Production
"House's Head" was the fourth House episode directed by Greg Yaitanes. It was written by Peter Blake, David Foster, Russel Friend, Garrett Lerner and Doris Egan. Executive producer Katie Jacobs said that the season finale was "a little bit different" than the episodes preceding it. "House's Head" was supposed to air after the Super Bowl XLII but due to the 2007-2008 WGA Strike the episode was derailed, and the House season 4 episode "Frozen" was aired instead. The T-shirt House wears in the episodes, which shows a skeleton drinking coffee, and says "Coffin Break", was created by a designer named Taavo.
When Lisa Edelstein (Dr. Cuddy) heard she had to do a strip scene in the episode, she called actress Sheila Kelley, wife of Richard Schiff (with whom Edelstein had worked previously on The West Wing and Relativity). Kelley had worked on a movie about strippers long ago and Edelstein asked her for her advice on the choreography of the striptease. On the episode itself, Edelstein commented: "It is very interesting what happens in the first half of the finale in terms of learning about how House sees people and getting the world from his point of view entirely". Before the filming of the scene started, Edelstein showed the dance to Hugh Laurie, who, according to Edelstein, was "incredibly supportive, like a cheerleader". Edelstein commented that after the scene was filmed she, "felt beautiful, and it ended up being a really lovely experience".
The whole bus-crash sequence was storyboarded. Greg Yaitanes described stunt-coordinator Jim Vickers as "crucial" for the filming of this sequence. The bus crash scene was filmed in a studio using a big spinning wheel (which Anne Dudek referred to as a "gadget"). This gadget was mainly the back of the bus, and could be turned 360 degrees to increase the authenticity of the scene. For the rest of the bus, a greenscreen was used that surrounded the complete outside of the bus. The shots involving Anne Dudek were filmed at another time, using light effects and people simulating a bus crash experience in the otherwise motionless gadget.
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Famous quotes containing the word production:
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
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—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The problem of culture is seldom grasped correctly. The goal of a culture is not the greatest possible happiness of a people, nor is it the unhindered development of all their talents; instead, culture shows itself in the correct proportion of these developments. Its aim points beyond earthly happiness: the production of great works is the aim of culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)