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''Friday Night Lights'' is an award winning American Television Serial Drama adapted by Peter Berg , Brian Grazer and David Nevins from A Book of the same name. The series details events surrounding the Dillon Panthers, a High School Football team based in fictional Dillon, Texas . The show uses a small-town backdrop to address many issues facing contemporary Middle America . Produced by . NBC increased this number on November 13 , 2006 ordering a full season of 22 episodes 1. In addition to airing in the United States, the program is also broadcasted in Canada , The Philippines , Finland , Sweden , Ireland , Norway , Iceland , Italy and the United Kingdom and is available from several online sources. On May 10 , 2007 , NBC sources confirmed to TV Guide's Michael Ausiello that the network had renewed the show for a second season 2. This was confirmed by NBC on May 14 , 2007 when it was announced that the show would change timeslots during the 2007/2008 season, airing, appropriately enough, on Friday nights at 10/9c. 3 After a shakeup in NBC management the timeslot was adjusted so the show could air an hour earlier at 9/8c. 4 Season 2 episodes are scheduled to begin airing on October 5 , 2007 . 5. CHARACTERS Major Roles
Secondary Roles
EPISODES See Also: List of Friday Night Lights episodes PLOT ''Friday Night Lights'' is the story of the Dillon Panthers, their Coach Eric Taylor and the fictional city of Dillon, TX, a town that lives and dies with every game their Panthers play. It is not a “sports show” in that the individual episodes tend to revolve around the personal lives of the Coach and his players and not around the actual playing of Football . Upcoming games are treated more like ever present specters in the background, influencing events while not being the focus of them. Accordingly not every episode will show an actual game even though every game that is played by the Panthers is shown to some extent, often in cut scenes at the end of an episode. The show puts special emphasis on dealing with social issues facing the various team members and their families. Episodes have addressed pertinent social issues such as Infidelity , Drug Use , Mental Illness , Racism , Alcoholism and Parental Abandonment . Season One See Also: Friday Night Lights (season 1) Season one revolves around two main events, the ascension of Coach Eric Taylor to the position of head coach and the paralysis of star Quarterback Jason Street. These two events set off a chain reaction that leads the series through its first season, a season that largely revolves around a few basic themes. The first of these themes is the overcoming of adversity. This is most evident in the juxtaposition of the team's new quarterback Matt Saracen and Jason Street who is now paralyzed from the waist down. Both these characters must struggle against seemingly insurmountable odds as Street learns to live without the use of his legs and Saracen must rise to be worthy of the position he has now inherited. Both struggle mightily against their respective challenges and their journeys largely parallel each other as each eventually conquers those challenges. At the same time, a theme that repeats itself throughout the first season is the struggle Coach Taylor must face trying to balance the need to do the right thing with the need to appease a town whose hopes and dreams are inseparably intertwined with their high school football team. At several points Taylor must risk his team's success and consequently his job to do the right thing. Finally, the first season's overarching theme is that even seemingly stereotypical people have unknown depth; once that depth is revealed people generally aren’t as different as they believe themselves to be. Nowhere is this made clearer than in one of the season’s most volatile relationships, that of “Smash” Williams with Tim Riggins. Williams is a driven athlete, obviously college bound, with a good family, while Riggins is an unfocused alcoholic with absentee parents and no prospects beyond high school. When the season opens both characters despise each other but as it progresses they become more and more dependent on each other eventually forming a friendship. In doing so they realize that they aren't as different as they had once thought. Each character is touched in some way by this theme as most were introduced as stereotypes of a small Texas town in the Pilot. Gradually, as the season progressed, the audience began to see each character's depth and to discover the similarities among them. PRODUCTION Inspiration See Also: Friday Night Lights (film) Friday Night Lights (the TV show) takes its inspiration from a book entitled “” which was published in 1990 . The book, written by H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger details the 1988 season of the Permian Panthers , a high school football team in Odessa, Texas . The book itself is intended as a work of journalism and is assumed to be completely factual (though some citizens of Odessa dispute the book's accuracy). The characters in the book are not renamed and the book makes no attempt to conceal their identity.6 The 1990 book was followed up with a Film In 2004 starring Billy Bob Thornton and directed by Bissinger’s second cousin Peter Berg . The film’s characters are again based on the real life residents of Odessa circa 1988 and the film stays loyal to the book itself in most ways.7 Conception Once filming on the movie was completed, Berg turned his attention to adapting the story for Television. Unlike the film, the show's pilot chose not to use Odessa's fabled Permian high school team but instead took their story as inspiration in creating a new, entirely fictional, cast of characters. Still much of the work that went in to the Pilot’s creation was a duplication of work that was done on the movie and it is clear that Berg made a conscious choice to carry over many of the elements from the 2004 film. 9 These choices include casting Connie Britton 10 and Brad Leland 11 in similar roles and using songs by Explosions in the Sky, a band that wrote most of the Film's Soundtrack . 12 The film's soundtrack would eventually be re-released as a soundtrack for the TV series using cover art from the Season 1 DVD. 13 More significantly, Berg has expressed in interviews how much he regretted having to jettison many of the interpersonal topics covered in the book because of the time constraints of a feature film. Creating a TV series, particularly one based on fictional characters, allowed many of those elements to be brought back in and addressed in depth. 14 Filming for the TV show's Austin, TX-based pilot began in February 2006. Berg describes filming the Pilot and eventually the show in Texas as “a deal breaker him ” and the pilot goes out of its way to pay homage to its Texas football heritage. One example is in the opening of the Pilot where a caller on the fictional “Panther Radio” compares Kyle Chandler’s coach Taylor to Texas Longhorn coach Mack Brown. Brown ironically makes a guest appearance later in the Pilot playing a Dillon booster alongside Westlake High School coach Derek Long. 15 The pilot also incorporated as much of the surrounding area as possible. Football scenes for the pilot were filmed at Pflugerville High School's Kuempel Stadium and at RRISD Complex. The Dillon Panther uniforms were based heavily on the uniforms of the real life Pflugerville Panthers. 16 In addition to physical locations, many of the characters were also inspired by Berg’s observation of local high schools when preparing to film the movie. One example of this is the character of Jason Street whose promising football career is ended by a spinal injury in the pilot. This was inspired by a real life incident in which David Edwards , a player from San Antonio’s Madison High, was paralyzed during a November 2003 game. Berg was at the game when the incident took place and it had a profound effect on him leading him to base the pilot around a similar incident. 17 Performances The show’s producers decided at the outset to allow their performers leeway in what they say and do on the show. Though scripted like any hour-long television drama performers are given great leeway in the delivery of their lines and the blocking of each scene. If actors feel that something is not true to their character or that a mode of delivery doesn’t work they are free to change it provided they still hit the vital plot points. 18 The freedom that producers have extended to the performers is complemented by the fact that the show is taped without rehearsal and without extensive blocking. Camera operators on the show are trained to follow the actors rather than actors standing in one place and having cameras fixed around them. This allows performers to not only feel free to make changes but to feel safe in making those changes because the infrastructure will work around them. Executive Producer Jeffrey Reiner described this method as “no rehearsal, no blocking, just three cameras and we shoot”. 19 Working in this fashion has had a profound influence on everyone involved with the show with series star Kyle Chandler going so far as to say “When I look back at my life, I'm going to say, "Wow, producer Peter Berg really changed my life."” 20 Executive Producer and Head Writer Jason Katims echoes this sentiment saying “When I first came on ‘FNL’ set, I thought, it’s interesting — this is what I imagined filmmaking would be, before I saw what filmmaking was” 21 Filming ''Friday Night Lights'' is filmed in and around Austin, Texas and is unusual in its use of actual locations as opposed to prefabricated stage sets. The show uses real locations in and around Austin exclusively and has no sound stage where filming is done. This, along with the production team using hundreds of locals as extras, gives the series a uniquely authentic look. The drive towards authenticity continues in the show’s documentary style filming technique which employs three cameras for each shoot and shoots entire scenes in one take. This differs from most productions in that most productions will film scenes from each angle repeating an average scene several times and readjusting lighting to accommodate each shot. By filming a scene all at once the producers have tried to create an environment for the actors that is more organic and allows for the best performances. This desire for authenticity in the production extends to the football games as well with the series making heavy use of the uniforms, cheerleaders, fans, and the stadium of the real life Pflugerville Panthers. Producers even go so far as to tape Pflugerville games and use it as game footage in the show.22 Added to that are real life University of Southern California football announcers Peter Arbogast and Paul McDonald who provide off-screen commentary during the football game sequences. It has been reported that filming for a second season may be moved to another location to save on cost. The series represents roughly $33 million a year in revenue for the area in which its filmed and states such as Louisiana and New Mexico have been aggressive in courting the production company. Texas itself has been said to be considering legislation that would allow them to match the offers of other states and the production company has stated a preference for the Austin area where it currently films.23 Marketing Initial marketing of the show was targeted at the youth market and focused heavily on the football element. NBC teamed with social networking site Bebo.com to create a site that allowed students to upload video and photos as well as create blogs about their local football teams. Students who participated were eligible for one of ten $5,000 scholarships. The focus of this promotion was a deal that would provide NBC and the show promotion on Bebo’s network of youth oriented sites including Piczo, hi5, Tickle, Ringo and FastWeb. 24 To complement this promotion NBC sent out “School Spirit” kits to 1,000 high schools around the country. These kits included posters, pop-poms, mini-footballs and disposable cameras all bearing the show’s logo. The kits also contained copies of the show’s Pilot episode on DVD. 25 This promotional trick is something the network would return to for its second season promotion when it teamed with HouseParty.com to send out 1,000 "Party Kits" which contained advance copies of the Season 2 opener along with other promotional material. 26 |
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