What are the particular challenges of the episode currently being filmed?

As a matter of fact Doug Petrie�s episode (Flooded) is one of the few episodes which is fairly easy for us. In the sense that there�s one demon and there�s not much in the way of CGI. In fact, I don�t think there�s any CGI in this one, so this is one of those few episodes where we get to take a breath.

Having said, we started the season with a two-parter which was horrendously over budget, but Fox has always been terrific in that if I promised them that ultimately we�ll make the money back, they�re okay. So long as at the end of the season we come out at our [budget] pattern we�re fine.

[Bargaining] was a case where we had so many stunt men and we were also doing a lot of night exterior [filming]. We had motorbike demons, so we had this great flood of demons on motorbikes that were going everywhere - including tearing up a grave where Buffy was buried and everything like that.

There, the problem became "Where do you do that?" � in that you need a location but, believe it or not, you couldn�t do it at Warner Brothers back lot (for instance) because they have trouble with the neighbours. You couldn�t go to Griffith Park which is the other place in Los Angeles - this huge park with many different looks that we use a lot - because, again, they were concerned about tearing up the grass, problems like that.

That [also] became a huge number of stunt men, a huge number of prosthetics and a lot of night exteriors that you�re trying to shoot at this time of the year. It doesn�t get dark until 9pm and it�s light at 5am.

Ironically, later in the year when it gets dark earlier, we�ll probably be writing episodes that need a lot of daylight.