Ron James’ comedy special Fast Forward — filmed at Showplace Performance Centre in Peterborough in October — airs on CBC Television on New Year’s Eve. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the production of the special, along with some exclusive video clips of what you will see on New Year’s Eve.
When we interviewed Ron James back in October, he explained why his New Year’s Eve special was being filmed at Showplace and how the theatre was going to be transformed.
“It’s the theatre in the country that gave me a hat trick of sold-out shows,” he says. “What Lynn Harvey and her company and the set designers and the production team are going to do at Showplace with visuals is going to knock your socks off.”
A leading producer of entertainment television in Canada, Lynn has produced each of Ron’s previous five stand-up specials and his series The Ron James Show that ran for five seasons on CBC Television beginning in 2009. She began working with Ron after being introduced to him by the creative head of CBC Comedy.
“We just clicked,” she says. “We went on to do four specials together and then CBC became interested in a weekly series. So we came up with the idea for The Ron James Show. We did that for five seasons and this is our second special since the series stopped.”
“Ron’s always amazing,” she adds. “We’ve worked together almost every day since then. Even when we’re not in production, we share offices and we’re involved in his tour.”
CBC has traditionally aired comedy on New Year’s Eve, which has proven popular with viewers.
“That time slot has been hugely successful for CBC,” Lynn says. “It gets a million viewers or more. There’s a core age group that goes out on New Year’s Eve, but there are lots of families that stay home.”
Only a couple of months after The Big Picture aired, Lynn’s company began looking for venues for Ron’s 2015 New Year’s Eve special.
“We got the green light to do another special in February or March and then we began the search for where,” she explains. “Before the series, the specials always had a regional feel to them. Since the series ended, they’ve become more about the year in review, Canadiana, current events, and stuff we all deal with — like technology and the change in everything.”
“We were just looking for a lovely theatre to shoot in,” she says. “We looked around at theatres that were of a certain size. This theatre is a little smaller than we usually shoot in, but there were certain elements of the architecture that made us choose it. We love the balconies, which make it feel grand in some of the shots. And Ron has a history in Peterborough — he loves it here.”
For the set design, the production crew extended the Showplace stage by projecting an animated cityscape on panels.
“Last year, we did the set with projection and we really liked it,” Lynn says. “We looked at those panels and thought they were like windows, and we started talking about people looking in on Ron, and Ron looking out on the world. Our set designer Pete Faragher is brilliant — he’s done the Junos and Big Brother — and he came back with the beginnings of this idea of a cityscape. We had another wonderful person, Dale Heslip, help us design the content and then we hired a great graphics company.”
“Two months [before the filming], there was the ‘Mulcair win’ opening,” Lynn says. “And about three weeks [before the filming], we had the ‘Harper win’ opening. We ended up with the ‘Trudeau’ win opening.”
Even the title of the special depended on who won the election.
“We actually changed the title after the election,” she says. “We had a different title [than Fast Forward] but once Trudeau won, we thought it wasn’t right anymore. It’s a different vibe in the country now.”
With the set design and script in place, the crew was ready to film Ron’s two performances at Showplace on October 25th and 26th.
Aside from the cameras and production crew, there were other notable differences being part of a live audience during a television shooting.
Before the show began, the crew asked audience members to stow their coats under the seats and to turn off their cellphones. During his performance on stage, Ron repeated jokes when he misspoke or when he felt his timing was off. Lynn explains this is all part of the production process.
“We shoot more than double what we need,” Lynn says. “The show’s 44 minutes long on air. Ron’s performance times out at about 1 hour and 10 minutes, but that’s without any laughs. So we have to sit in editing and make a lot of hard choices.”
After filming is complete, post production begins as soon as the crew get back to Toronto. There’s about six weeks of editing, followed by audio post production, with the show ready for broadcast by mid December.
In terms of the crew itself, Lynn explains a range of people are involved in the production, from a core group in her production company to a trusted group of freelancers working on technical production, audio production, as well as cameras.
“A lot of these people worked on the series,” Lynn says. “You spend hours and days and years in the trenches with most of these people, and they’re just the best.”
Lynn also points out that the Showplace staff — including general manager Ray Marshall, technical director John Milton, box office manager Theresa Foley, and marketing manager Emily Martin — helped make the production a success.
“Ray and John have been great,” Lynn says, “and of course the box office staff”, who had to coordinate ticket sales with seats being removed for production reasons and other seats having sight line restrictions.
“It’s been a lovely experience.”
Exclusive video clips from Ron James: Fast Forward
Fast Forward will be broadcast on CBC Television on Thursday, December 31st, 2015 at 9 p.m., with an encore presentation at midnight.
In the New Year’s Eve special, Ron takes us through the highs and lows of 2015, covering a wide variety of subjects as he cuts a wide swath through contemporary culture.
He talks about when Alberta “turned orange” and when Bruce Jenner turned female, the Man Bun, the rise of Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau, climate change and the “Green Pope”, gluten, soccer and baseball, vaping, internet shaming, his two-week arctic rafting trip, and much more.
Courtesy of Enter the Picture Productions, here are some exclusive video clips of what you can expect to see on Fast Forward on New Year’s Eve.
