Reality TV: An Insider's Guide to TV's Hottest Market (18 page)

Before you decide to throw yourself from the nearest window, remember that this is just another rung on the ladder that provides innumerable opportunities to show off your story skills. Your next step to story producing is easy: Earn the respect of your story staff to a point where you’re asked to do scene work.
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This will usually happen once postproduction is well under way and the show starts to bump up against deadlines. As you notice your story staff shifting in tone, from cheery let’s-go-for-lunch camaraderie to a state of weeping and gnashing of teeth, spring into action and ask if you can be of assistance with any scene work. After all, you’re clearly familiar with the show, and what’s the harm in throwing some light bit of business your way?

Other chances to flex your creative muscles include composing teases (the content that typically runs at the end of the first act to hook the viewer on exciting content to come), writing or rewriting voice over content, and handling promotional selects and bonus scene requests from the network (show highlights and mini-scenes that can be used online to promote the show, respectively).

Do these things well, and with a bit of luck, next season you’ll be a full on Story Producer.

Bad news. No glamour there either. But it’s a lot more fun.

The Politics Of Reality

What makes Reality Television tough to handle for the Story Producers who toil behind the scenes is the fact that many believe that the illusion of reality, the imitation of life you’re creating for millions of viewers, depends on complete denial of the process. It’s kind of the same deal as hot dogs — the makers assume that the less consumers really know about how the product comes together, the better.

Some Reality-driven cable networks have gone so far as to brand themselves with slogans like “Life Unscripted” and “Not Reality — Actuality.” Thank heaven they can turn on a few cameras for 30 minutes to an hour and walk away with a show, eh?

A few words of advice guaranteed to preserve your sanity: Get over the need for public acknowledgement. But just before you do that, consider joining the WGA’s Nonfiction Writers Caucus. You can learn more about their efforts to gain recognition (as well as health and pension benefits) for Reality show writers at
www.wga.org
.

“That Stuff Has Writers? ” — Building A Reputation On An Invisible Job

The best story producing creates results that appear seamless, so when your uncle seems surprised that his favorite Reality program (yours!) has writers, take it as a compliment.

Promoting yourself within the confines of the Reality production universe is far more important than seeking public recognition for your hard work. Remember where those checks come from.

To that end, I’ve worked hard to build a reputation among my peers that’s predicated on a few basic principles:

•  Be fun to work with.

•  Tell the best story possible
under the conditions you’ve been hired to work in
.

•  Edify the people you work with and help them to advance.

Notice the italics above? Telling the best story possible
under the conditions I’ve been hired to work in
means giving it my all without killing myself on productions with problematic network execs, poor quality source material, or any of the other roadblocks that can crop up. Remember the phrase that can save your sanity when everything’s going south: “It’s just television.”

Dan O’Shannon, a writer and Executive Producer for
Frasier
and
Modern Family
, once advised: “As you’re coming up through the ranks, remember that your job is not to make the best TV you can, but to make your Executive Producer happy. Sometimes these two goals are worlds apart.”
⁴
While that’s some sage advice no matter what genre you’re in, sometimes your Executive Producer or someone at the network will give you a note that can’t be addressed due to lack of source material or wishful thinking. When, after making best efforts to comply, you don’t have the content to make an interviewee “sound more excited” or create something that didn’t happen out of whole cloth, just acknowledge the issue, document your attempt to address the note (because they’ll ask if you tried), and move on.

Good execs recognize hard work, so there’s no reason to panic. Keep doing your best and that will be enough to build a reputation on.

Ethics

There are a lot of nasty, mean-spirited shows out there, and depending on the kind of person you are, working on them can really grind you down. Castmembers will sign away everything just to be on television, up to and including the right to be portrayed accurately. While one can argue that anyone desperate enough to take a stab at Reality stardom gets what they deserve, I think most of them just don’t have any idea how sharp the teeth on the machine can be until it’s far too late.

I’ve learned the hard way to avoid shows that trade on negativity and humiliation, always putting myself in the position of the participant. How would I feel if something I said was intentionally taken out of context? What would I have to explain to my family and friends as an embarrassing fabrication? How would I feel if a guy in a seven-foot monster costume jumped out of my closet and scared me?

A few true items from the trenches:

• A woman who might not have passed a psychological exam (now pretty much an industry standard during casting) was allowed to appear on a top talent competition program. After being humiliated on national television, she committed suicide in front of one of the judges’ homes.
⁵

• An unwitting couple vacationing in Las Vegas returned to their hotel room to find what they believed was a dead body. They were detained by actors posing as security guards while police and EMS workers were summoned. Only later were they informed that they were being featured on a prank series.
⁶

• An unwitting participant on a different prank series sued for severe emotional and physical trauma after her experience on the show. While riding in a car that she thought was bound for a Hollywood event, the radio malfunctioned before announcing that the United States had been taken over by aliens. She ran from the vehicle and was confronted by an actor in full alien getup, believing she was about to be killed.
⁷

Carefully consider the spirit of the shows you’re offered. Can you live with working on these kinds of programs for most of your waking hours and months at a time?

This brings me to another important point.

Saying No: Building the Resume You Want

Many years ago, long before Reality Television and I were acquainted, I attended a seminar in which Michael Wiese, publisher of this very book, shared a lesson he’d learned about how saying “No” to less than ideal opportunities freed him up to say “Yes” to better ones when they came along.

When I’m offered a show that’s far below my rate, mean-spirited or just plain dopey, I have no problem saying “No.” The television universe is a big place. Better shows are out there waiting to be made, and old friends and associates may be just days or even hours away from calling to offer me a chance to work with them again.

Try not to look at jobs from a standpoint of desperation and scarcity, as if that lowball offer on a zero-budget series about an abusive, drugaddled Z-list star will be the last offer you ever get. Remember, you and your friends will know you worked on that piece of junk unless you keep it mum and omit it from your resume. Even so, the credit might pop up to haunt you on IMDb or similar sites.

Now why would you give months of your life to an utterly valueless credit you’re ashamed of? Yes, I already know — it’s a paycheck. But so is the better show you had to say “No” to because you’d already accepted employment on the crummy show.

So what kind of credits should you say “Yes” to in order to boost your perceived value to employers?

Major broadcast network credits tend to carry more weight than basic cable shows, primarily because network shows are so heavily promoted (read: easily recognizable) and typically higher-rated (read: successful). A few of those dotting your resume will give you the look of a heavy hitter who won’t leap at lower offers.

That said, innovative cable shows that excite you are always worth taking, especially personality-driven material that will enable you to show off your skills as a storyteller instead of a simple time-cruncher.

None of us can predict which shows will be hits, but it’s not hard to guess which shows will make your resume look ridiculous and kick your self-esteem in the teeth. Avoid them and be happy!

Never be afraid to say “No” when your enjoyment of your job or the integrity of your resume is at stake. And when you’re ready to say “Yes,” be sure you know a little something about your deal memos, the agreements between you and your employer outlining your compensation and conditions of employment, too. For an in-depth analysis of what you’re signing away and whether or not you should worry about it, check out Appendix E at the end of this book.

Advancing Your Career

One of the major obstacles to advancement in Reality Television is that almost everyone in a position to hire you will go to friends and previous associates first when staffing a story department. As the years go by, here’s some advice on making sure past coworkers and employers think of you first.

Keep track of your past coworkers by maintaining a database (or at least a hard-copy file) of their contact info, handily provided for you on each production in the form of call sheets. If you see a familiar name scroll by at the end of something you’re watching, drop them an email or social network message to let them know you saw and enjoyed their latest effort. Between shows, try to meet up for lunch with your old colleagues once in a while. What you’re doing is maintaining your garden of references and potential job leads without being the jerk no one hears from until they get cc’d on an email blast begging for work.

Beyond that, there are other ways to cast a wider net and boost your contact count.

Networking In The Reality Community

Not long ago, Producer Jill Garelick founded Connecting Reality (
www.connectingreality.com
) to bring the community of working Reality Television professionals together. Registration is free, and the group hosts social events every few months somewhere in Los Angeles.

Professional networking site LinkedIn (
www.linkedin.com
) also features a group titled “Alternative and Reality Television Professionals.” Once your career is up and running, LinkedIn’s structure will help you to connect with other pros by requesting introductions from your existing mutual contacts. A word of advice for this site, as with all other networking done online or off: Never recommend someone you don’t know or whose work you can’t vouch for. Preserve the value of your recommendations so that when you need to help someone you believe in, your word will carry weight.

Networking In The Broader Television Community

If you studied media at a college or university with a well-established alumni program, failing to take advantage of those alumni connections is positively criminal. In Los Angeles, alumni organizations from UCLA, USC, Tisch, Ithaca, Syracuse and many others host regular events for their graduates. Heck, if you graduated from Harvard, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a job lead in Los Angeles.

If your college doesn’t have an alumni presence where you live and work, get the ball rolling yourself. I started Full Sail University’s West Coast Alumni organization in 2001, and through the efforts of our graduates on message boards and at our infrequent gatherings, the job leads keep flying.

In Los Angeles, New York, and other major entertainment cities, watch for seminars and panels that are open to the public. For one-on-one networking, my favorites here in Los Angeles are those put on by the Caucus for Producers, Writers and Directors (
www.caucus.org
). Panels include industry heavyweights of all stripes, and pay attention, because so do the tables that surround you.

Professional Organizations

Joining the L.A.-based Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (
www.emmys.org
) gives you access to their members-only events, which are great for meeting other professionals not only in Reality TV, but across ATAS’s full peer group spectrum. As a member of the Nonfiction Peer Group, you’ll also be able to attend member-only seminars and panels that offer access to top Reality professionals and network execs. I strongly recommend ATAS’s student membership to anyone studying film or television at an accredited institution, as adding professional affiliations to your resume early on can paint you as a serious-minded individual to prospective employers even before you’ve built solid working credits.

If you don’t live in Los Angeles, never fear! Across the country, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences boasts (as of this writing) some nineteen chapters. You can find them at
www.emmyonline.org
and yes, they have student memberships as well.

The Producers Guild of America, online at
www.producersguild.org
, hosts many events each year and will consider (on an individual basis) Field Producers, Segment Producers and Story Producers for membership based on experience and actual job function.

The Hollywood Radio and Television Society is an organization of execs representing broadcast and cable networks, studios, talent and management agencies, producers, legal and financial firms, new media companies and more to address issues that are relevant to the ongoing success and future of our business. Their ticketed events feature some of the most powerful folks in the industry, and are great for networking. You can find more about them and their events at
www.hrts.org
.

The Caucus for Producers, Writers and Directors (again, at
www.caucus.org
) was originally formed more than thirty years ago with the stated goals of elevating the quality and diversity of television and restoring creative rights to the members of the creative community at large. They continue to evolve as both an honor society and a source of mentorship to new creative talents. While it’s an organization for mid-career and fully matured professionals, their industry panels and events are open to the public at nominal cost.