LOST
What a TV series taught me about Life, Death & Everything In-between
The original story writer Jeff Lieber, and co-writer/director JJ Abrams were saddled with an almost impossible task — to turn their story idea of a plane crash on a deserted island into a series pilot in just 11 weeks.
ABRAMS: On the Saturday morning, we got a call. They were greenlighting a two-hour pilot. We had 11 weeks to write it, cast it, shoot it, cut it, and turn it in. It was insanity.
Reading the cast and crew interviews on empireonline.com one can only imagine the backroom chaos that eventually became LOST — a mile marker in series film production, and a repository of nostalgia for those of us that became devout converts of its crazy story premise. The pilot was shot in Hawaii and the production team shipped down an actual plane for the wreckage. It rained every day for 12 days during the shooting and JJ Abrams and his team navigated all sorts of odds to make it work. Damon Lindelof and the scriptwriters were making things up, churning out scripts for scenes scheduled for shooting each day, while figuring out the rest of the plot. Actors had no backstories on their characters nor enough information to connect fully with whom they were playing. Some actors arrived on set and were plunged immediately into the epicenter of all that chaos.
