Just wanted to check in and post some more pics of the ongoing construction at SVU while we are on hiatus.

It takes a lot of work and time to redo/add on to existing sets. We have to completely remove the old lighting set ups above and then install new ones to accommodate the new piece of the set. Any more guesses on what we may be building?

I’ll post them more once construction gets a little further on it’s way.

Also, if you have a second, check out this link:

http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/the-many-deaths-of-mike-doyle/1194840653472/index.html

It’s the Many Deaths of Mike Doyle, he plays or should I say played (tear) CSU Tech O’Halloran on SVU. Seems like every roll he takes he ends up a dead guy. Check them out.

Now that we are on Hiatus, there is some interesting stuff happening here at the SVU stages. Wanted to give you all an inside peek of the transformation of our Squadroom. Not going to tell you exactly what’s changing, but I’ll keep posting updated construction shots to keep you up to date

This is a shot from what was the Squadroom hallway towards what was a wall of the Squadroom.

This is a reverse shot from what was inside the Squadroom towards where the Multiplex monitors were.

Any guesses about what we are adding?

A few people are asking if Chris and Mariska will be in the season finale. Absolutely.

Again, I’m sorry to say I can’t reveal who is going to be killed in the finale. I can hook you up with some behind the scenes photos from the season finale.

We lugged all our stuff out to Coney Island. We were blessed with a beautiful day to shoot.

We always provide some shade for the actors and crew when it’s sunny. Here’s Chris, Richard, and Ice staying cool.

Can you speculate from here on why we’d be shooting at Coney Island????

So lastly, I know it’s not the biggest question that many of you are asking, but I understand some of you think that I am the showrunner, Neal Baer. Sorry to say that I am not. That’s a fact.

Hit me up with some question on tonight’s episode “Crush”.

Sorry to be away for a bit. As each season wraps up here at SVU, it gets busier and busier.

As many of you have read someone will be killed in the season finale. No chance that I’m going to spill the beans on that one. You are going to have to tune in on June 2nd to find out. Again, please discuss within your comments your guesses. Good or bad, it’s good to have all discussions on the blog.

Since we aired a repeat this week, I figured I’d post some generic pictures from set. Do you ever wonder how we shoot those wide, swooping shots around our sets? We use a techno-crane. Here’s a shot of it in the set during rehearsal:

The way it works: The camera is attached to the end and spins on it’s own axel. The long arm it is attached to extends as well to add more movement. The camera it self (turning, zooming in and out, etc. ) is controlled by the camera operator from here:

And the long arm itself is moved by our grips from here:

Notice all the weights we have to add to this end of the arm to counter act the weight of the camera on the other end.

This specific episode aired already. Does anyone have any guess which episode it was?

Some answers from the crew:

People were asking about the wardrobe our actors wear. Thanks to our costume department, here’s a break down of our stars’ designers:

Stabler’s suits are primarily Hugo Boss

Benson wears quite a few things: Theory, Vince, Rag and Bone, J Brand, Joie, and of course Me & Ro Jewelry

Cragen wears Brooks Brothers

Fin has a lot of Levi, Hugo Boss, and Nike

Munch wears John Varvatos

Greylek goes with Hugo Boss & Theory

This week's episode “Baggage” has a great guest star: Delroy Lindo. Enjoy watching him team up with Stabler to track down a serial killer!

Hit me up with some questions.

Tuesday’s episode “Hell” is a ground-breaking show for television. “Hell” is the first television show to shoot at the United Nations in New York City...EVER. It’s an amazing place and we couldn’t be more thankful for the U.N..’s support in helping us tell a story that highlights such an enormous problem throughout the world.

Here are few shots from our day at the U.N.:

Inside the lobby. (Where we shot people aren’t even allowed to go!)

Outside, toward the street. (The famous U.N. flagpoles.)

On 3/20 Nat asked if Amanda Green was going to write another episode. Tonight’s episode is an Amanda script!

Check out “Hell” tomorrow night!!!

Notice how the windows shattered a second or two, too late? Well, that’s why we always have doubles. Lets do it again!:

As you can see we dropped a dummy on the car and then through special effects we blow out the windows.
The question is, who got killed???

Answers to some more direct questions:

On March 8th Arabesque asked: In the older seasons of SVU, you used to use set dressings to establish a general time frame (i.e. a skeleton hanging on the wall around Halloween, Easter basket on the edge of the desk, etc.). Is there a reason we don't get to see that anymore?

We don’t necessarily air our episode in the direct order that we film them anymore. So even though we may be filming a show during say Halloween, it may not air until January.

On March 4th Nat asked for me to clarify the switch in airing order regarding the 5/12 episode.

There will just not be an episode on 5/12 and all the rest would be pushed back? So what would have been the 5/12 episode will air on 5/19, and the finale will be on 6/2.

So last night Stephanie March came back. NEXT WEEK: Carol Burnett and Matthew Lillard (Shaggy from Scooby Doo)…

So I'm sure most of you noticed last week (2/10) we did not air a new episode. As I mentioned in the last post, NBC controls our airdates and even though we were scheduled to air an episode last week, we were preempted for a Dateline Special. "Transitions" aired last night instead. One other change: we will not have a new episode airing on 5/12. Instead we will air it on 6/2.

Here's something to get you excited for upcoming episodes -- a behind the scenes photo during the filming of "Ballerina," scheduled to air on March 17th.

So this is a shot of our Director Peter Leto watching a live feed of what we are filming in the near by Interview Room (look at the upper left corner of the photo). Peter Leto is at what we call "Video Village" (which I described in a earlier post: http://blog.nbc.com/laworder_svu/production_blog/confession_behind_the_scenes_p/#comments ). Video Village is set up in the Squadroom (can you tell?). Why are there two monitors with the same image? Sometimes we use two cameras at the same time to film., so we have the separate images up on the two different monitors. However, when we are only using one camera (as we are here) we just put the same footage up on both monitors so it's easier to see for the crewmembers near video village. Cool fact about the Video Village: it was invented by Jerry Lewis…

Last, but absolutely not least thing about this photo….that's CAROL BURNETT we are filming!!! Stay tuned on 3/17 to see her episode!

Here's something cool about tonight's episode. The script called for a few mug shots of Dabney's character "Frank Hagar" from the last 30+ years. Sometimes the actors themselves find some old pictures of themselves that work and we just turn them into mug shots. However, this time Dabney didn't have anything we could use. So our graphics department (Dylan and Dan) took photos that were taken of Dabney during prep and de-aged them. Dabney's 77 years old in real life. Check out how young we made him look in some of them:

Few Questions answered:

Emily asked "Why do you tape the rugs down?" She is referring to the picture of Stephanie on set from my previous post. We tape them down for a few reasons. 1) So the actors don't trip. They have stage directions and lines to know, the last thing we need is for them to have to worry about tripping. 2) We tape them so they don't slide or move during the scene. Lastly and most importantly, 3) SOUND. Those high heels make a lot of noise when actresses walk around. The rugs eliminate that sound.

Katt asked: "Now that Cabot is back; is Greylek not the ADA anymore?" Cabot is back but Greylek is still here as well. Stay tuned on 3/10 to find out.

KT asked: "How many episodes are left to air this season?" Including tonight's episode we have 10 more. There are some big guest stars coming to SVU down the stretch so keep watching. Seems there is some confusion with our airdates in general so let me lay them out for you (and of course these can change per NBC): SVU has new episodes tonight and next week (2/10) followed by a break. We'll be back on 3/10 with new episodes for four weeks. We'll have a small break again, and then our last four episodes begin airing on 4/28. Hopefully that's not too confusing.

So Stephanie March had her first day of shooting last week with us. When I was walking by on set I snapped a quick photo with my phone so all could see her first scene back (sorry the quality is so poor). I'll get some good ones next time.

Some people are asking when we saw her last. Her last appearance on SVU was when she came out of witness protection to testify against the man who shot her. The episode was called "Ghost" which aired back in 2005.
Stephanie also was part of the cast for "Conviction" which was another one of Dick Wolf's shows and as Alexandra Cabot.
When she returns to SVU we'll tell you why our detectives haven't heard from her…
Her first episode is slated to air on March 10th…

Sorry for the delay since my last post. We were on Hiatus for a few weeks.

If you haven't heard THE GREAT NEWS, Stephanie March is returning to SVU as Alexander Cabot for six episodes!!!

Congrats to Robin Williams on his People's Choice Award for guest starring on SVU!
You can see his accpetance speech here:

Robin Williams - People's Choice Awards

As usual, it's crazy just getting back to work. So I thought a quick way to start the New Year is with some cool tidbits about SVU:

Did you know:
In the open credits of the show all of the people shown/seen (outside of the actors) are current or former crew members
Did you know:
In the 10 Seasons that SVU has been on the air, we have seen over 25,000 people for casting for rolls on the show
Did you know:
Before Diane Neal was casted as our ADA Casey Novak, she originally appeared on the show a few seasons earlier as Amelia Chase, a female rapist in the episode "Ridicule".
Did you know:
Here at our stages (not including our permanent sets) we will often use the same set pieces in over 50 different sets before it gets discarded.
Did you know:
Many of the pieces in our Courtroom set were original from Night Court, then were used in the Dragnet Movie, then (after major renovations) landed here at SVU

Thoughts about this week's show "Stranger?"

Happy New Years Everyone!

Any questions about last night's episode "Smut"? I personally thought it brought up a very intriguing question about what is worse: Knowing you were sexually assaulted and having to live with it, or being sexually assaulted and never knowing you were??? Our guest actors were great. Did anyone recognize Michael Trucco? He plays Sam on Battlestar Galatica.

To answer what seems to be a big question everyone is asking: Yes Jay Leno's new show will be airing on NBC at 10:00pm every weeknight, so our time slot will be moving. When I know more you will know more!

Does anyone know what Tech Advisors are? These are people who are experts or well trained in a certain career whom we go to for technical advice for certain details in our episodes. For example, we have a regular Tech Advisor for legal matters/procedures and also a regular Tech Advisor for police procedures/processes. Some shows just take what is called "Creative License" and do what ever works best for their story or show. However, at SVU we do our best to be as accurate and real as possible. So much to the point where (as an example) we will have real ER nurses playing background roles during our hospital scenes to make sure everything we are doing is correct.

I wanted to give you guys a sneak peak behind the scenes of the episode "Hothouse" airing later this season. We had a professor and grad student from Columbia write all of our equations on the board. The gentleman on the right is David Bayar (professor at Columbia) and on the left is Jonathan Bloom (grad student). David Bayar was actually the technical advisor for "A Beautiful Mind". So we were lucky enough to get them both.

Hopefully you all will appreciate how we try to be as accurate as possible, for such details as equations on a blackboard.

Hit me up with some questions on last Tuesday's show!

Lastly, you asked if trainers/handlers were right off camera during the animal scenes, i.e. the Tiger. Yes, very very close. To give you a shooting secret: Chris Meloni was not really there when the tiger lunged at him. We shot Chris's reaction on his half of the frame with the camera locked off (meaning not moving) and then had the tiger come in and shot him on his side of the frame. We got the tiger to lunge by having his trainer stand where Chris was with a stick with some meat on it. Then in Post Production, the magic happens. They overlay the two shots, removing the trainer from the tiger shot and insert Chris's reaction shot. Tada!

I have to tell you, as of the 5 seasons I've been at SVU, this one is at the top when it comes to the fun we have had shooting it.
Stay tuned this Tuesday for "Persona", as we welcome back Judith Light, but NOT as JUDGE Donnelly…….

So it seems like you all want so see some more behind the scene photos from Wildlife. Ask and you shall receive:

PHOTO #1: Here is Stabler looking like he may be undercover in a pretty sketchy place, just maybe...

PHOTO #2: Here is Cragen holding what seems to be just a basketball...

PHOTO #3: Has anyone seen Madagascar?

PHOTO #4: Ever been this close to a Cougar?

PHOTO #5: Hard to imagine this little guy (5 months old) is going to turn into a vicious leopard.

PHOTO #6: Last, but not least. Meet Sally the monkey. By far my favorite.