Reality TV: An Insider's Guide to TV's Hottest Market (3 page)
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Authors: Troy DeVolld
That first taste of writing, even for silly little 30-second ad spots, really hooked me. I dropped out of art school to concentrate on becoming a film and television writer, banged out film spec after TV spec after film spec after TV spec, connected with my first literary agent…
…and then spent the next five years selling exactly
nothing.
I paid the bills with day jobs as diverse as selling classified ads, working in a video store, and scheduling patients for a large dental practice. Sure, I knocked out an independent project from time to time, like educational videos for middle-school math students and hopelessly low-budget commercials for local businesses, but I wasn’t getting any closer to a real career.
In the mid-‘90s, I enrolled in the Film and Video program at Full Sail University, a great little (now huge) media school where I received a topnotch education in the big picture of film and television production. By the time I graduated in 1996, I was recharged and ready to take on the world.
Instead, I wound up working an office job in another unrelated field for just over three years, still writing my film and TV specs in the dim, dark hours before and after work, all the while maintaining my zero sales / zero interest batting average as a wannabe screenwriter.
The good news is, that’s the end of the downer part of the story.
Closing in on thirty, I decided it was “do or die” time. I reasoned that I could be broke in Los Angeles just as easily as I could be broke in Tampa, so in late August of 2000, I packed up my trusty ten-year-old Buick Century Custom and rattled west to California.
As so often happens once you get off your butt and chuck it all to the wind to
do
something about your situation, the stars aligned pretty quickly after that. Just two days later, as a matter of fact, before I even reached the magical La-La-Land end of Interstate 10.
Halfway across the country en route to L.A., I pulled off of that stretch of road in rural Texas and checked into a small, grungy cinderblock hotel that looked as though Norman Bates would have felt at home as its proprietor. If you’re unclear about how sketchy the place was from that description, let me embellish by adding that my room key was handed to me by a faceless man in a dirty undershirt through a mail slot. Half frightened out of my wits but too tired to reconsider my lodging options, I locked the door behind me and turned on the television, hoping that a little bit of noise would lull me to sleep.
It did exactly the opposite.
As fate would have it, MTV was premiering a new Reality special called
Fear
that night. The premise was simple — a half-dozen or so young people were left in a purportedly haunted location with five thousand dollars at stake if they could last a couple of nights and perform a few paranormal research tasks without losing their nerve. To my surprise, I found it to be engaging, funny, scary stuff. The contestants’ reactions to every bump in the night were more terrifyingly (slash, hilariously) real than in any horror film I’d ever seen.
As I watched the only name I knew in Los Angeles crawl by in the end credits next to the title “Story Producer,” I could hardly believe my luck… I knew just who to hit up for work when I got into town the next night.
I’d never heard of a “Story Producer” before, nor had I much knowledge of Reality Television at all, having grown up as a sitcom and feature comedy fanatic. Soon, however, my pal Christo Garcia was able to get me hired into an entry-level position on
Fear
, providing me with a start in the genre. Sure, it was a 7 p.m. to 4 a.m. night shift where all I did was review tape for the story staff, but I was working on a busy studio lot and absolutely over the moon about my new career. Less than a year after I was hired on
Fear,
I was promoted into the show’s story department.
Once my run on the show ended, I took a job on the first season of another MTV series called
The Osbournes
, a show built around the day-to-day lives of music’s legendary “Prince of Darkness,” Ozzy Osbourne, and his family. There, I worked as the Dailies Coordinator
1
within a story department that included writers and producers hailing from sitcoms,
Saturday Night Live
, and even
Sex In the City
. I learned more about shaping story on that show than I ever thought possible, including how to gently tweak naturally occurring reality to achieve a funnier or more dramatic end result.
Today, all this time and twenty-something projects later, I’m lucky enough to be able to look back on a resume packed with not only a number of successful, Emmy®-nominated programs, but many of the shows regarded as milestones in the genre. From
The Surreal Life
to
Dancing With the Stars
, I’ve been blessed by stints on some of the most iconic and enduring Reality shows on American television, learning plenty along the way.
As long as we’re on the subject of good fortune, I’ve also managed to become one of the most consistently employed Story Producers / Supervising Story Producers / Supervising Producers in Reality TV.
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The old Buick I crossed the country in has long since been traded away for something a little shinier and more dependable, and I’ve gone from crashing on a living room futon in the sketchier reaches of Culver City to a beautiful apartment in North Hollywood where, if I step out onto my balcony, I can spy the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences over on the next block.
Best of all, though, I’m now frequently asked to share my experiences with traditional film and TV writers hoping to cross over, as well as media students all over the country who are looking to catch a break in Reality production. I’m a big believer in sharing what you know with the next generation coming up, as I know how much I’ve benefitted from the counsel of my elders in the business, many of whom have been at it for as much as a half-century or more.
Which brings us to this book.
A final, important point before we move on: I’m not writing this book to gratify my ego or to make a quick dollar.
3
I’m putting fingertips to keyboard to ensure that
anyone
who wants to catch a break on the creative end of Reality Television will know how and where to start the journey in this nutty genre… and that they get that information from someone who actually does it for a living.
Additionally, I promise not to pad the book out with lists of addresses and names that are outdated as soon as the book goes to press, or to waste your time telling self-aggrandizing stories about celebrities I’ve met or worked with.
4
You deserve better than that for your hard-earned money and the time you’ll invest in reading this book, and there’s very little that a bunch of photos of me standing next to
Dancing With the Stars
host Tom Bergeron could teach you except which one of us looks better in a suit.
5
The concern here is that you get a practical, useful overview of the process designed to either get you into the business of Reality Television or heighten your appreciation for the work that goes into your favorite shows.
In return, all I ask is that you let me know if the info’s been of any use to you or if you have questions or needs that future printings should address. As I mentioned in the “How To Use This Book” section a while back, you can reach me with comments or for advice through my blog,
www.realitytvbook.com
, or by email at
[email protected]
. Before you hit “send,” however, please understand that I neither read nor accept submissions of any kind, and as a precautionary measure I don’t read anything with an attachment. I prefer to limit my advice to beginning-to-mid-career issues, avoiding the topic of pitching shows, though if your needs are more involved and specific to a project you’re gearing up to sell, I’d be happy to consult with you at a reasonable fee depending on how deep in production or postproduction I am at any given time.
6
Oh, and one more thing. In my struggle to keep things real, you’ll find that just about every chapter of this book kicks off with a personal anecdote about my own experiences in Reality Television or those related to me by close friends in the business. It is in these “My Reality” moments that I hope you’ll get the best snapshots of what the day-to-day experience of working in Reality TV is really like. It’s hard work, but I sure do enjoy it.
Onward!
Note
1. A title I have never heard used before or since in Reality TV, supporting the story department by generating reports on raw source material and assembling rough highlights reels.
2. Don’t worry, I’ll be demystifying the multiple job titles later.
3. As evidenced by the fact that I’ve added no teenage wizards or vampires to juice sales.
4. Much of the time, I never even meet the stars of the shows I work on until long after my job is done. I’ll explain why later!
5. Bergeron. Hands down.
6. TV is where I make my living, so my first priority is whatever show I’m on at the time.
Chapter Zero and Rule Number One:
Story is Story, and Story is Written. Sort Of.
A
few years back I was at a friend’s home with a number of other creative types when someone happened to mention Reality Television. I was hastily volunteered as an expert on the genre, and for a few minutes the roomful of (mostly) other writers seemed interested in hearing just what the heck it was I did for a living. That is, until a certain successful screenwriter combatively pitched in his two cents:
“Come on, though. You don’t
really
call it writing, do you?”
“Actually, yes, I do.”
“But you’re not creating literary material. You’re just… editing.”
“Well, sure, compressing time is a big part of what I do, but I also write outlines, interview content, narration, host material....”
“But it’s not really
writing
.”
Try as I might, I couldn’t convince the guy that my job had a writing component of any kind. Sadly, his uninformed opinion (which he was prepared to defend until the cows came home) was sorely indicative of most people’s take on Reality TV.
Now, I’m not about to try to convince you that every word and action in a Reality show is scripted. It’s just not. Ever. Even the most heavily “produced” shows have
some
naturally occurring elements.
The recipe for every Reality show is different. Sometimes writing and content manipulation are applied as sparingly as one would sprinkle a strong spice, and other times they’re the main ingredients. Some shows follow a natural timeline and endeavor to play reality straight, in which case the story team’s focus is applied to the compression of time. Other programs shred content like a salad shooter, stitching together bits of dialogue and action, repurposing scenes left and right.
1
There is no Reality show I’m aware of that’s comprised of a straight-up, uncut piece of source footage. Someone’s there, pulling strings behind the scenes to at least some extent, on every Reality show there’s ever been, compressing time and performing myriad other duties to make the end product more engaging and entertaining.
Why do we hesitate, then, to acknowledge the work of storytellers in the Reality genre? If real life doesn’t happen in 30- and 60-minute increments complete with ad breaks, how can there
not
be some kind of creative work going on behind the scenes?
That, friends, is a mystery so easily solved there’s no need to call in Scooby Doo and The Mystery Gang to investigate. Reality shows have writers and producers (albeit with unusual job titles) who all endeavor to shape story and bring you the most realistic end product they can… a passable imitation of life.
2
But how does it all come together? Here’s a simple exercise that’ll help you to understand the basics:
THE HOME IMPROVEMENTS HOW EXERCISE
In high school, you may have peeked inside a frog or two in biology class. Ages ago, frogs became a standard tool for basic anatomical study due to the fact that their physiology makes them easier to dissect than most other types of animals. More pointedly, our little green friends have the misfortune of being comprised of easily identifiable guts.
In the world of Reality Television, basic cable home improvement shows are my first choice as “lab frogs” because most of them share a similar construction and aren’t generally too complicated. They easily demonstrate concepts like compression of time, use of host voice over and interview content to enhance stakes
3
and that sort of thing.
Try this little exercise at home: Select any do-it-yourself home improvement Reality program and prepare to study two or three episodes. Make it easy on yourself and try a 30-minute program first.
Grab a stopwatch and a notepad, settle in and start viewing. Count the number of acts and jot down when certain events occur within the overall structure of the show.
During your review, keep an eye peeled for these specific moments:
• “Tonight On” tease (a glimpse ahead at the show you’re about to see)
• Opening Title Sequence
• Introduction of the Host and Designer/Contractor
• Introduction of the Location, Homeowner and Project
• Consultation
• Commencement of Work
• Introduction of First Hurdle to the Project
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• Overcoming of the First Hurdle
• Introduction of Second (Larger) Hurdle to the Project
5
• Overcoming of the Second Hurdle
• Completion of Project
• Review of Project