Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/569837
38 dga quarterly "I generally rehearse as Jimmy, which is beneficial all around," says Potter. "I feel like I know his timing, his humor, and mechan- ics very well, so then I can see whether you need a prompter in a certain area, or cue cards, or whether something's dangerous or precarious. If I have a stand-in do that, they generally won't tell you that information." Fortine calls the morning run-throughs "the hardest rehearsal times of the day. You're just getting the elements, sets, and scripts, and you have to block and rehearse it perfectly in 20 minutes. Jim- my's going to look at it and you're going to get notes, so there's a lot of pressure there." On schedule, host Kimmel appears onstage at 11:00 and runs through the bits, giving notes as he goes. Fortine then breaks down the music for that evening's band. "I count bars, so I know where things are, when a change comes, or if I need to cut to the drum- mer." Meanwhile, Restrepo Considine is coming up with bumpers, the four- to six-second bits that take them to and from commercial breaks. After that she and Fortine go through their notes together. "I'm the keeper of the book," Fortine says. "I'm the one who collects all the information that Sandy has for me, that the producers and stage man- agers and logistics have for us, and I keep us all on track. That frees Sandy up to paint her pictures and figure out where she's going." Fortine then holds the camera meeting. The show uses six camer- as in studio, adding four more when they have a musical guest. Most of the space is zoned, so there are no marked shots. "On other shows I could be doing shot numbers and being very specific, and that's a three-hour camera meeting; mine is a 15-minute camera meeting." If the music is on the inside stage, rehearsal takes place at around 2:00. If outside, they have to wait until 4:00, in consideration of the neighbors. That's about the same time Kimmel will email the team his finished monologue. Restrepo Considine has about 15 minutes Restrepo Considine's extensive background also gave her a se- cret weapon during her audition for Kimmel Live!: She had already worked with most of the crew before. "I felt like they were on my side," she says. "They're the top guys in town. They made it a lot easier than it would have been if I didn't know anybody." She still had a sharp learning curve her first few months, "learn- ing Jimmy's rhythm and figuring out what he's thinking, and what I can do in the studio, what my parameters are," she says. "There's nothing I'm going to do in there that they haven't done, because they've been there for 13 years. You're limited by the space that you have. And when you're shooting comedy, there are certain things you're never going to change. You stay where the funny is." Shooting for a week on location in Austin helped the team bond. "We were in a big theater, and I had eight cameras. Every day we came up with a different way to bring Kimmel [cast member] Guillermo [Rodriguez] in. [One night] we had him coming in on a horse with mariachis." The guest that night was Bill Murray. Restrepo Considine asked him if he'd come out on a horse too. "He said, 'That would be funny. I can ride sidesaddle,' because he was going to dress as a University of Texas student going to a game." The bit killed. She and Murray have been friends since her SNL days. He had even sent her a text when she auditioned for the Kimmel show. "Just remember to have fun." itting in the booth during a morning rehearsal, Restrepo Considine reviews the activities on a bank of screens in front of her. Fortine sits at her left. Onstage, the crew runs through a bit called "Dare Roulette." Fans from across the country will appear on the LED screen that forms the stage's backdrop, acting out assorted dares. Potter stands in as Kimmel, reading the lines and cueing Rodriguez to spin the "Dare" wheel. PHOTOS: RANDY HOLMES/ABC S "You have to look at it, figure it out, and do it. You can't get bogged down in