Flashbacks cost money. Every time old footage is used, they must pay residuals to the past writers and featured actors. Beyond that, it is obvious that the show wanted to paint Jessica and Cristian's meeting as being more drawn out, mesmerizing and fantasy-like than it actually was at the time.

I took my finger off the ff button to try and give NewTeen Jess and NewTeen Chris a chance but I just couldn't take it.I understand that using old footage would have cost money,but didn't they have to pay the new actors?!

Kral wrote:

Ok that was so fake. Jessica and Cristian EXISTED ON THE SHOW as teenagers once upon a time. Instead of hiring these 2 nameless dayplayers to play FakeTeenJess and FakeTeenCris in a bogus flashback....why not just dig in the vaults and pull out some REAL Jess/Cris scenes from back then? It shouldn't matter that they were played by 2 different actors at the time since this bogus flashback are of 2 different actors too!

That just irritated me. They past up the opportunity to treat long time fans to a stroll down memory lane.

IA that they should have used old clips of original Jess and original Cris. Maybe its that they didnt wanna remind people that the present Jess and Cris are recasts.

This is just another instance of the current HW re-writing the history of the show and the character to suit his vision which has nothing to do with what the viewers want to see.Do they really believe we're dumb enough to forget what we
already saw years ago?

allison13 wrote:

I took my finger off the ff button to try and give NewTeen Jess and NewTeen Chris a chance but I just couldn't take it.I understand that using old footage would have cost money,but didn't they have to pay the new actors?!

I agree Allison. I would think that a casting call, and the hiring of the day player actors to play young Cristian and Jessica (as well as the additional extras used in those scenes), not to mention the production crew that it took to produce the scenes themselves, would cost money as well.

And is it true that flashbacks really cost? I would think that ABC would specify in actors and writers contracts that the characters, likeness, and material is all their intellectual property that they can use at will.

My impression really was what Always said, that the show was trying to shy away from reminding viewers of the previous actors who regularly held those roles. Soaps historically avoid flashbacks of previous castings of still present roles, because I guess they think it would break viewers concentration to be reminded of yesterday.

This is the real first scene of Cristian and Jessica meeting.



I think the reason they shied away from showing a true flashback is a little of everything mentioned here:

• Residuals to the actors
  
• Royalties to the original writers of that episode
  
• Not wanting to distract from David Fumero and Bree Williamson with images of the actors they replaced. Plus, in those scenes you had OldJoey and OldKevin too.
  
• The original meeting between Cristian and Jessica wasn't as romantic as the show probably preferred it to seem as they reflected back.
  
• Additionally...there was music licensing issues to consider too.
  

Still, I agree with everyone that since we know that the real thing actually happened in real time, and exists in ABCD's video closet, that the recreated flashbacks did seem very fraudulent.

SecHandNews wrote:

allison13 wrote:

I took my finger off the ff button to try and give NewTeen Jess and NewTeen Chris a chance but I just couldn't take it.I understand that using old footage would have cost money,but didn't they have to pay the new actors?!

I agree Allison. I would think that a casting call, and the hiring of the day player actors to play young Cristian and Jessica (as well as the additional extras used in those scenes), not to mention the production crew that it took to produce the scenes themselves, would cost money as well.

And is it true that flashbacks really cost? I would think that ABC would specify in actors and writers contracts that the characters, likeness, and material is all their intellectual property that they can use at will.

My impression really was what Always said, that the show was trying to shy away from reminding viewers of the previous actors who regularly held those roles. Soaps historically avoid flashbacks of previous castings of still present roles, because I guess they think it would break viewers concentration to be reminded of yesterday.

They can. The footage is theirs. They own it, and can reuse it whenever they wish.
They, however, still must pay a commission to the writers for reusing their material, and to the actors for rebroadcasting their live performance.

This is why soaps tend to avoid showing flashbacks of a character when they were being played by another actor.