UTV13 sitcom examines life on 'Locust Walk'

The concept behind Locust Walk, a student-produced campus television drama scheduled to debut tonight on UTV13, is familiar: Beverly Hills, 90210 or Melrose Place-esqe characters grapple with issues such as sex, drugs and race. But the similarity between Locust Walk and the programs that influence its production is limited to theory. The show's novelty only emerges behind the scenes. High Rise South 1315 replaces the more well-known numbers and a early 70's home-video spotlight barely compares to the technology used to produce network television shows. It is hard to imagine that Melrose Place would stop taping for five days while waiting for a $35 spotlight bulb from Arizona. And instead of a boom microphone, one of the campus show's producers holds a microphone -- attached with masking tape to a wooden broomstick -- above the actors heads. Although the four producers, Wharton sophomores Dan Khatib and Andrew Simonian and College sophomores Alex Saltzman and Andrew Waller, received technical guidance from advisors at UTV13, the station provided them with only a video camera and a microphone. The students have spent $500 of their own money since they began the project in November. Tonight's premiere, which will air on UTV13 at 7:30, 9:30 and 11:30 p.m., took about three weeks to film. Because the cast and crew, including the four producers, had almost no experience with television production, taping and editing went very slowly. The first scene, which was only four pages long, took five hours to film and tonight's episode required between 30 and 40 hours of editing. In addition to their inexperience, the producers said their familiarity with the script made editing difficult. "And after six hours in the editing room, anything is funny," Saltzman said. In the HRS apartment, two of the show's actors, College freshman Gilly Guez and College sophomore Matt Kapuchinski rehearsed a scene for tonight's episode while the four producers searched for gaps in the script. Although there were many more hands than there were pieces of equipment to be handled, and about as much space as a normal high rise kitchenette provides, the cast and crew appeared to know their places and stayed out of each others way. Through the heavy crossfire of older brother-like taunting from the five men surrounding her, Guez -- who plays "Lori" -- managed to remain strong against her obnoxious television boyfriend Keith, played by Kapuchinski. Kapuchinski, who also wrote and performed the Locust Walk theme song, described his character. "The scene that defines my character is the bedroom scene when I'm sleeping with this character and all I want is the sex," he said. But just as Jason Priestly denied any real-life resemblances to his 90210 character Brandon Walsh, Kapuchinski maintained that in reality, he is nothing like his character. And his seemingly reserved manner substantiated his claim, until he sprung from the couch, grimaced down at Guez, and surprised the crew with his own creative dialogue. "I don't have hemorrhoids!" he declared, cracking up the entire crew. Unlike Kapuchinski, it is easy to see that Guez is not much different from the nice-girl character she portrays. "As you can tell, I was not type-cast," she said with a little too much innocence to believe. "I'm really mean. Anyone can tell you I'm the meanest person." But contrary to Kapuchinski's comment, none of the episodes deal with hemorrhoids. The University's infamous water buffalo incident will, however, be eluded to in a future episode.

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