'CSI' Passion For Authenticity

A journalist has praised CSI for its authenticity after a visit to the sets. But such details doesn't happen without hard work and diligence.

"One of the things that frustrated me watching the cop genre for so many years", consulting producer Elizabeth Devine told R.D. Heldenfels at The Beacon Journal, "was that people write crime scenes based on television crime scenes. That's why you see chalk around bodies and all that. 'Cause nobody (in real life) chalks bodies. I mean, I don't know who started that."

And Devine should know — she spent 15 years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's department, and was a crime-scene investigator herself. This gave her the perfect grounding to become a consulting producer for CSI, and to write for the show. But she admitted they don't get everything perfect. It is still a TV show, so it's "not a hundred percent accurate."

After the research has been done, it's up to the actors to convey the necessary facts. But sometimes a helping hand is needed, which is appreciated by the cast. "They spell it [complicated jargon] phonetically for us on the page," said Marg Helgenberger (Catherine Willows). "Thank God for that."

On his set visit, Heldenfels was impressed. "Sure, it has touches of show business," he wrote, "not least by shooting some of its scenes, as well as those for Las Vegas-set CSI, in and around a Hollywood studio. And rare is the case solved as quickly as those on the show. Still, in walking through the autopsy room, the firing range and other parts of the set, the details all look right."

Though it would seem it's not just Heldenfels that has admiration for fictional settings of CSI. "The set is the envy of some real-life forensics experts who long for equipment this shiny and high-tech," he wrote.

The full set report can be found here at The Beacon Journal.

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