Surreality Shows: Nuts and Bolts

Poof! Tomorrow I start my stint with the Post-department at Bernie Mac. Also, this weekend I go back to the Surreal Life. Believe it or not, they have wrapped their season and this might be a good time to talk a little bit about reality tv.

My own take on reality tv is totally irrelevant to me. I still want to learn how they shoot it. There are so many issues involved, its unbelievable. You have to be pretty smart to be the DP of a reality show. Think of it! Its your job to make sure that everyone is always well-lit. Since you will be shooting in an unorganized fashion, and the editor will be looking for good emotional moments, it is your job to make sure that the compositions are interesting no matter where the camera goes. This involves having good depth, separation of background, interesting color contrasts, and of course, no cables or stands or flags ANYWHERE. Period. Yeah, its quite a bit more work than it seems.

Surreal Life is a pretty typical reality show I would say. Washed up celebrities show up and live in a house and bla bla. Whatever. Seeing HOW it gets to look as good as it does on TV (and it looks pretty frickin good, try shooting a reality show in your own apartment and see the difference) was pretty cool.

First things first, the Surreal Life house belonged to some famous rocker - i really don't remember who, blame it on my foreign-ness - and is situated on top of the central LA hills, right up top Mulholland Drive. Its the highest point on the hill and is a huge estate: includes a pool. two tennis courts, a basketball court, a palatial house with couple of floors and a view of all of LA and San Fernando valley to kill for. Look at it this way, you can peek into J-Lo's backyard and one of the Friends' backyard from there. If you live on land higher than JLo's, you are pretty much up there. So, this is the house they bought and converted into a reality house. What does that mean? A reality house? Well, for starters, you need to figure out where the electricity lay out is and what kind of capacity does it have. You are going to light a house such that it exposes well on to a camera. Though these cameras are fast (fast=need little light to make a good image), they still need a substantial amount of light to make an image look half-way decent, not to go muddy, So you have to be very clever about where you place your lights. One of the projects I had on the Surreal Life was to light the rotunda at the entrance of the house. It's a curved wall. So here's what I did. The wall was painted red, had several half arc white shelves gunned on to it. Then using PUCK LIGHTS (these are small white spot lights shaped like hockey pucks, often used in showcases at home?) - around 36 of these puck lights, I lit the shelves. At intermittent intervals, there were pucklights installed on the wall, 2 inches above the level of the shelf and around 2 feet apart from each other. In front of these lights, small glass fishbowls were placed with water in them and a dead plastic fish. Pretty bizarre right? Well, remember that bit about striking composition, this fulfills that. Also, the puck lights streaming light through the water, gives out a very nice, shimmery light that plays on the red wall, on the person standing in front of it and generally makes a pretty picture. Plus, its low on power, cheap to buy, easy to make look pretty and hide since its small. In conclusion, it makes a good REALITY light and indeed it was used generously all around the house. On ceilings, in nooks and corners, to accent furniture, etc.

Less is always less on tv. EXCESS is interesting and noticed. So, not only was there the puck set up at the entrance, there were also these panels of LCD lights on the ceiling that changed colors with time and gave off a nice, dynamic and ever changing light on the players as they walk into the house. All of this makes for a visually interesting image that can be framed from any angle and look good.

Watch were you seat: Since its your house, you can choose to place seating comforts where you want to. Which means, any place you put down a sofa or a seat, you must be prepared to shoot from every single angle. If you're going to put down the sofa set there in the corner of the room, be prepared for the characters to have the most exciting moment of hte show on those couches, and for you to loose it because you couldn't film since you couldn't even reach that dingy corner in the basement of the house. So, every place you put down a sit-able thing, you need to make sure it has interesting visuals, a good backlight, some nice key light etc arranged.

Make it distinctive. Don't use the same tricks everywhere. The Surreal Life house had each room looking more bizarre than the last one. the color schemes and the kind of lighting used was completely different. Some had KINOs, some had very top, tungsten lighting. Some were lit with neon signs, etc. The reason: You want to create a very good sense of geography and identification. These characters are going to be walking from room to room most of the show. The last thing you want is two identical rooms so the audience thinks they are all in teh same place, at the same time and that doesn't come across as so interesting does it?

Regarding actual recording: The ENTIRE house is rigged with security type cameras, every corner, every nook and cranny. These cameras record decent footage that is definitely usable. They can record in the night as well. Of course, the bathrooms dont have these. The cameras are recording footage in the form of digital data on a Hard Disc CONSTANTLY, 24/7. All these cameras lead to a wall of flat panels, each showing us a view from these cameras. On Surreal Life, this wall is in the garage. This is where the CONTROL ROOM is located. This is where the director, the TDs, the dimmer guy and all sit. Looking at this footage, the director has constant control over where to shoot and what to shoot. He always has 4 camera crews at his disposal and he can send them out at any time to cover an action he finds interesting in some other room. Of course, there are microphones rigged into every corner possible. When these camera guys go back, they are carrying not HD but digital cameras that have quality pretty close to HD. No Wires and a camera, as light as possible. No Tripods either. They just have - what is called a - Biscuit attached to the camera. These relay signals a WAFER placed at a prominent spot in the house and thats how the signal goes to the house. With them is also a sound person who has a box full of recievers slung around his neck. He tunes in and out or chooses signals he needs to make that footage this cameraman is shooting powerful.

In this way, the director is able to control what gets shot when. By the way, a show like the surreal life is only on for 2 weeks. Those two weeks are edited to make look like these guys have been living together for 4 months. Pff! So, the director does this gig for 2 weeks. Then the story editors swoop in and start picking out story lines and how they might want to build off. They get the cast members to do interviews, the relevant ones and the show comes together.

Phew! Specific questions are welcome. About anything.