Jeffrey Reiner, co-executive producer of “Friday Night Lights," has directed many of the show’s first season episodes.

“There’s nothing technical about our approach. In a regular TV show, actors have to hit their marks, and they rehearse, and they have to wait for the lighting. Our show, before you know it, we’re shooting. There’s no rehearsal. There are no marks. We have very minimal lighting. After you’ve done that for six months, the show’s progressed to the point … it just feel so organic.”

For the rest of my interview with Reiner, click below.

It seems to me that interest in the show has picked up in the last couple of months, does it seem that way to you all out here?

“Yeah it does. I think the thing that’s interesting about the show is -- where the pilot was so beautifully made and so heartfelt, it was still kind of an expository thing. And the beautiful thing about serialized television is that you get to really explore the characters’ lives, and the writing staff has just done a brilliant job of not being afraid to go to these places. And then the style of the show takes something that on any other show that might come across as melodrama, and it just prohibits most of it from going that way.”

I agree. But how does it do that? I mean, yes, the one sentence description – “The Taylor family has a fight about Julie’s new friend” – that could be horrible. But it’s not, the way your show does it.

“Yeah. Well, the way that we work is, we don’t have any rehearsals. And the writers are not precious about every word being said. So we stick to the script in the sense that a scene is a scene, but we have the license to explore what is the truth of the scene. Instead of trying to mimic exactly what’s on the page, we’re just kind of finding it, in a very organic way.

“There’s nothing technical about our approach. In a regular TV show, actors have to hit their marks, and they rehearse, and they have to wait for the lighting. Our show, before you know it, we’re shooting. There’s no rehearsal. There are no marks. We have very minimal lighting. After you’ve done that for six months, the show’s progressed to the point … it just feel so organic.”

That’s the word I used in a recent piece about the show. It just feels unforced, like I’m watching the lives of these people. It unfolds so naturally, that, this might sound weird, but I don’t see the commercials coming. It’s not like the writing or the editing is telegraphing,“Here’s the end of an act coming up.”

“When we first did [an early episode], there was a writer on the set, and she kept saying, ‘You have to shoot the tagline.’ And I knew there wouldn’t be a tagline. I don’t know if you remember, but there was that moment when the coach takes Saracen out to the field.

“The scripted line was, ‘Can I take your son for a ride?’ Then you cut to them in the car. [That day on set, it was,] ‘Coach, pick up the pie. And Grandma, hug him, and talk.’ So the coach picked up the pie she gave him, then I had him eating it when he’s driving Matt. So that just became that [and that scripted line didn’t get said in that way.]

“To the writers’ credit, so many people want their words spoken [exactly as they are written, but ‘FNL’ writers] understand [the process] so well now. It’s a combination of the writers picking up on the style of shooting, and I don’t feel like they write scenes with beginnings, middles and endings. And even if they do, the style of the show deconstructs it.”

So how did that come about? Is it because the movie was shot that way?

“Pete came up with the three camera [thing] and very little rehearsing and barking lines out at people. And then since then we’ve kind of evolved it. We do five takes in a row. Five takes, I’d be yelling [stuff], but [now there is] a little more of a method to it, to where we stop the cameras and give them direction. But it’s always direction to find the truth of the scene.

“And it ends up being so much about behavior. [Sometimes] you’re playing the subtext so hard, but a lot of times, it’s more interesting to see how a person is behaving during a scene.”

Right, like, the look on someone’s face can be just as important. Like that time that Smash’s mom was listening to Smash and Waverly talking about the walkout [after McGill’s racist comments]. There was that conversation, but also her silent reaction to it, which kind of leads you to that later scene, where she talks to him about it.

“Right. What’s interesting about our show is that there are so many different planes. That scene, when it was written, there wasn’t the mom in that scene. And I had the idea to put her in, I called Jason, I said we should put mom in the scene. He forgot to write it. [laughs] But it’s such a second nature, we’re all so much on the same page, that I had already told an AD to get mom there [that day]. And the scene, instead of becoming about these two high school kids talking about this, becomes so much more layered.”

Exactly.

“And that’s what we try to do. That camera style – we’re not working so hard to get our shots that it doesn’t cost us any time to get something else. We’re always kind of examining different points of view with the camera.

“In a regular TV show, if you’re going to sit and do a scene, you have to wait for the lighting, you have to find the right place for the camera. Here, we’re shooting 8 hour days, instead of 14 hour days. We just shoot. I’ll say, ‘I want a camera here and a camera here. The third camera – you surprise me.’

“That third camera, even if you’re shooting the scene in a traditional way, that third camera will find a different point of view. So you’re in the moment, and you cut to that camera angle, you’re seeing the scene from a radically different place. And it doesn’t cost us any time or money to get those shots.

“A lot of filmmaking, television especially, has very traditional cutting [editing] rhythms. You have your standard shots. Now television’s changed, but as great as television has become, it still is a medium where people want to see the faces there. As TV’s get bigger and bigger, that’s going to change.

“But people can tell, not only from the writing, but from the editing rhythms, where the scene’s going. The great thing about our show is that there’s always something different. There’s always that one or two angles that are going to break that pattern, break that editing rhythm. You find yourself saying, wow, I wasn’t viscerally prepared for that.”

Right, like the camera will focus on someone’s hands or something like that.

“That’s behavior, and that’s what’s interesting, and we have the time to show that. There’s a scene where the Coach [Eric Taylor] is trying to tell [his daughter] Julie about [something] and it’s about her not listening to him. Connie [Britton, who plays Tami Taylor] kept making these funny faces at him and suddenly that was the extra dimension there. There wasn’t just one point to the scene. Any married couple will tell you that that is real. We have freedom to tell more than just where the scene is going.”

Yeah, the scene is not just to set up the next scene, or a plot point coming up. It can be about five things, and you never even touch on two of them again.

“That’s what I love about it. That’s what I love about it the writing. I just got off the phone with Jason and we were talking about the season finale and he said, ‘I think we’ve earned the right to, in this season finale, to cut to any character who’s ever been on the show.’ Because even though they many even have been on for two episodes, you have that interest.”

Right, everyone is very specific. They’re not just random supporting players, from the lady in the jewelry shop to Tyra’s sister.

“The lady in the jewelry shop, she was the owner of the store. I remember saying the day [we scouted the location] ‘I want her in the scene.’ She wasn’t scripted. So I show up [for shooting] and there’s this sort of cute blond woman. I was like, ‘Who’s that?’ ‘She’s an extra, she’s going to be person [behind the counter].’ I said, ‘No, let’s put the old lady in.’ I said to her, ‘Just sell them the stuff.’”

She was great.

Yeah. She came up with that line, ‘How bad was it, was it diamond bad or gold bad?’ She just made that up. I like to give the actors what they call upgrades [which happens if you give an extra lines]. When we were looking for a real pastor, we used a real pastor from a church. When we do a church sequence, we are shooting a real church sequence. I’ll even throw in the principal of the school – ‘OK, you’re acting now.’ Even if that person might get cut out, it sets a tone. What it starts doing is starts lending this realism to the show, and the cast and the crew feel it.

“All of those quad rugby guys, they’re the real dudes. We throw them lines. It’s not even though you have the camera on them, and they become [part of it]. [It costs several hundred dollars per actor] but I’ll upgrade 10 people a show, because I don’t want them to mimic.

“Sometimes it’s just to find something in a scene, even if we don’t use it. I think the jewelry store lady is a really good [example]. All the physical therapists are real physical therapists. I was researching the spinal cord stuff, and I met this nurse. He was a gay nurse. I said, Jason, you’ve got to meet this guy. In the context of Dillon and the football world he’d be good. Jason likes him, we shoot him, and he acts. He’s a good actor.”

I never would have guessed he wasn’t an actor.

“Yeah, and we use real coaches. Pete did that, and we’ve kind of carried that tradition on. It infects the whole crew and cast with the sense that anything’s possible. One day we were finishing so early, I said, let’s add a scene on. There was a scene where a [Rally] girl tells Tami that her Panther player wants her to have threesome. They said, the actress is not available. I said, let’s give it to Nora -- she’s a PA in our AV department. She came to the set and suddenly she’s acting in this kind of pivotal scene. So there’s this sense that anything can happen, and we don’t have this intense reverence for every hierarchy.”

Or the tradition of how it’s usually done.

“And that was ultimately something that Pete brought to the table, and when NBC was looking for people to work on the show, they found the right people to carry that on. A lot of people won’t do it.”

Actors or directors?

“Directors, a lot of directors. I had a director out here [doing prep for an upcoming episode] and we were watching another episode being shot, and I realized we were going to finish in six hours. I said, ‘Do you feel like directing today?’ He says, [jokingly] ‘Yeah.’I said, ‘No, do you want to do a scene?’ And he kind of freaked out. I said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be here to help you.’ But that sends a message to everybody …”

To be on your toes…

“No, more like there is a process here of discovery, and finding stuff and not being so precious to have to plan everything out. We plan very little out. The writing is so good is that it affords us to be able to shoot from our hips.”

So why are you allowed to make the show this way, this very unique way?

“When they went with the script originally they had a lot of confidence that it was a movie, and it had the same director as the movie. So [Peter Berg] went and did [the pilot] and it was great, and the people at NBC said, ‘Why break it?’ I think it happened before they even realized what was upon them.

“We had a conversation the head of production and he said, ‘If you save money, we’ll give you more money.’ Pete and I said, ‘We don’t want any more money. We don’t need it.’ The show doesn’t get better because you put more money into it. In fact, when I’m not directing, [I’m being told that] our directors want this and want that. I say, ‘No, you can’t have that,’ because we don’t need it and I know it’s going to be something that will get in the way of the scene or finding the great performance or finding something special.

“On this show you just feel so connected to the actors because the performance at the end of the day, is all that matters. [It’s about] finding interesting ways to do it. And they’re so game to try things.

“I shot a scene the other day and I said, ‘This is [crap].’ And we kind of found it, but I didn’t like it. So I redid it. Actors love that.”

They do?

“Yeah, because they know that we’re not satisfied with [crap].”

You’re not just going to finish the scene just to get it done.

“Yeah. The actors have a great [b.s.] detector at this point. If they feel someone just wants…”

To wrap it up…

“Or not give themselves to the scene. That’s the beautiful thing about the style, it’s fearless. You don’t have to be afraid of not making your day [schedule of scenes]. You don’t have to be afraid of shooting too much film. You don’t have to be afraid of making your budget numbers. You are going to make your schedule. There’s a certain fearlessness.

“If the actors feel the director [is open to trying things] and the director feels the actors are, you can try so much. You add a line, you take a line out, the jewelry lady comes in. And suddenly we’ve taken this great material and made it even better. The actors – it’s just like a horse that’s not tethered. I don’t want to compare actors to horses. [laughs] But you know what I’m talking about.”

There’s just a sense of freedom.

“Yeah. There are great shows… I mean, ‘Six Feet Under,’ I thought was one of the best TV shows in a long time. It still had Alan Ball’s sensibility to it, which I loved. But tonally, it had a very specific tone. Whereas our show, I don’t think we’re chasing a tone. Pete would say, ‘No presentation.’ We don’t want a presentational kind of effect on it. The camera can’t be stylized for the sake of it, and that goes for the performance as well.”

I think that the cast is talented, but for some of the younger actors, I wonder if the process is making them even better than they might have been in a different kind of project.

“They are learning to act in the most pure sense of it. They’re not forcing themselves into scenes. They’re letting the things merge effortlessly. They are very in touch with their voice.”

And sometimes is a scene not what you thought it would be?

“Yeah, all the time. There was a moment in episode 103, where the coach is watching [game] films and Tami is going to go to book club. She walks in and says, ‘I can’t stop thinking about that kid in the hospital.’ And he says ‘yeah.’ We tried it, then I gave the line to the coach. And it was better. But then I took the line out. I said, ‘Come in, look at him watching TV, know what’s on his mind, Kyle, you look at her, tell her to come over, and just kiss her.’ And that’s what the scene is. Pete Berg called me and he loved that scene, because it was just a little moment of behavior.”

And the locations only aid the sense of authenticity.

“Everybody knows what Dillon is supposed to look like, but we know what to film here and what not to film here. Everybody knows what it is [we’re looking for]. We do take pride in finding locations that will speak not only about the place but speak to the people as well.

“You put an actor in a certain environment… like the jewelry store, you know? Or [Alamo Freeze.] How many shows would put their characters in that drab environment, wearing white tops and white hats. Can you imagine that on the WB? Chad Michael Murray in that? [laughs]

“I turned to the script supervisor and said, ‘This is incredible, that I’m shooting as three page scene where they’re not talking about anything, they’re wearing white and they look like complete dorks.’ It’s kind of a dream job for me. I love photographers who can find the most boring object and photograph it and you’re fascinated. We love the mundane. Like Applebee’s. I moaned about having to use product integration. But the minute I was in there…”

That’s what there is in a town like that.

“Yeah. But in most TV shows, you want to find a cool coffee shop with a tremendous amount of character.”

But you’re not going to find the trendy coffee place in Dillon

“Yeah, Olive Garden is kind of it.”

Have I gotten used to it, or has the shaky camera been toned down?

“We’ve toned it down. I felt like it was distracting. I look back on the pilot and it wasn’t jiggly. Maybe it was, I don’t know. I just felt like it was getting in the way of telling the story. I thought it was a little affected. I think everybody’s noticed that the show has become much more calm and relaxed.”

I’d imagine there’s a particular skill to directing a show like this.

“The directors who’ve done the least successful jobs, they didn’t direct, they figure, ‘I’ve got three cameras, I’ll just talk to the actors.’ I like the camera where I put it but I let one go where it wants. We do something called criss-crossing [shooting both sides of a scene at once], which in the old days of TV and movies, that was a no-no.”

Why?

“Because it compromises the lighting, and everyone wants the camera to be very tight to the eyeline. I love shooting that way [with two cameras going]. That scene where Julie and Tami are arguing about Tyra—you’re right there and they’re overlapping.”

To me that makes sense – why not get both those performances at once? They’re both obviously into the scene…

“And you’re capturing them both. Most TV and movies, they only shoot [one person at a time].”

But that way, the other actor knows they have to work up that energy again for their take. And on the 10th take, is it still there?

“And that is one of the great things about this show – the actors don’t feel like, ‘I can’t give it up for this shot [their energy, their performance, etc.]’”

They don’t have to save it.

“They don’t have to save it, they don’t have to work it up again. Chances are, when they hit their stride, we’re going to be photographing it.

“The strength of the show is that we’re in the moment. We don’t wait around. We don’t want to get anyone thinking too much. It’s immediate. At the end of those eight hours, I’m exhausted. The crew’s exhausted, because we’re working so intensely for those eight hours.”

There's more on "Friday Night Lights" here.