By now, you’ve probably spotted ads just about everywhere for next month’s TV WRITERS SUMMIT, put together by Derek Christopher and featuring some tremendous folks like Jen Grisanti, Chad Gervich, Ellen Sandler and… well… me. Talk about being humbled by great company! At any rate, I’ll be the final speaker on the 12th, but seriously, folks — come for the whole enchilada.
More info here: www.tvwriterssummit.com
If you’re a TIME subscriber or can pick it up at your local newsstand, the January 9, 2012 issue features STAR GAZING, an article by the delightful Belinda Luscombe that just happens to contain some interview content from me and a nice plug for the book. Check it out!
In the wake of this month’s approval of the CALM act (CALM being an acronym representing “Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation”), wherein the FCC unanimously voted to make it illegal for advertisers to boost volume during ad breaks, comes my own gripe about too-loud-tv: Uber-hot music mixes in shows.
A recent post by RealityBlurred.com‘s Andy Dehnart on Facebook quoted a letter he’d received from someone who’d written to complain about how loud the background music was on a reality program. While the humor of the post was derived from the author of the email somehow thinking that Andy was in a position to do something about it, it actually raised a very real question for me: Why the hell have reality shows started mixing their music so hot lately?
Look… sometimes, field content isn’t all that sensational, so every once in a while, editors throw in a good drum hit, a cricket, or some other oddball “sting” to call your attention to a particular action or phrase. When a whole scene needs to be spiced up, though, it’s time to bring the pirates over the wall.
Yep, I’m guilty of coining that phrase. Two people glaring at each other over coffee isn’t that exciting, but if you build a driving piece of music to a crazy crescendo over it, you can hang the end of an act or even an episode on it — so long as you’re using those big “pirates coming over the wall” tracks. They do have a tendency to get loud, though. Pirates are noisy buggers, after all.
The problem with that is that you have to apply that kind of thing sparingly. You can’t do it in every scene or act or the audience will get audio shell shock.
Another reason music could be mixed hotter than normal might just be the amount of music placement going into shows. Some pop artist has a new track that a media company wants to showcase, so suddenly, that track (complete with lyrics) gets dropped into a show somewhere. A rough cut or two later, there might be a request to boost the soundtrack a little bit, as — of course –the network really wants to show off the song. The danger in putting music ahead of story is simple to understand — you can easily be completely yanked out of the scene if the music is trumping story content.
Here’s another of my goofy metaphors: Let’s say two people are arguing on the street and some guy walks by blasting Sir Mix-A-Lot’s classic “Baby Got Back” out of a boombox. You might find yourself suddenly following the music instead of the fight you were watching. THAT’S WHAT’S WRONG WITH SCREAMING MUSIC TRACKS.
See how distracting the all-caps are? BOOM. CONCENTRATION BLOWN BY NOISE.
At any rate, story and editing superfriends, keep watching those levels and remember — make your decisions in favor of story over noise whenever you can.
I’m starting to get those kinds of emails again. Folks with “ideas” for shows that want advice on how to get access to networks, despite the fact that they’ve never worked in the industry before, have no representation, and are already worried more about how to keep someone from stealing their great ideas than how developed their idea really is.
I love you guys, but you should no more expect to start your career in reality television as a show creator than a newbie baker who’s never cracked an egg should expect to start off his or her career making ultra-complicated eight-tier wedding cakes. Unless you’re bringing recognizable personalities into the mix (as in, “It’s a reality series about my cousin, Selina Gomez, who’s already signed a letter of interest”) or add some other kind of unique value to the project, it’s gonna be a tough road.
Complicating things further, reality TV is different from scripted in that you can’t really write a spec for a reality show that will get you hired as a reality producer. It takes time to build your credits and become the kind of person that a production company or network would want to meet with, so starting at the bottom and putting the time in is how that works most of the time.
So once more, here’s how you break in and work your way up:
Starting Your Career in Reality Television
If you’ve decided not to take my advice, might I suggest that you check out this book by Donna Michelle Anderson:
The Show Starter Reality TV Made Simple System
… and at less than half the full softcover price.
Click here to order: http://www.amazon.com/Reality-TV-Insiders-Hottest-ebook/dp/B0069QEJME/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321643296&sr=1-7
… and at less than half the full softcover price.
Click here to order: http://www.amazon.com/Reality-TV-Insiders-Hottest-ebook/dp/B0069QEJME/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321643296&sr=1-7
Wanna have brunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel’s famed Polo Lounge with me while supporting a terrific cause? Bid at the link below! Just a week left to go!
http://www.charitybuzz.com/catalog_items/272870
More on the Caucus Foundation here:
Hi, folks. Just a quick reminder that this blog is here to answer your questions and you’re welcome to ask me anything both here and at realitytvtroy(at)gmail.com. I refer to these methods of contact in my book, and must make this request as it’s now getting out of hand: Don’t call me at the office. Let me say that again…PLEASE don’t call me at the office. Sugar on top. PRETTY PLEASE don’t call me at the office.
Apparently, the number’s easy to figure out. Since the book has been released, I’ve received over a dozen blind calls (usually asking me to hear pitches, which I don’t do) and as a result, have to restate my policy of not taking or returning calls, restricting my time and advice to off-hours email and blog queries only. Even then, no pitches.
When I’m at work, I’m on my employers’ dime. Drop me a line and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can!
I’ll be spending a good part of my day today reworking a supertrailer cut, and I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned these before on the blog.
A supertrailer is the short one to three minute preview of an entire season of a show that’s used in marketing. You can often find them posted on YouTube or network websites in the weeks prior to each new season. A supertease, on the other hand, usually comes at the end of the first episode, offering a glimpse at the remainder of the season to keep viewers hooked.
Everyone does things differently, but whenever I’m asked about structure for a supertrailer or supertease, I think that rather than throwing them together as a random string of highlights, you should group content by theme. I wandered from my old formula recently and the result wasn’t quite the same.
Try structuring your supertrailers this way so you don’t end up with just a bunch of noise:
First: Interview heavy opening segment establishes the world of the series. What’s special about the cast? The location? Their situation?
Second: Big noise and action. All the great moments of conflict and powerfully visual stuff. Don’t forget all those great reaction shots!
Third: Emotionally raw content. Crying, sharing, humanizing moments that will make viewers feel for your cast. Sadness, joy, whatever — remind us again that the show isn’t just about a premise, it’s about the people who populate it.
Fourth: Big action or conflict ending with a solid interview bite or in-scene soundup that looks toward the future.
A solid supertrailer forms the foundation for a supertease. Pull out everything from episode one (since the supertease runs at the end of that episode) and fill in the missing spaces or awkward pauses with content from episodes two through the end of the run (or however far along you are in shooting). Why pull out the episode one content? Well, you’ve just seen it all go down before you get to the supertease, so it’ll lose it’s oomph.
As reality shows are produced on ever-shrinking schedules, I’ve noticed a phenomenon in post that I like to call pancaking. You know how the more batter you pour out, a pancake seems to get wider but not taller? Same principle.
In the old days (meaning right around Y2K), you’d have three to six story editors / story producers putting together docusoaps / docuseries with an editing staff not much larger. Story would get a couple of weeks to work through the material and come up with a paper edit that would then be passed off to the editors, who would turn everything into an assembly and refine it further with the participation of the story department.
Now, with shows going to air almost as fast as they’re ordered up by networks, I’ve seen scenarios where story producers and editors sometimes start on the same day. In most cases, the ratio of story to editors has drifted considerably — two story producers may serve up to four times as many editors. Basic laws of time and space dictate that two story producers simply cannot feed the beast that is eight hungry editors looking for thoughtfully composed scenework over the course of a ten or twelve episode run. That’s what I mean by pancaking — operating a smaller story department but adding more editors in the belief that the show will go out faster.
If you find yourself in the position of story producing on a pancake show, you’ll have to resign yourself pretty quickly to a few things in order to survive:
1) You can’t create thoughtful paper edits for every scene. There’s no time. What you can do is provide highlighted copies of field notes to your editors and give them ultra-specific guidelines (I prefer a written paragraph) as to how you’d like to see the scene come together and what it needs to accomplish.
2) You’ll have to warehouse your content. If you’re not sure yet where story is going, but you want to be ready to create a rough assembly in short order somewhere down the line, have editors cut scenes and store them in a community CUT SCENES bin. I also highly recommend that all cut scenes be titled beginning with the date, as in “9.26 MARION AND JO GO TO THE MALL,” for reasons explained in the next entry.
3) You’ll have to be more organized than usual. One of my story producers, Andrew Hoagland, came up with a terrific little Excel spreadsheet on which we enter the names of all the scenes that come in each day, in order by date. In columns to the right of these, we leave a spot for the story producer to initial once content has been reviewed, a space to initial which editor the scene has been handed off to, and which episode the final, cut scene appears in. This is stored on a server, so that everyone in our story department has access to it. If I suddenly find myself four minutes short on an episode, I can glance at the sheet, find a relevant scene that doesn’t have a home yet, and plug it into my assembly. Scene titles on this sheet should be exactly the same as they’re entered into the system by editors, as it makes them much easier to track down if you know both a date and title like “9.26 MARION AND JO GO TO THE MALL.”
4) You’ll have to chase the boss sometimes while anticipating last-minute changes in his or her schedule. On pancaked shows, I always preschedule screenings for the full season, always 48 hours before an episode (any version of) is due to go to network. That way, if something comes up and your EP or Supervising Producer suddenly can’t make the screening to sign off internally, doing it the next day will still give you 24 hours to make changes before you’re due to ship. Trying to coordinate these at the last minute can be painful… you don’t want to be begging for a screening the day you need it if you’re on a compressed schedule.
Keep these in mind and you’ll have a much better go of things, trust me.
