only shooting during that magical, yet fickle sunset lighting.
"We had no access to the house and no time to rehearse at all prior to shooting the episode, which is not an ideal situation for something like this," he says. Despite the "really stressful" shoot, Rogen and his crew (which also includes co-stars Catherine O'Hara and Ike Barinholtz) produced one of the series' funniest and best episodes.
"If we had had weeks to rehearse or it was a set or something we could control more, it would have been much easier," he adds.
"Wouldn't have been as fun!" O'Hara chimes in.
"Wouldn't have been as fun, yeah," Rogen agrees. "There was a crazy energy to it."
See what else Rogen had to say (in addition to O'Hara and Barinholtz) by watching the full interview. Then, vote in our poll below and drop some comments.