On Saturday morning, July 24, 2004 at San Diego Comic Con, Lost-TV talked with Executive Producer Bryan Burk. No dark and bloody secrets were revealed... yet!
   Yes, you will find out what is making that noise in the bushes, and no it is not a dinosaur.
   But "outing" the Big Noisy Thing will not be the death knell of "Lost." The creators and producers of this series are more forward thinking than that. This is a series for which JJ Abrams already knows how the next six seasons will end. Or was it seven or eight seasons?
   Isn't that being just a touch optimistic, you ask? After all, ABC has only picked up the show for 11 episodes. And a full season for a TV show is 22 episodes.
   Let's put it this way: "Lost" is not a series which will run out of ideas. Nor is it a series short on savvy. Bryan paraphrased Damon Lindelof, one of the creators of "Lost," by saying that doing a series was a lot like a cross country drive. You have to know where you're going. You might make some detours and you might change your destination, but you do have a general idea about where you hope to wind up when you set out.
   "We're huge fans of 'Twin Peaks,'" Bryan said. "And we loved it, but our fear (with 'Lost') was to have a situation like 'Who Killed Laura Palmer?' In Episode 9 (of 'Twin Peaks') they tell you and it's like, now what?"
   If JJ and Co. know how each season will end for the next six (or was it eight?) seasons, it doesn't look like "now what?" will be an issue.
   The very nature of a television series puts it in a different realm of story telling than a film. With a movie, the creators know what the end is. With a series, there are many factors to take into consideration, particularly as the project gains momentum. Maybe someone is cast originally as a walk on, everyone loves the character and or the actor who portrays that character and more scenes are added and he gets to stay. Maybe a cast member has a developing fan base and the big, "I'm gonna die" sign blinking over his head is turned off and he or she gets to live.
   The point is, how does a writing staff maintain freshness and vitality week after week?
   By knowing how each season will end. By establishing a core group of characters, each of whom have issues which are more or less serious. What those issues are and how the character reacts to them will affect how the story evolves. And, as BagEndInn's MsAllegro found out in HER conversation with Bryan, by revealing to each cast member the nexus of only his or her own character and not that of the others, just like real people in real life, harboring real secrets. Each actor might have a copy of the script, but not the backstory of the people he or she is working with. So as filming progresses the actors will be just as surprised as the rest of us.
   "Lost" is currently filming in Oahu. The cast has moved to Hawaii for now and are well on their way to becoming locals, according to Bryan. He hinted though that the production team was competing for space, since there seems to be quite a few shows and projects filming on Oahu at the moment.
   Bryan and other production team members are based in Los Angeles, however, and see "dailies" which are overnighted to them. An episode takes 8 days to shoot and the shooting schedule is Monday - Friday with 12 hours days, often longer. As of this writing, they were working on Episodes 3 and 4.
   And what is Bryan's background? He's been making movies since he was ten. We didn't ask him what would compel a ten year old to set out on that path and stick to it but that’s a question we'll save for next time.
   But Bryan, while deferring all creative comments to Damon Lindelof is definitely not out of the loop on the low down on "Lost" and its denizens. We observed that we felt that the Big Noisy Thing had more to fear from Evangeline Lilly's character, Kate, than anyone else on the island.
   Bryan looked around innocently. "Kate has issues," he said. And that was all he said. If we want to know what those issues are, we'll have to learn it each Wednesday night at 8 PM starting on September 22.
   But one thing we did learn. Bryan loves Lost-TV. Tom Sherman, formerly with ABC and now overseeing all of JJ's productions, loves Lost-TV. Damon Lindelof loves Lost-TV.
   "Tell Xander we love him!" Bryan said.
   More than happy to oblige!
   (NOTES: Love ya too, Bryan! Anyway, many thanks to my staff who went to Comic-Con and snapped this up. Also, if you wish to put this article up anywhere, please credit it to Lost-TV and link it to http://www.lost-tv.com/.) Permanent Link | 10:41 AM