How is this for a challenging work environment? Standing two feet behind you in your already cramped office is a crewmember of a television show that you've never seen before in your life. He has a two-way intercom system strapped to his utility belt, a wire piece straight out of the Secret Service's summer catalog connected to his ear and every few minutes he gets a cue from someone outside to turn off your office's air conditioning. And, it's the middle of August.
To make matters worse, the student health service's entire supply of condoms--some 25,000 of them--is sitting in a storage closet in your office, and if the temperature in the closet climbs above 80 degrees, the contraceptives become "injured" and you have an awkward phone call to make to the Trojan people.
To top it off, Katie Holmes is standing outside your window on the main quad shooting, re-shooting and re-re-shooting the same scenes for hours on end. But the only thing you can do is just sit there at your desk and wait for the film school student behind you to turn your AC back on, as the condoms continue to simmer.
Ah, the many joys of having the most popular television show amongst teenage girls filmed on your campus.
Ray Rodriguez, the Coordinator of Health Promotion and Education in Duke's Healthy Devil office, promises that the intermittent air conditioning in his office on August 10--the Dawson's Creek crew needed to eliminate the buzz of the AC unit during takes--did not, in the end, harm any of the University's condoms. It did, however, provide for an interesting day's work and a possible sign of things to come.
Dawson's, beginning its fifth season on the WB Network this fall, has been shooting on Duke's campus for several day-long stints since late July, and is tentatively set to resume September 15.
The Gothic Wonderland has been dubbed Worthington College, where Holmes' character Joey Potter is beginning her freshman year. Raleigh will play host to Boston Bay College, which two other Dawson's regulars, Jack and Jenn, will attend.
So far, filming at Duke has been concentrated on the Main West quads, in the Gothic Reading Room of Perkins Library and in the Sarah B. Duke Gardens. Besides Rodriguez's off-again-on-again air conditioning and a complaint from a woman who was late to a meeting because she was not allowed to enter a building during a take, the six days of shooting have gone remarkably smoothly.
But the July and August filming was during Duke's summer session, and the upcoming mid-September shoot should prove more challenging.
"It will become unquestionably more of a presence during the school year," says Cabell Smith, who is the Radio-TV Manager for Duke News Service and is overseeing all of the filming. "We are trying to minimize the impact. There may very well be some minor inconveniences, but we will make every effort to not have that happen."
University officials hope the positive impact of a nationally televised program's presence on campus will far outweigh any disruptions that might occur.
"The most important thing in our decision was that [the show's producers] were eager to support and involve our students educationally in the process of doing the show," says John Burness, senior vice president of public and government relations. "There will be internships available to students, paid positions for student extras and seminars will be held."
The Film and Video Program will supervise the internships and guest lectures, and class has already started in an intensive tutorial Dawson's Creek course, says Josh Gibson, assistant director of the Film &Video Program. Portions of Duke's $3,000-a-day location fee will also go to the program.
"This is a great opportunity for students to learn about the goings-on of an episodic show," says Gibson, who will also co-teach the course with Film &Video Director Jane Gaines.
Gibson and Gaines say that the course will closely study the theory and history behind shows like Dawson's, which have episodic structures, use single-camera setups and are essentially primetime soap operas.
Eight students each semester will have an internship on the show, and a behind-the-scenes
"They've really been bending over backwards to be open to students coming and helping," says Gibson.
Though most of those who served as extras during the summer's shooting were Durham residents, a few Duke students were also on set.
"It was an interesting experience," says extra and senior Abby Baker, "but nothing I'd ever do again. It's not really my thing to sit there for 12 hours and try to look cute the whole time. And you're not really going to be on anyway." Baker says she was paid more than $60 for the full day's work.
"It was kind of exciting to see our school being filmed and to know that in the fall, if we watch the show, we will be able to recognize a lot of the people and a lot of the buildings," says senior Charlie Mercer, another extra on the show. "I'm glad they chose us instead of [The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill]."
One Duke extra and Dawson's enthusiast is already planning a season premiere party. "We're going to have it where you drink every time you see people you know," senior Margaret Cantrell explains, who was an extra for two days and earned $95.
Cantrell warns others who might consider going to the open casting call--scheduled for several days before the September shoot--that though being on the set is fun, being one of those picked to be in a scene is a tedious experience.
"You kind of sit there in the Great Hall... and they randomly select extras," she says. "It's so sad if you're not the chosen one. And it could come down to the shirt you are wearing, because it doesn't go with the color scheme of the scene."
Even a fan like Cantrell is wary of the prospect of having Dawson's here for the entire year. "It's going to be a novelty at first," Cantrell says, "but it could get annoying if they start filming during finals or midterms."
The effect on campus life is a serious consideration in allowing a show like Dawson's to film on campus. The producers and the University hope to schedule filming on days when there is not high activity on campus nor during academic crunch times like midterms or finals. They will also try to utilize weekends and student vacations.
"What we'd like to do is to notify students in advance when Dawson's will be here, where they'll be and when they'll be shooting, so that they will be prepared and can avoid any inconveniences," says Smith.
University officials have attributed the ease of the shoot so far to the professionalism of the crew and the fact that everyone involved with the show has working on a college campus down to a science. Officials at other colleges who have worked with the Dawson's crew agree.
"We had a very good relationship, because it was pretty easy to negotiate what they wanted to do and merge it with how the University's day went," says Dick Scott, the associate vice chancellor for business at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, of the Dawson's crew. UNC-W has served as Capeside, the characters' high school, for the past four years.
"We tried to stay out of obvious problematic areas, like going into a classroom building as much as we could; that cuts down on the amount of conflict," says Scott.
Smith says that because Dawson's will be coming back to Duke several days a month for the remainder of the school year, the University will be able to work with producers on a continuing basis to deal with any recurring problems of filming.
This is not the first time that Hollywood has invaded the University. The Gothic architecture of Main West makes Duke one of the most sought after campuses on the East coast.
"The look is very elegant and has a New England feel to it," says Dawson's producer, David Hartley. In the show, Worthington is in the Northeast and close to the characters' hometown of Capeside, Mass. For the past four years, Wilmington, where the show's production is based, has portrayed the Cape Cod town.
Duke's relative proximity to Wilmington, where the show will continue to do most of its sound stage filming and where most of the cast and crew reside, was also a major factor in bringing the show to Durham, says Hartley.
Though the University typically receives seven to 10 applications a year for feature films, television shows and commercials, it only accepts one or two a year, says Smith. Most are rejected for the content of the script.
"We look at it first of all to make sure the University will not be portrayed in any negative way," says Smith, who along with Burness and Al Rossiter, director of Duke News Service, makes the final call. "We review it for content for sex and violence or any other potential problem for production."
Notable past rejections include the college student-favorite Animal House (1978) and the Morgan Freeman-vehicle Kiss the Girls (1997).
Those films that have slipped under the radar include The Program (1992) and The Handmaid's Tale (1990). The former depicted a college football team's season, and included a scene of players lying down in the middle of a busy road to prove their courage. The incident caused two separate copycat incidents, and several teenagers were run over by cars.
Handmaid's, a futuristic look at America under a military dictatorship, caused a stir while shooting on campus. The producers filmed several scenes in front of the Duke Chapel, erecting scaffolding and a hangman's gallows in front of the building during spring break. Members of the Duke community were outraged that the University would allow such scenes to be filmed.
Following the backlash against both films, the University became tighter in its application process, and now limits filming to only those projects with less controversial themes.
Some say the filming of Dawson's at Duke may increase its visibility on the national level and boost applications.
But Christoph Guttentag, director of undergraduate admissions, dismisses any claims to a possible "Flutie Factor." The admissions phenomenon was coined after Boston College's Doug Flutie threw a Hail Mary pass to win against Miami in 1984, sending B.C.'s application numbers soaring the following year.
In recent years, there has been an entertainment equivalent, a "Felicity Factor." Following the premiere of Felicty, a then-WB show whose title character is a student at the fictional University of New York, New York University experienced a significant climb in applicants, though not all have attributed the rise to the show's popularity.
"I think the difference between Dawson's Creek and Felicity is that [the latter] is based in New York, and even though it has a different name than NYU, there is clearly a strong affiliation between the show and the location," Guttentag says. "Its presence in New York is part of the show. Duke is being used as a locale for shooting, but not as part of the identity of the show."
Duke undergraduate admissions received its biggest jump in 1986-1987, the year after the men's basketball team went to the Final Four for the first time in eight years. Applicants went up by almost 3,500, says Guttentag.
Since then, no achievement on the national level has led to any significant jump in applicants. Guttentag says that Duke's visibility on the national radar is already high enough and that the filming of Dawson's only goes to reinforce the beauty of the campus.
What remains to be seen, of course, is how current Duke students will react to the Hollywood invasion once filming begins again.
One graduate student on campus over the summer, Bethany Peters, has already expressed her concern with the intrusion. "I was asked more than twice to take an alternate route because they were filming a scene," says Peters, who studies economics.
"The crew that spoke to me to encourage me to take another route was always nice to me. What bothered me was their implicit assumption when they were asking students to walk around their sets, was that this campus was theirs and that I was the visitor."
Nonetheless, passerbys will gawk, quads will be closed and the Durham ratings for the WB Wednesday nights at eight will rise. And as long as the Healthy Devil's condoms are safe, and no other potential crises arise, Joey Potter may become just another member of the class of 2005.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.