[ TELEVISION ]
Hawaii's balmy setting gives way to terror on the small screen in "Lost," which begins shooting today.
Family-safe thrills in store
for isle-based ‘Lost’The castaway drama tones down
violence for its early time slot
"Lost," ABC's castaway drama that begins principal photography today in Mokuleia, might be too scary for some children, so the producers/creators of the show will edit some of the more frightening scenes before the two-hour pilot airs in September.
The producers are concerned that the content could be too violent for children watching the show in the early 8 p.m. prime-time slot, sources said. The show is the saga of 48 plane crash survivors stranded on an unnamed Pacific island populated by at least one person-eating monster.
The show is produced and created by J.J. Abrams (ABC's "Alias") and Damon Lindelof (NBC's "Crossing Jordan").
Abrams told the Television Critics Association last weekend in Los Angeles that "certain things ... we're going to have to adjust, not just for the time slot, but to air at all." He also indicated that the network hasn't asked producers to make the edits.
Costs for the "Lost" pilot are estimated to have cost $10 million to $16 million, but the result is high production values in a gorgeous tropical setting.
The first hour of the two-hour pilot features horrific and realistic plane crash scenes and explosions, beach wreckage and the "monster," which is not the show's star, Abrams said.
"If you have a monster ... you call it a monster ... then it's sort of disposable and silly and feels kind of irrelevant or gimmicky," he said. "If you have something that represents terror and represents fear and represents sort of the darkness of this place, to me that's incredibly valuable."
"Lost" crew members construct makeshift shelters on the beach for crash "survivors" marooned on a mysterious island in the series being filmed in Mokuleia..
Abrams also said that "Lost" guest stars will not suddenly wash up on shore in each episode, but are featured in flashbacks to the survivors' lives before the crash.
Abrams, who is on Oahu preparing for filming, was not immediately available for interviews, but sources said two episodes will be shot simultaneously and directed by Jack Bender, another producer on the show.
The pilot opens with Matthew Fox ("Party of Five"), who plays the physician Jack, waking up on a tropical beach after an accident. Moments later, the viewer sees that it's a plane crash. The pilot episode uses flashbacks to show the plane ride and learn more about the passengers stranded on the island.
When Jack starts walking around the beach, he sees the L-1011's wreckage and bodies littering the area. Survivors include a pregnant woman.
A male passenger is sucked into the wing's spinning jet engine turbine, then someone else is impaled by shrapnel. Without warning, the plane's fuselage collapses and explodes in a fiery ball.
The survivors move away from the wreckage, then try to figure out what to do. They realize their predicament when they notice that the aircraft's nose is missing, as well as the plane's black box and transceiver, which rescuers would need to find them.
A woman named Kate helps stitch Jack's cut, then reports seeing smoke in another area of the island.
The group hikes through the jungle to search for the cockpit, where they find one of the two pilots barely alive. But he's suddenly wrenched from the cockpit by something very big that no one sees.
The transceiver's battery is nearly dead and doesn't provide much of a signal. A few survivors hike a steep climb to a ridge top to see if a signal can be reached up there.
The transceiver gets a small signal -- a distress call in French -- but they soon learn that it's been repeating for more than 15 years.
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