“A little over to the left, bitte? Danke, thank you, okay now let’s try it again.” The cameraman makes a few last minute adjustments, the actors get a quick preening, and the camera rolls. “Cut! Schön,schön,” says the director, and the massive television crew begins to reorganize itself for the next shot.

Nearby, Camp Ground residents are seated on folding chairs, bundled in deep layers to stave off the October chill. The house being shot, a beautifully kept pink and white cottage with a wraparound porch, is the center of the action. In this particular shot, two German actors, Heide Keller and Siegfried Rauch, approach the front steps with exaggerated trepidation. “She plays the ship’s chef-hostess, which is sort of like the ship’s purser, and he is the captain,” explains Jennifer Weno, a German teacher at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School.

The crew is filming a scene for Das Traumschiff, literally translated The Dream Ship, a popular West German-German television series by ZDF that has been airing in Germany since 1981 and is one of the most-watched shows in the country.

“It’s based on the premise of The Love Boat. People love it . . . it’s more than Seinfeld level,” says Ms. Weno, who began teaching at the high school in the fall. She continues: “The class has already watched 10 minutes of one episode. The plot here is that these two, who have been on the show since the beginning, have both decided they want to buy a house on Martha’s Vineyard, but have coincidentally chosen the same one and arrived to meet the owner at the same time.”

The second director moves agitatedly through the German and American production crew, barking orders in both languages, glancing up at the sky every few seconds and exchanging glances with his director of photography, who is seated nonchalantly on a camera dolly, smoking and squinting at the sky himself. No sun and that’s a good thing; if the sun comes out the continuity of the scene is compromised and the last hour of shooting will have to be scrapped and started again. The production crew of about 40 black-clad twentysomething assistants and grizzled television veterans all understand this, at least in German. But the group of high school German students huddled on the lawn at Trinity Methodist Church looks mostly lost. The banter of media production is not a part of their curriculum. Some appear bored.

Suddenly someone shouts “Positions please! Quiet please! Action!” and shooting begins. The students lean forward to hear what’s being said, but most of the dialogue is stolen by the wind. The couple reaches the arched doorway of the cottage and after a hesitant knock, the beautifully ornate double doors swing open to reveal Larry Hagman, best known for his role as J.R. Ewing in the 1980s primetime hit Dallas. He wears a 10-gallon hat and an assortment of western paraphernalia. His voice booms across the Camp Ground, the staged Texan timbre echoing off the steel girders of the Tabernacle. Seconds later, a 15-foot boom microphone, its business end covered in a furry wind baffle, drops into the frame and in emphatic, frustrated tones a German term that can only mean “Cut!” erupts from somewhere in the sea of crew members. An embarrassed teenager hoists the offending instrument high in the air where it meets a low-hanging oak branch. Several bulky men with ponytails rush over to assess the damage and the various directors and their assistants go back to milling around, muttering in low German tones. The gawky boom operator slinks away toward the Wesley Hotel to have a smoke.

The interruption is brief by general production standards, perhaps owing to the famously efficacious nature of the German people, and the scene is reshot, this time with a new, more muscled boom operator. The stars of the show retreat and the director of photography begins to set up a new shot down Trinity Circle. The high school students have by now begun to sit down, some wrapped in blankets, others shrugging deep into their sweatshirts. The novelty has begun to wear thin in the damp and chill; their first introduction to the tedious reality of a scene shoot.

Then a second director marches toward the crowd of students, a broad smile on his face. “Do you guys want to be in the show?” he asks. There is a murmur of assent. The grinning man raises his voice. “I said, do you guys want to be in the show?” The murmur grows louder. The director moves closer, spreads his arms wide and says at the top of his lungs: “Do I say ja?”

“Ja!” comes the reply in unison. The students leap to their feet. They are about to become stars.

This episode of Das Traumschiff will air either on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve, with an expected viewing audience of 10 million.

And Ms. Weno is ecstatic. “I just moved to the Island and took over the program in September. I’m trying to get them excited about German. You know, nine to ten per cent of the German population will watch this,” she enthuses. The students pick up their stage directions and the cameras begin to roll. Ms. Weno lowers her voice to a whisper. “Right now there are more kids learning German in Europe than English. It’s very important right now,” she says, adding: “And I’ve learned that there are actually quite a few German speakers on the Island. But many of them aren’t aware of each other because Germans aren’t really like that. I’d really like to start a German speaking potluck.”

Nearby, a woman wearing a long, black insulated coat and warm hat looks on. She is Ellen Descheneaux, and is the owner of the house that was used for the shoot. “Normally, I wouldn’t be here this time of year. I came back up from Arlington, Virginia,” she says. “Had this place for 31 years, it’s called Captain’s Corner . . . I was approached by the Camp Ground at one point, they had okayed the whole thing and there were a couple of houses that they were looking at and mine was one of them . . . I’ve never even heard of the show, but I love J.R. He’s in my house! It’s exciting!”