This is a great video from the Writers Guild of America which, god bless 'em, is still trying to get reality TV "producers" into its union. Reality "producers," in fact, do as much editorial work on their shows as "CSI" screenwriters or "30 Rock" joke writers do on their shows.
If you don't believe me, this well-produced video featuring the folks on A&E's "Intervention" (a rare "unscripted" show with a Guild contract) will walk you through an average episode to demonstrate the role of writing.
The big difference is that writing a reality TV show mainly occurs in post-production (as opposed to pre-production or production production.) But it's the same cognitive process, the networks know it, the writers know it and, increasingly over time, you, I and everyone else knows it.
All this video proves is that reality shows have editors and loggers, not writers. Reviewing footage and cutting tape together into a narrative is editing, not writing.
There's plenty of REAL writing going on on reality shows, but the WGA has almost never covered it and they still don't focus on it. When Probst explains the rules to a Survivor challenge, he's reading rules that were written by a writer. The questions on a show like Moment Of Truth don't just pop out of Mark Wallberg's head. Any time an announcer says "Coming up on Super Nanny..." that's all a script. With actual words.
Maybe if the WGA bothered to cover the real writing going on in Reality it would have been easier for them to try to unionize these editing jobs.
Posted by: Duh | November 20, 2008 at 06:55 PM