Jason Katims, head writer and executive producer for 'Friday Night Lights' - Chicago Tribune | The Watcher

“Basically the style of shooting and the way we produce it, that was started on the pilot by Pete Berg, and my sense from when I was brought on to run the show after the pilot, was that if the show didn’t have the same sense of authenticity and if it didn’t have the same sense of reality -- of feeling like you’re being dropped down in this place and observing it – if it didn’t have that, it wouldn’t be the show.
the feeling that you’re there
"...the visual style, and that the characters themselves – we endeavor to make them feel like real people. ..that’s always the kind of thing I’ve aspired to do as a writer, the kinds of people I’ve wanted to observe.
“There’s something interesting in terms about how the way we produce relates to the way we write stories. Because we haven’t built a single set, and everything is in a real place, we as writers are put in a position where we’re very free to explore. We can go into Tyra’s house as soon as we can go into the Coach’s house, or Saracen’s house, or Landry’s house for that matter. cool
and in intrvw w Aimee Teegarden [Julie] she says there are three cameras shooting so it's not take after take.
sounds like a dream of acting...
and of editing:

“The other part of the process that nobody’s really talking about that’s also very unique is the editing process. Because we’re shooting three cameras and we shoot all the rehearsals, and because of the way it’s shot, the editors are getting 3-4 hours of dailies every day. It is an incredibly challenging process, but an incredibly creative process. ah right the editors have much more to go through and assemble fr. awesome. I wanna be an editor for this show.
Our editors just won the ACE award for the pilot. Jeff Reiner, our director/producer, is a former editor. And editing, to me, is the closest thing in this business to writing. To me, it is writing. So in the editing rooms, you’re dealing with a lot of raw footage, scenes are being assembled and put together and rebuilt in the editing room as well.
And we have no cutting patterns. You want to cut to that guy over there? The editor can never say, ‘We can’t cut to him because we don’t have the right matching shot.’ It doesn’t matter. Nothing matches. You can cut to anywhere from any angle at any time. cool.

“I say this to say there is a fluidity and something new and different in every stage of the game.
a fluidity as you go from scene to scene. And that fluidity comes from a combination of where the cameras are, the way the cameras are moving, the way the cutting sequence works, and what the actors are saying in that space.

("If you break it down, it still is written, it still is a show, there are five acts, there’s a teaser there’s an end and all that stuff. But we’re able to let things breathe a little bit more.)

“Again, it goes back to Pete Berg – this was his style that we kind of have taken and adapted in a sense for series television. It’s what makes the show the show.
And it has to do with everybody. For example, the camera operators. I was talking to one of our camera operators. And she was saying that after this she doesn’t want to do it any more. That’s partly because she has other things she wants to do with her life, partially because she’ll never have another gig like this. This is a show where a camera operator is given their marching orders and then they go find their own shots. They find it. The director doesn’t tell every camera [every shot]. It’s impossible.
“When you’re shooting these football games and have five, six, seven cameras going at once, a director can’t micromanage that, nor would you want to. So there’s something about that, the same thing goes for the director of photography, the production designer, so many people have a certain freedom.

“When I first came on set and was spending some time here after the pilot, I thought, it’s interesting – I thought, this is what I imagined filmmaking would be, before saw what filmmaking was. yes yes yes yes me too me too. to jaime, I was like: so, thee's only one camera? and your part of the scene is filmed separately fr the person your talking to? What I imagined it would be was, people moving really fast, actors trying this and trying that, everybody being very excited and it being very creative and it being a place to sort of discover things. That’s what I thought it would be, and this is the first time I actually saw it work that way.

oh, I am in love with this, that this is going on out there (and resulting in a tv show than wh no better?) and thank you maureen ryan for this coverage I have not read elsewh (though maybe it's been being reported, talked about? just all I've read are reviews fr the debut of the show) about the way the show is made - wh seems like a big story -

“There has been, more so than any show that I’ve ever worked on, I feel like there has been a sort of unity and understanding of what the show is. And a belief in the show despite not such great ratings. There’s belief in the show from [NBC Universal CEO] Jeff Zucker on down. [NBC head] Kevin Reilly -- a few weeks after we premiered and the numbers were not that great, Kevin Reilly wrote an open letter to the cast and crew of the show, basically saying how much he loves the show and how proud he is of it and to keep doing what we’re doing. It’s really … it’s the opposite of what you’d expect. What you would expect is, as much as people might be enthusiastic about a show, if it premiered to disappointing ratings, it wouldn’t be – how do we find the audience for this show, but ‘what’s wrong with this show?’

...so, to keep reading..
An interview with NBC entertainment president Kevin Reilly on the show's creative process and its chances for renewal.
An interview with co-executive producer Jeffrey Reiner, who's directed many episodes of the show.
A story on the show's innovative creative process. w photos

in Friday Night Lights | [an extravaganza] - I visited the show's Austin set a few weeks ago, and here's all the coverage I was able to wring out of that visit. great, fr Maureen Ryan tv critic of ChicagoTrib. great great.