Adventure Reality Show Production
Where do TV crews stay when shooting in the wilderness or extreme settings?
Overseas or out in the wild, or in the third world, or wherever is not five star or on a beach or luxury cruise, the crew offer to share the same accommodations as the reality show contestants. I'm sure there are some exceptions to that. Overall you have to be pretty tough to work one of those shows. You have to be willing to sleep on the ground. You have to be willing to sleep in a sleeping bag anywhere. You have to be willing to sleep with a mosquito net over you. You have to be willing to go without sleep, which is probably more to the point. It depends on the setup of the reality show. Certainly there will be accommodations nearby, but if you don't have time to go to them, you don't have time to go to them.
How do adventure reality show producers prevent crew members from helping the cast?
You might think that people start rooting for people on reality shows and that they might want to help them, but the truth of it is, everybody knows better. Nobody helps and they don't really care who wins. They might really dislike people if they treat the crew poorly, but they'll take that up with production and address it in a different way. I have never seen any temptation by anybody to even unconsciously help somebody on a reality show. Everybody understands what the game is, what they're being employed to do and letting the game unfold on its own is fun; I don't think anybody wants to ruin it. There was this town where their police force allowed four celebrities to become real cops, and I'm sure that wasn't a competitive reality show, but people in that town felt that they needed to be helpful to the people on camera. That's up to production to instruct local hires, whether or not they should or should not cross that line. If it's a competitive reality show, they have to understand, they have to really lay down the law about how there can be no interference in a competitive reality show. The big networks have lawyers around for the shoots of those competitive reality shows to make sure that there are no fairness issues, no law suits or anything like that.
Are the settings for adventure reality shows as remote and rustic as they seem?
I think people would be surprised that the more remote and rough and tumble locations are every bit as remote and rough and tumble as advertised. Maybe sometimes you can't even do justice to how remote and rough and tumble they are. I would say that happens much more than times when you could turn the camera over there and see a mall. That doesn't really happen. I mean, it's more effective for production. It's more effective for shooting in 360. It's more effective for lots of reasons to have real good locations on reality shows. There's less interference from other people for one thing. But also, there's a certain cache in being able to say: you'll now drive 100 miles into the Kalahari Desert and look for a well.
How dangerous are the stunts on adventure reality shows?
Safety is a really well thought-out issue on reality shows. On safety, first of all, if you are talking about anything that is going to be airborne, the people that have been doing the rigging have to be well vetted by the production company. Their equipment has to be checked - their reputation and references, their local hirers: everybody has to know what they are doing. If a reality show had people propel down the side of a skyscraper in Shanghai, forty storey skyscrapers like their window washers and they had to look like they are a window washer, we have to maintain safety. We even knew Chinese and flew crew and equipment from Australia, because we had better ropes. Don't try to cut any corners when it comes to safety on reality shows.
How do the crew members endure extreme conditions on adventure reality shows?
Cast and crew go through the same conditions on reality shows. If you're caught in a snowstorm and it's freezing cold, you're all freezing cold. If you're sleeping on the beach, you're all sleeping on the beach. It's not really that difficult. What would be difficult is if there was preferential treatment. If there was a suite of luxury rooms at a hotel that all the cast had to stay at and there were plenty of vacant ones and they wouldn't let any of us stay in there, and they made us sleep in the freezing cold, I think the crew might rumble, but it generally doesn't happen that way. We have to protect our best assets on the program, who are the cast, the talent, and the camera crews and the crews that support them. You have to protect them all equally, because if you have cast members who are pampered in a tough situation and the crew members are exhausted and burnt out, you won't get the coverage. It doesn't make any sense to have a class separation between people. Everyone is usually in the same boat on a reality show.
What is a 'pickup' in reality TV production?
A pickup is to go back after the fact and ask about something that you probably should have asked about when it happened. You find when you are putting the reality show together that you are missing somebody's opinion or reaction to something so you ask them later and you play it back as if it was real-time.