Empty Studios

A former Stamford (and ABC) colleague posted a photo of the empty Stamford studio today. This enormous space that used to be wall-to-wall full of All My Children and One Life to Live sets, many ingeniously designed to share walls and doors so as to save space and money, is now an empty shell. And though I have read numerous posts about the demise of the Stamford venture, this picture really got me.

I remember that when One Life to Live finished shooting at ABC, while I edited shows for weeks afterward, I specifically avoided going back into the studio. I had lived with the idea of the show ending for a long time. I was at least somewhat prepared. Yet, I knew, somehow, that the empty studio would bring it home. Edit rooms were just cubicles with computers. For me, the studio and the control room were the places that brought the show to life, the places where the team worked together. So once I had survived the last shooting day and its accompanying on-set speeches, I knew I couldn't go back. I could handle the end, as long as I didn't go back to the studio.

Clearly, when I saw the Stamford studio photo posted today, it was like the "going back" that I never intended to do. Any set is really just an empty shell until the work of scenic designers and artists and the collaboration of a production team make it a living, breathing thing--a place where stories are told. And when it returns to that empty shell...

Will I survive? Sure. Will we all? Of course. And while the photo was everything I hoped to avoid seeing at the end of ABC, I'm not sorry that I saw it, and that it moved me, today. It reminded me of the community it supported, even just for a moment in time. And of the people I hope I will cross paths with again, somewhere down the road.