The unsung heroes of reality TV
Without the editors, you've got a shapeless mess
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Shows like "Survivor" shoot hundreds of hours of video. It's up to the editor to make the action into a compelling story that fits in the allotted time.
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LOS ANGELES, California (Hollywood Reporter) -- One of the little-discussed byproducts of the reality TV revolution is the fact it has thrust editors into the creative vanguard.
It is in postproduction, after all, that shows like "Survivor" and "The Mole" and "The Bachelor" are made or broken. Without editors, they are simply a few hundred hours of raw tape in search of a reason to exist. It is the editor who is duty-bound to take this unfocused mishmash and give it something resembling a story line.
"A show like 'Survivor' is actually beautifully made. The production values are fantastic. The photography is great. The editing is ingenious. It's in the editing bay that characters are created," notes TV director Mick Garris, a longtime observer of the phenomenon. "They make good guys and bad guys. They manipulate the audience in who's doing what to whom by the simple juxtaposition of images."
This assessment isn't necessarily new, of course. But just as it's clear the so-called reality genre probably isn't going away anytime soon, so too is the idea that it's the editors who are now the real producers.
Mike Flanagan operates a postproduction institute called Video Symphony in Burbank, helping train tomorrow's editors. He's placed a number of graduates on reality shows, and observes, "In reality, you basically have about 300 hours of footage to weed through for every hour of air. You have roving cameras, hand-held cameras, mounted cameras.
"It's up to the editors to find what's interesting inside that mix," he says. "So they become something of the storytellers in reality much more so than in a sitcom or episodic drama. They have a significant amount of the say and are often the prime shakers of a story line."
The reality of reality
TV director Mick Garris says "The Bachelor" is a reality series that's edited well.
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What does the eminence of the editor say about the state of primetime? For one thing, it would seem to confirm that the word "reality" is actually a misnomer when describing this programming genre: If it's all about taking material and creating an artificial filter through which to view it, that would seem to be less an example of realism than manipulative contrivance.
The editing bay is, thus, the place where reality becomes something decidedly less than real.
"It's essentially a way to get drama on television without using the Writers Guild," longtime TV director Brian Threnchard-Smith observes. "You have producers putting ideas in the minds of would-be celebrities, then you have them attempt to act, with greater or lesser success -- and then it's left for the editors to sort it all out."
But indeed, the emergence of the editor to a place of creative prominence isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Erik Nelson, executive producer for his Termite Art Prods. on Fox's upcoming special "When Animals Attract," emphasizes, "Many primetime reality showrunners (producers) are too busy thinking up 'the next big thing' to wade their way through hundreds of hours of footage. I mean, if you've seen one candlelit hot-tub encounter, you've seen 'em all.
"So as a result, by the time a cut is produced, 95 percent of the creative decisions have been made for the runner," he says. "And considering the talents of the editors out there with whom we're lucky to work, this is a good thing for all concerned. In this case, culling is creating."
Creating, indeed. Nena Hsu, an editor on the ABC reality effort "Switched" -- which shoots up to 60 hours of footage to find 21 minutes of usable material -- notes, "Our job is to make sense of it, to set the right mood and pacing and make it interesting. If there's no story, we have to create one."
And there you have it.
The term "unscripted" can clearly be less literal than one might otherwise suspect. At the end of the day, one man's reality is another man's fiction.
Copyright 2004
Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
