 " August " was co @-@ written by co @-@ <unk> J. H. Wyman and Jeff Pinkner , while being directed by <unk> veteran Dennis Smith . They began shooting the episode during the second half of September 2009 , right after wrapping production on " Of Human Action " . <unk> producer Josh Singer later noted how " August " helped them write the rest of the season , " There was one episode , ' August ' , which was all about the Observers , that I feel was mythology without being mythology . And somehow , in working that episode , we sort of found a new creative vein . And it 's not that that episode was necessarily so related to everything else we did . But I feel like it sort of opened us up in terms of how we were feeling about the year " . 
