Are reality show storylines written ahead of time?
Essentially, it is not necessarily writing a story. You are certainly orchestrating your set and your participants to maximum entertainment. but you don't simply go up and say to somebody, I need you to say I'm jealous of Bob. He's a real jerk. But if you know that they feel that way, you can go up to them and say, I haven't heard you talk about Bob, especially in relation to Sarah. What do you think about it? And then they'll probably say, "Bob is a real jerk. I can't stand him." Just think smart. What we're trying to do is serve the viewer, not with something that is like a canned reality, but we're trying to help them understand the progression. We are trying to help them understand what we know about everybody on the set. We can't film everything, but your eye sees way more than the camera. When you look at what the camera has seen, and you don't see the connective tissue, the audience, the last thing you want them to do is be confused with how did the character has gone from emotion A to emotion C? That is what we're doing. We are trying to make sure that the story is all there, and that the camera, which can never be as good as the eye, will often miss things, and so we might go after it again.