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I've been with Aaron Spelling, now, it will be 29 years this coming October

and so far we've done 47 TV series together.

And as | keep saying to Aaron, we're gonna do it till we get it right.

This is, by far, the single most difficult series we've ever done,

mainly because of the optical effects, the special effects, the CGI

and the complexity of what we do with the action.

We've never run into anything like that,

not on any of the action-adventure shows we've ever done.

Any executive producer in today's television, if they're hands-on,

it starts, obviously, with the concept of a script.

We pitch concepts among each other,

in this case, with Brad Kern and Jim Conway, the writers.

Brad, being our fearless leader,

is always one step ahead of the game.

As soon as we finish wrapping one season,

Brad is already plotting the next one.

And we try to get at least six concepts to the network,

you know, during the hiatus, while everybody else is off.

We're kind of getting the head start on the season.

Then we come up with kind of a road map,

a loose road map, for what the series is gonna do and be.

I'm a big believer

that a season should have a beginning, middle and end to it as well.

| divide the season into three parts.

Once we have that bible for that season,

then we are looking for concepts,

individual concepts for different episodes.

And we're looking for: what are the ways

we can challenge the sisters, the women,

how can we learn more about who they are,

what situations can we put them in, in their love lives,

in their sisterly lives, in their work lives.

And then from that, we are looking for the magical stories,

the demonic stories that might challenge them.

So from the story point of view,

we're looking for those fundamental elements

that make up the tonal balance of Charmed:

sisters and witches.

And then we sit down in the story room,

six or seven or eight writers and we knock out the stories.

Our process is, you know, Brad is very much--

He knows how to run a writers’ room.

And that's one thing | loved about writing on this show was that

there is a method to the madness.

And there is a process and it works well, it works quickly

because these are really difficult stories to break.

They're so multi-layered.

So we'll pitch our story, we all have crazy, wacky ideas.

You are never gonna believe it.

There's sort of an unwritten rule of not saying no

to anything right off the bat.

So your craziest, wackiest ideas sometimes become the best episodes.

It's such a strange job because you're not--

You're not a doctor where you show up and you say:

"| have to suture this wound." Or whatever doctors do.

We have lots of long, intense sessions of talking

and then we have lots of times where we throw footballs around

and try to stick pencils in the ceiling to kind of just, you know,

get our brains revved up.

But then, you know,

it is a very focused room when it's time to be focused

and, you know, we all work together,

we all come together to try to, you know--

The goal is always to get the story that's on the board

off the board as soon as possible and with the best story

so that the writer, whoever's doing it, will, you know,

have the equipment that they need to get it done.

It's a group effort and we rally to break those stories

so that when we're off alone writing those scripts,

we don't wanna be stuck with a story that doesn't work.

So we're all working

to try to prevent that from happening to anybody else.

Over the course of a year we use about 11 different directors.

And some do multiples, some do just one or two.

The first day at prep, we get a script.

Each script takes us into a whole new world, depending on who the demon is

and what's gonna happen to the girls that week.

We have a pre-concept meeting, we sit down with the department heads,

the production designer, the stunt coordinator,

the visual effects, mechanical effects,

and we talk about the script.

And as we come to each of these scenes,

we discuss the best way

to make all of them all come to life.

And that deals with what the environment is that they live in,

the stunts that they get involved in,

the kind of powers that they have when they blow people up

or when they do whatever nefarious things they're gonna do.

What usually happens is I'll receive a script here at the shop.

I'll read the script and highlight a special effect

make-up or a prop that they may need me to build.

Then | will go to the meeting at Paramount

and we will sit down and do a table discussion

about the episode and how we're gonna approach everything.

A lot of times | will come in with some computer-generated designs

to show what direction | would like to take the character

to make sure that it's what they're thinking in their head.

And then we can use that as a guide to start the design process.

And then, as soon as | get a signed-off design,

| go in and | start sculpting the character,

get the sculpt to a certain point, send pictures to the guys

to make sure that they like the look of the finished sculpt

and then it goes into the mold process, the foam process

and, ultimately, the finished piece.

We use prosthetic-adhesive glues

which are actually used for the medical field

so that everything is extremely safe and strong

for any of our prosthetic stuff.

- Kill her. - Not yet.

On a normal day, we would have a combination of possible tattoos

that we would use on backgrounds or principals.

The majority of the make-up that | use is a lot of this tattoo illustrator.

It's really nice because it works almost like acrylic paints.

And then we also have a number of different cream makeups

and brushes to apply all of the materials.

And, of course, if we're going to give them a nice bald head,

we have our standard bald cap.

We also had-- There's a lot of times when we needed to come up

with scars and wounds for people who had been attacked

or killed by demons,

so we have a bunch of scars that are foam-latex scars

that we can pretty much place wherever we need to

depending on where the character's being hurt or attacked.

We have a bunch of different sizes and a bunch of different looks

so that we can get it as small of a scar

or as big a gash as we need to make it.

We do a lot of elves on the show, also for background characters.

We did the nanny elf and a lot of regal, upright, tall elves too.

Very Lord of the Rings and very pristine.

So we came up with a couple of different sizes of elf ears.

And these are the actual molds for the elf-nanny ears.

In the last season, season 8,

| played a character called the krychek demon.

And the interesting thing was that

three different characters turned into the same demon-type creature.

So, what happened was,

| played the first creature that one guy would turn into,

then we changed out my lenses, changed the paint job,

changed my wardrobe

and then another character, later in the episode,

turned into another version of that demon

and | played that demon.

Then another character in the episode

turned into a third version of that demon.

So for one episode, | actually played three different characters

that were relatively the same look,

but different wardrobe and different lenses.

One of the great things about Charmed, for me, as an actor,

is being able to play so many different characters for the same show

and being able to variate, you know, the way | play the characters

so that, ultimately, no one knows that it's me every time.

And as far as being a makeup artist,

to be able to do these really cool makeups

on all these great actors that they're bringing in.

So on both levels, as an actor and a makeup artist,

the experience has just been really cool.

You never know what to expect.

This is the wardrobe department for the girls,

for all the clothes of our hero actresses.

Basically, what happens, we get the script,

we read it, we break it down for every girl.

What kind of clothes they should wear, it depends.

If they go to a date, they'd wear something different

than when they're playing with the kids, or, you know.

Sometimes we have specialty costumes.

We had a lot of weddings, so you need bridesmaids’ dresses

and wedding gowns and all that.

And then we fit, we see whatever looks best,

then, that-- According to that, we pick outfits for the show.

A lot of times we try to change them a little bit,

especially Rose's and Alyssa's clothes, we--

You know, we play a little bit with them, sometimes add things.

We're trying to accessorize them

and make them look like their character.

One of the ones that we really liked for Rose was this one,

which was because she does love lace and it's black and white,

it's very classy, it's very chic and also, you know,

like, blouses like that, just beautiful, feminine, timeless.

| think Holly, overall, is a jeans girl, you know.

She starts, in a way, with jeans or cords

or some cargo pants and as | said, she likes the earthy colours.

And then just paired with, like, a cute top.

I mean, | know she herself | think really, really liked this one.

And you know, that's kind of a typical Holly look.

So, Alyssa, you know, likes the colorful and | would say

like something like that really reflects Alyssa really well.

It's beautiful color and she does like a little bit of detail.

She does like ethnic things and...

Well, she really likes anything that's interesting and unusual.

And she, too, like, normally pairs it either with cords

or black pants or mostly jeans.

You know, jeans is-- Since they fight demons all the time,

it's kind of one of the best garments to have.

It's easy to do stunts in and everything.

| do all of the physical effects on the show.

So it'd be the rain, the wind, the fire.

A lot of our explosions, large or small,

are done practically, on the set.

Just about every day on Charmed, we wreck a lot of things.

We've got some witches that are really powerful and they just--

We've blown out every window, every door of the manor.

We have lived on that set for eight years

so | can't even think of one thing that we haven't done.

| mean, we have literally done everything.

We have done huge fireballs, you know,

where we've just leveled the attic and everything inside of it.

One episode, in particular,

we actually hooked up a Chevy Suburban

to every piece of furniture in the attic.

And literally drove the Suburban-- Put a hole in the wall for the cable

and drove the Suburban and yanked every piece of furniture into the wall.

And just, you know, a melee of destruction.

The girls trust me a hundred percent.

And like | said, we do pyro on the set every day.

And after a week of it, it's pretty simple stuff.

We do stunts on this thing left and right,

but the second-to-last episode, where we demolished the manor

was one of the bigger, if not the biggest, undertaking

in terms of flying people around, flying people through things,

that, | think, we've ever done in a day.

Although we've had some big ones, this one was monumental

in that we had three people flying at one time one way,

two people flying through the banister

in the manor on another shot.

And to do it, to do it safely, you know, it took a great deal of preparation.

It's one of the rare times

that we actually were given a day in advance to test and rehearse.

| don't think it gets any bigger than that.

I think that is, like, the sum total of,

you know, of all eight seasons of Charmed.

We've lived in this manor for, you know, the last eight years

and even for me, just to walk in on this set,

it was mind-boggling just to see our house in smithereens.

The look of the show hinges on my shoulders.

I'm in charge of the camera crew. | work with the Grip Department,

the Electrical Department, in creating the pictures that you see.

It's a pretty involved process. You don't work alone.

You work in conjunction with a pretty great production team.

On a series,

you do have a tendency to have a similarity from scene to scene.

You have a continuity

of look in the show.

And when | came to the show four years ago,

| was asked how | would change the look.

And | found that a lot of the artwork in the California impressionist school

was of Victorian manors.

And the lifestyles that were created there,

the sunlight coming through the stained glass windows,

soft tones on the actor's skin,

very soft light wrapped around the women's faces.

And everything seemed to fall into place

as far as what Charmed could offer using that type of style in the manor.

And that was also contrasted by the fact that we deal with demons.

We deal with the dark side of the world

and that school of art also had a dark side.

They are street scenes in there

that are very muted and filled with shadows.

It starts here,

you know, in your head, not just your eyes.

And if you can see it there, you can generally put it on film.

We've gone through several crews, as far as directors of photography

and I've enjoyed working with all of them.

It's gaining their trust

and having them know that I'll take their film

and give it a look that's gonna be good

and that's gonna go with what they had in mind when they filmed the scenes.

I'll know what they have in their mind for certain scenes.

We want it to be really cool,

or we want it to be really warm and orangey.

And I'll take those notes and I'll apply them to the picture

and they'll look at it on the air and be really happy with what they're seeing.

And if there's something that's slightly off,

you know, we'll talk about it and it's a work in progress.

It's been really enjoyable to work with people like that

because it's very collaborative.

We're creating the effects for some of the final scenes

for the grand finale for Charmed.

It includes the big climactic finale

between the Jenkins and the Halliwells.

The destruction of the house

where we see a couple shots inside the house

as their power is unleashed and rips through the interior of the house.

And then when we cut to outside the house,

we see the whole house destroyed, blown off its foundations.

And then we're also dealing with the final aftermath,

what happens once the house is destroyed and who survived

and what we're gonna see from that, you know, from the foundation.

Interpreting episode 21 from a visual effects standpoint,

I saw it as a huge challenge. | mean we have 200-plus visual effects.

We're gonna be blowing up the manor.

We went as far as going up in a helicopter.

| went up with Steve Lebed, our visual-effects supervisor.

We took some aerial shots

so we could get a high angle of the explosion.

The challenge of taking this manor and blowing it up,

| mean, it's a huge, huge project just to encompass the visual effects

and the practical effects necessary to do that.

| mean, they literally tore the whole manor apart.

They made it look like a bomb went off

and scorched it and destroyed it.

And to go and work on the visual effects

of blowing up the house, taking a stock shot

that | had actually shot, establishing the house

and seeing how we're blowing it up.

And taking the high-angle and seeing the explosion

from the high-angle down to the detail of a car in the driveway next door,

you'll see it flashing, where the car alarm is going off.

| mean, we spent a lot of time and worked out a lot of detail

to really make it seem as realistic as possible.

There's been so many unique shots we've done.

It's hard to say exactly what the most challenging would be.

We've blown a lot of bad guys up in the show.

At least once an episode, so that's quite a number.

And, certainly, when the show first started

it was really an interesting time to sit there

and take some of these characters and blow them up.

And as the show progressed, as we upped the stakes,

obviously, we had to come up with more interesting ways

of blowing up bad guys.

So now that came down to all the artists

who were tasked with coming up with interesting, unique ways.

for them to die because one of the things that the production wanted

was a different kind of vanquish each week.

They didn't wanna see the same guy die time in, time out.

They really wanted to kind of push the envelope with that.

So it really kind of-- All the artists pulled together

and came up with some really interesting stuff.

This is where we do the final mix of the show.

We combine the music that our composers have created,

all the sound design work for our visual effects,

all the dialogue and ADR, which is voice replacement.

And I'll spot the music with the composer.

We'll look at a scene, I'll say, "Okay, | want the cue to start here."

At the same time, | will sit with the sound-effects supervisor

and we'll say, "Okay, we need to have the sound

for the dark guy orbing in here and Paige orbing out there.

| want backgrounds for the street on Phoebe's apartment.

| want to hear cable cars in the distance."

All those sorts of things.

This is unbelievable. Piper takes the car, Paige orbs

does anyone stop and think that Phoebe can't orb?

No, of course not. Why? Because it's all about them.

Okay, hi, yeah, | can't get this thing off.

All those elements will then be cut and put in the correct positions

and they come here to the stage where our mixers, behind me,

will blend it all together and work on the final mix.

And then we satellite it off and it airs. And we do it all again.

It's a remarkable process, not just on Charmed, but just on television.

It always amazes me that television is as good as it is

when they make 22 or 24 movies a year.

And whether the audience likes the episodes or not,

they're always impossible to accomplish and achieve.

And somehow, some way, the magic of Hollywood works.