Stephen Hopkins Quotes

In television, you make an hour-long episode every seven days; we used to make 'Party Down' in four days per episode. It's quick and with independent movies is the same: you gotta keep moving. It's very similar.

It takes a week to do a sitcom in Hollywood. I do a show a day in my studio, three or four shows a week.

On 'State of Affairs,' we're going after some names that you wouldn't think would traditionally do TV. A show that shoots in Los Angeles is such a rare bird in hand that I think we're gonna have the pick of the litter.

I love doing TV. It's such a breakneck pace, you know. It's kiss and go with your leading man. You meet them in the morning and go right into a clinch. The filming is over before you know their last names.

Normally, if you do a television show, it's 25 episodes. Your year is kind of shot, you know what I mean?

In daytime, you're shooting an episode a day, which is on average about 90 pages of script a day. That is very hectic. On '90210,' you get to work through it a little more. You're not just flying through it just to get it done.

Looking back now on our workload, I just shake my head at our pace. 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' was my first series, so I didn't know anything about that when I started. I just assumed it was normal to make 26 episodes a year on a seven-day shooting schedule.

I did a network show in the U.S. before, and I loved it, but you have eight days to shoot an episode, and it's just a ridiculous pace.

I wrapped that Monday and started on my third episode for Miss Match on Thursday of that same week and we just wrapped yesterday cause it was split over the holiday.

On a television show, you basically make a movie a week. Movies take three months - it's crazy. They're so slow, it's like vacation to me.

I really enjoy doing sitcom television. It allows me to stay in Los Angeles and spend more time with my husband and kids.

It's kind of weird because 'Saint George' shoots on the exact same lot that 'Justified' did and, actually, the exact same soundstage, too.

When I'm on set filming 'One Tree Hill,' I get up and work out four to five days a week.

Directing television is really hard - it's so fast. You shoot an hour show in seven days.

'Game of Thrones' is shot on a very similar kind of schedule to a TV show, but there's a lot more time and focus put into the script.

After 'Heart Skips A Beat' hit No.1, I barely had a chance to celebrate 'cos it was straight over to the judges' houses for the 'Xtra Factor,' filming in Greece, L.A. and Spain.

We shot on location in our very first weeks, in our very first shows. I would like to go on location again, Hawaii would be good!! But normally, we tape five days a week in the studio starting at about 8:00 a.m. and continuing until about 8:00 p.m.

Television moves fast, and you don't have the indulgences you have when you're shooting movies of so many takes because there are tight deadlines.

I really wasn't on the Dallas set much. I did three or four episodes so I didn't see too much.

'Days of Our Lives' was an insane schedule. You're doing a whole one-hour show in a day. You do a very cursory run-through with the director telling you where you're going to be standing, then you do a quick rehearsal on camera and you shoot it.

For 'Breaking Bad,' our offices were in the ugliest building in Burbank, California. Which, if you know Burbank, is really saying something.

With TV, you just have to finish the days and get the episodes out. And it's always going to be an impossible schedule. That's the funny thing with TV that not a lot of people realize.

Ten episodes goes by really quickly, especially when you've got a really tough shooting schedule of seven-day episodes.

We did four months on 'Line of Duty' from beginning to end, and that would be a long theater run.

We shoot 'Hustle' for 12 to 16 weeks, so that's how long I'm here each year. I've always loved London. I lived here for three years back in the Seventies, when I did a TV series, 'The Protectors,' for Lew Grade.