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Guiding Light is getting a new look
CBS's daytime drama Guiding Light celebrated its 71st year on the air on January 25. First, on radio, then and now on television, this grand old soap opera has never stopped telling its stories, making broadcast history. Production goes on, but starting February 29, 2008, viewers will be seeing Guiding Light in a brand new light. Led by innovative Executive Producer Ellen Wheeler, Guiding Light it busting out of the studio to starting filming in a more realistic, cinema verite style. "Soap operas have been shot, by and large, the same way since the 1950's, the same way I Love Lucy was shot - with pedestal cameras, in just a few interior sets," said Ms. Wheeler recently. According to her, the "[it's] old-fashioned, and it isn't working anymore." With that in mind, Guiding Light's fictitious hometown of Springfield (no, not the same one in which Marge and Homer reside), is coming to life. Outdoor scenes will be filmed in Peapack, New Jersey, becoming, in effect, a real live Springfield. Imagine, the Spaulding mansion, Reva and Josh's Cross Creek cabin, Cedar's Hospital, even everyone's favorite burger joint, Company! The interiors will feature permanent four-walled sets with ten-foot high ceilings shot with cameras that are free to roam. The entire look is meant to break with the conception of what most soap operas look like, and while it sounds revolutionary, it's actually been done before to some extent. When the ABC soap, Loving, was failing in the ratings in 1995, producers changed the name of the show to The City, reset the show in Soho, and tried to jazz up the way it was shot. It didn't work; the soap was canceled in 1997.
Guiding Light is on much firmer footing than that show was. True, it's in the lower tier of soap opera ratings, but it's a critical darling and it won the Daytime Emmy as Outstanding Drama Series in 2007 (tied with The Young and the Restless).
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