Reality TV: An Insider's Guide to TV's Hottest Market (16 page)

As for host voice over, typically recorded late in the process, provide your Editor with a hard copy of that missing material that they can “temp in” using the microphone typically found in Reality edit bays.
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Composing the printed list saves your Editor the trouble of scrolling through your stringout to find material one chunk at a time, and will give you a base for the V.O. script you’ll have to pass on to your host talent to read later.

In addition to my stringouts, I often create what I call “junk bins” in my Avid projects. In these bins, I save extraneous scenework and moments that I find interesting but not necessarily in service of the story I’ve chosen to tell.

Why save them? Because being able to show your Supervising Producer or Editor why something doesn’t work is easier than having to go back and waste time constructing a flawed scene just to prove it doesn’t work. Also, having an extra scene at your fingertips can save you and your Editor from a last-minute scramble for material if your show comes up a few minutes short.

Here’s another good reason to maintain your junk bins: Often, you’ll be asked (with very little notice) to provide “bonus” scenes or other content that can be used to promote your show online. Also, some programs may require additional superfluous scenes called “snap-ins,” so named for the way they are inserted into the program in order to elongate episodes for broadcast outside the U.S. where there’s less advertising time in each broadcast hour.

If you’ve got plenty of extra material in your junk bins, you’ll always be ahead of the game.

A Word On Act Breaks

An act break is the moment between acts in which, most often, your show will be going to a commercial. It’s crucial to remember that during those breaks, your viewers will often be surfing other channels.
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You absolutely must end each act with some sort of dramatic, unresolved bit of business to draw them back.

One neat trick that keeps viewers engaged is breaking a scene at a critical moment and then returning to the same scene following the act break. Let’s say Act Two of your show ends with a huge fight. Rather than resolve the fight, then see the fallout, then cut to commercial with nothing to entice your audience to return, look for the most dramatic moment to halt the action mid-scene, creating a solid “out.”

For example: Character “Bill” pulls a cake out of the refrigerator and declares in interview that he’s going to teach character “Mike” a lesson. Boom. End Act Two right there. Act Three can then resume with a castmate’s recap of what just happened followed by the completion of the action — Bill smashes the cake into Mike’s face to the screeching delight of the other castmates.

From there, you can then finish the scene and move on to the next.

TEASES

Another device at your disposal for audience retention is the “tease.” A tease is a short glimpse at a dramatic moment in the next act or, in the case of a “deep tease,” a noisy or emotional major moment from even later in the episode.

Typically, I don’t sweat teases until later in the rough cut process, as so much can change or be reordered between the time you execute your new outline, initial stringout and the completion of the first “rough cut,” the loose first pass you and your Editor will collaborate on.

The Rough Cut

So your paper script or stringout is complete. Congratulations! Now, let’s run it through the meat grinder we call the “rough cut.”

I don’t know when or how it happened, but over the span of time I’ve been working in Reality TV, rough cuts have begun to look more and more like nearly-finished episodes. Where they once were used as a thumbnail sketch of where story was headed, they’re now almost as polished as a finished show.

As you settle in, be sure that you and your Supervising Producer and EPs are on the same page about what they are expecting to see. Does that outline I asked you to write for them — the one they didn’t ask for — make sense to them? Then proceed.

With your paper cut and/or subsequent stringout ready, you may now commence with the sweet experience of being locked in a dark room with an Editor for weeks knocking out that rough cut… or so you’d think. Every Editor I’ve ever worked with would probably agree with the next bit of advice I’m about to give you:
Get things started, then get out.

That’s right —
get out!
Don’t hover. The last thing an Editor needs is an edit bay buddy watching their every move. But before you close the door behind you, make sure you’ve reviewed materials with your Editor and communicated your basic expectations and the intent of each scene.

But how will you know what’s going on if you’re not there, staring down every keystroke, snip and effect? What if the Editor doesn’t follow your script to the last detail? What if they blow open your precious script or stringout and start adding or changing things? Well, all of that could happen, but there’s at least a 50% chance that their creative input will improve on your work. Keep an eye on the schedule, drop in just a couple of times a day and ask what they might need, but stay out of their hair the first few days. Establish trust. Show them you’re not a maniac about having your scripts followed to the letter.

Remember, your job is to create and distill story. The Editor’s job is to refine that story into an engaging audiovisual end product. The working relationship and distribution of creative labor once your story hits the edit bay is up to the two of you to hammer out.

When your Editor’s ready to show you something (which should be within the first few days), be as positive as you can. Worry about the big picture more than whether or not you like minor visual choices. Is your story intact? Did they improve on your work? Does the story feel like it’s moving?

Remember that yours is a collaborative partnership. If something isn’t working, don’t attack your Editor in a “Hey, you’re messing this up” tone. Ask them if something might work better if variables X or Y were to change or suggest that their ideas might not be in total sync with the style of the program. A little diplomacy goes a long way.

If they’re dismissive or completely bullheaded about your input, though, take action sooner than later.

If the Editor has worked at the production company for a long period of time or has a history with the Supervising Producer, any of the Executive Producers, or (heaven forfend) the owners of the company, approach the Supervising Producer about how best to rectify the situation. Don’t fly into their office yelping about how so-and-so won’t work with you or do what you’re asking them to do, just ask (calmly) if they’ve worked with the Editor before and if they have any advice on how to handle them diplomatically. I once worked with an Editor who was prone to bouts of explosive frustration with our not-always-so-great source material, so once every four hours, I’d drop by and ask him if he wanted to walk to the corner store with me to get a diet soda or just to take a lap around the block. That was all it took to refocus and refresh him, and now he’s one of the go-to guys I recommend almost every time I’m allowed to hire my own team.

Usually within two to four weeks (depending on your circumstances), you and your Editor will have a rough cut ready to screen internally to your Supervising Producer and/or Executive Producer. It should be just a few minutes longer than your show’s target run time. My rule of thumb is nothing should screen at more than 10% over target… a rough cut for 40 minutes of content, for me, should screen at no longer than 44 minutes. Rough cuts that are too short will seem skimpy and beg the question “is that all we had?” Conversely, a rough cut that screens too long brings up questions about whether you and your Editor know how to tell your story efficiently.

It’s important during the rough cut screening and notes process to avoid becoming irrationally defensive about your choices or selling your Editor down the river when one of their decisions raises an eyebrow. If something is missing from the rough cut, either because you opted not to use certain source material or because your Editor deleted it, be prepared to helpfully explain why it’s been omitted. Sound confident, but don’t be afraid to say “I’ll review the material again” if something that didn’t make the cut is asked for. It’s not the Spanish Inquisition, it’s just a screening — so stay calm.

Once you’ve got your internal notes on the rough cut, it’s time to move on to the next step.

THE ROUGH CUT GOES TO NETWORK:FIRST NOTES

After your internal screening for your immediate superiors, your rough cut will be ready to send to network. Brace yourself, as here come the network notes!

You’ve probably heard or read a lot of funny stories about network notes. My all-time favorite is (and I’m only lightly paraphrasing it here): “Thank you for so thoroughly addressing our notes. Show is now boring for some reason. What can we do about this?”

It’s easy to laugh or cry or get worked up over network notes, but remember — this is their first contact with your material and these are the folks footing the bill for your show and its promotion in hopes that it’ll be engaging enough to attract advertisers, awards, and other returns on their costly investment. Of course they want to have some input on what will be going out on their network!

A good exec will likely pass back a lot of notes like these:

“Can we see/hear more of Alice in interview after the pool incident? Good content.”

“Conflict seems weak. Would flashing back to Joe’s past failures raise the stakes?”

“Act Three moves slowly. We could probably live without the scene in the kitchen.”

What makes these notes easily addressable is the fact that every one maps out a solution the exec thinks will help the project along. There’s careful consideration of the work going on here, and whether you agree or disagree with the notes, the unwritten subtext here is “do your best to achieve x/y/z and I’ll probably approve the cut.”

You and your Supervising Producer may wish to “push back” on a note or two that everyone feels strongly about, but as with all creative work, it helps to pick your battles rather than reject changes out of hand. You don’t know what kind of odd pressures your network execs are up against or what motivates them to ask for certain changes, so it’s best to cut them some slack and not simply regard them as the enemy, a reflexive state of mind that you’ll need to learn to control if you plan to stick around in Reality TV.

Now, just as there are talented, thoughtful, capable execs out there who can really help you out by seeing your work with fresh eyes, there are a handful that should really get out of the business and consider managing a mop factory. They’re the ones who either review shows in a hurry or pawn off the responsibility of giving notes to their assistants, in which case your fate now rests in the hands of a 22-year-old with $400 shoes and an Ivy League degree in English who’s biding their time until they can transform, butterfly-like, into an exec themselves.

Notes from these somnambulist execs or their assistants often read like this:

“This needs to be better.” “Act Two is boring.”

“Have Hank (
insert impossible, unmotivated thing character did not do and that cannot be picked up
) somewhere near the end of Act Three.”