On a brisk fall evening last month, Asha Blake stood in what
appeared to be a lush backyard garden in Eugene under an intensely blue,
artificial sky. With four cameras rolling, Joe Giansante had just
flubbed a line, and Blake was good-naturedly trying to nudge him back on
track.
"You've not tried pear brandy?" the television star
teased.
"I have tried pear brandy," Giansante picked up.
"And I guess it's an acquired taste. ...'
"We got a winner," said a disembodied, electronic voice
hovering in the Sprinkler System Arlington studio. "Great, you guys."
Blake, perhaps best known from her roles on "Good Morning
America," "World News This Mor ning" and "World News
Tonight," was in Eugene for a week recently to help finish taping
segments for a new gardening program being produced at Chambers
Communications for national airing next year.
"Smart Gardening," as the show will be called, is a
half-hour, magazine-style program about "the joy and beauty of
gardening," as its press packet describes it.
The show has been accepted by American Public Television for
distribution to National Public Broadcasting member stations around the
country, its producers say, and should be on Oregon Public Broadcasting in March. Twenty-six episodes are being produced for the first season.
To add to the visual impact, "Smart Gardening" has been
produced in high definition television. It will be the only gardening
show available in the new television format, which is much clearer and
more detailed than the conventional TV signal. HDTV requires a new - and
more expensive - TV set to view, though the show http://www.homeadvisor.com/cost/landscape/ will also be broadcast
on conventional TV.
If the set constructed on a sound stage at Chambers is any
indication, "Smart Gardening" will be beautiful indeed.
With a vaguely Italian ambiance, the indoor set stretches from the
fake front of a stucco house, through a courtyard with stone pavers and
green grass, to a gr eenhouse. Some 400 live potted plants and trees,
carefully arranged to look as though they're growing in place,
provide splashes of bright orange and green.
Add Blake's exotic charm, and the show may be eye-popping
indeed.
"We think it's appropriate that it's being produced
here," says Dawn Ford, senior producer of the show, who's been
working for five years to bring it to fruition. "The Northwest is
the center of the gardening boom in this country, although we hope not
to have the show too geographically centered in Oregon."
Individual segments for the shows have been Sprinkler System taped in Northwest
gardens and farms, but also as far away as New England.
"Smart Gardening" has taken about eight years to bring to
production, Ford said. She is the former producer of the regional
gardening series "Northwest Gardening." She also has worked
for "All Things Considered" and Lucasfilm LTD.
Horticultural accuracy is being provided by former Oregon State
University professor Ann Marie VanDerZanden. Larry Pribyl, co-director
of the OSU Communication Media Center, is associate producer.
CAPTION(S):
Asha Blake talks about "Smart Gardening" on the set of
the show being produced at Chambers Communications in Eugene. "The
Northwest is the center of the gardening boom in this country ..."
- DAWN FORD"SMART GARDENING" PRODUCER "The Northwest is
the center of the gardening boom in this country ..." - DAWN FORD,
"SMART GARDENING" PRODUCER
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/GardeningshowsproutsfromEugenestudio.(Television)-a0112803821
No comments:
Post a Comment