At least two cameras are always in operation in the studio. Lighting is provided by over 450 spotlights. In 2 studios covering almost 2,000 square meters, at least 30 sets are set up permanently and 13 temporarily – including 71 doors, 98 chairs, 68 windows, 12 sofas, 12 beds, 17 bar stools, 7 kitchens, 16 desks and over 500 invented and custom-made products.
In the building, there are over 50 announcements and calls per day from the production manager over the loudspeakers in the entire studio complex – i.e. make-up, costume, dressing room. Plus 150 times a day: “Attention, and please!” There are always at least 120 spectators at concerts in the “Mauerwerk” venue.
In over 6,000 episodes, there were far more than 3,000 days of outdoor filming at 2,000 locations. On average, there are 40 people on set. The most remote filming location to date was Cape Town. Another elaborate outdoor shoot was in an ICE train, which traveled for hours around Berlin with the GZSZ crew, as well as Mallorca and Venice.
The first take in the original GZSZ outdoor set at Filmpark Babelsberg was shot on August 18, 2006 at 12:05 p.m. with a large audience of first-time viewers from politics, business and in the presence of RTL station boss Anke Schäferkordt. For a scene in which the Minister President of the State of Brandenburg, Matthias Platzeck, made a guest appearance, the call was: “And action!”
More than 500,000 visitors have visited the original GZSZ outdoor set to date. The most well-traveled visitor came from Brisbane, Australia.
In the movie street in the outdoor set there are 13 houses, 7 lanterns, various street signs, 6 house entrances (with connection to the studio set) and many real trees.
On average, the phone rings 145 times a day, with fans wanting to be connected to the actors 45 times a day. There are also a lot of joke calls: Sometimes they ask for Dr. Gerner – for legal advice. The reception desk receives up to 450 extras a month – all of whom come through agencies.
The actors are woken up by the receptionists a total of 100 times a year. They never let anyone oversleep.
Each actor has one of a total of 100 mailboxes in which he or she will find dispatches, memos, role texts, scripts, magazines, invitations and lots of fan mail every week – in other words, a little over 10 kilos of mail a week.
Over 25,000 fan letters are received each year.
The average annual consumption in the make-up department includes: 15,000 cotton buds, 250 hair elastics, 25 kg of flour for use as dust, 250 packs of Kleenex, 1 liter of fake blood, 1,650 hair clips, 12,000 baby wipes, 150 tubes of lip balm, 6 liters of nail polish, 10 liters of nail polish remover, 1,200 follow-up photos for further filming.
GZSZ enjoys a huge following online. On Facebook, the number has even grown to well over 1 million since the fan page was launched.
On average, users watch 1.3 million videos a month, many of which, such as the weekly video preview, extended scenes, interviews with the actors and on-set filming, are produced exclusively for GZSZ.de. The reports and interviews on the tragic death of Verena in August 2011 achieved the highest number of views – 3.56 million videos. gzsz.de reached almost 4 million visits that month.
GZSZ is of course also available on cell phones. On RTL.de’s mobile portal, GZSZ also achieves up to 554,000 PIs per month with videos and previews of upcoming episodes.
Not forgetting the GZSZ Instagram account, which now has almost 500,000 followers.