Producers by nature are supposed to be good communicators. Remarkably  I’ve found many who aren’t. Shocker, right? It’s astounding how many production companies don’t let their ‘rank and file’ know what’s going on day to day in a production. Productions are alive with lots of moving parts and I liken it to several dozen people rowing a boat with one person in charge. If the person at the helm doesn’t keep everyone going in the same direction, you’ll end up with oars moving in many different directions. Can you spell c-a-p-s-i-z-e? How can you avoid drowning in a sea of production details? The answer: hold a meeting.

Meeting!? Ugh – I know you’re probably thinking “Isn’t that what they do in corporate America – hold endless meetings where nothing really gets done but wastes my time, and I end up staying at the office late into the evening so I can do the work that I should have been doing while I was sitting in that useless meeting while they were flapping their gums?”

If you’re thinking that you misunderstand me – I’m not talking about the kind of meeting where the production staff grabs a Starbucks and a Krispy Kreme and sits around the table endlessly yammering, that would be a colossal waste of time. The kind of meeting I’m talking about is a STAND UP MEETING. These are quick fast production meetings to coordinate everyone who is on the team. These meeting are held in the round where everyone stands up, if you’re standing up you don’t have time to get comfortable and start yammering. Time limit 5-7 minutes. Then meeting adjourned and everyone goes about doing their part of the production.

The purpose of the stand up meeting is coordination. Without real time coordination things tend to get lost, deadlines missed, and easily solved problems become a bad situation that keeps you up at night and costs you money.

3 Simple Steps So You Can Stand Up and Get Your Production on Track

1. Hold your stand up meeting first thing in the morning. The most important item on the agenda is giving the staff the objectives to be accomplished for the day. You should also quickly go over any problems. For example, if you’re running behind schedule, let the group know. There may be someone who is up to speed on their work and can pitch in. Or maybe someone has a scathingly brilliant idea on how you can make up the time. In any event, everyone’s in the same boat rowing toward the same beautiful shore line – a production that scores high ratings.

2, This is also the time to coordinate producers with their screeners, loggers and PA’s and find out if there are any trouble spots. This is not necessarily the time to fix those problems – you can do that amongst the key personnel involved right after the meeting. This is the time to identify any problems.

3. I have also found it’s very helpful to hold another stand up meeting around 4 p.m. to quickly go over the progress of the day and if there are any red flags that can be fixed before the close of business. Not the close of your business, because production doesn’t close – but if you need to coordinate or get something done quickly with outside entities/vendors, like permits, rentals, banks, etc. this is the time to do it.

If you’re thinking to yourself, “But I don’t have time to meet with the production personnel, I’m too busy producing,” then you need to get a grip. You do have 14 minutes each day to coordinate with the very people who are going to help you row that boat to shore and get your production in on time and under budget. You have no production without the personnel – so get them together and keep them coordinated.

If you’re suffering from the disease of production chaos – and it is a disease, once one domino falls the others aren’t far behind – then start having stand up meetings. Get coordinated, involve your team and produce a highly rated show.

Over to you.

Interview With Film Maker Ted Fisher Part Two

(See Interview Part One)

Today I continue my interview with documentary film maker Ted Fisher, as he discusses his process and the challenges of moving from short documentaries to feature length documentaries.

Hoop Springs Eternal is a very interesting story of a woman who makes a living using hula hoops.  How did you find this story and what compelled you to tell it?

Ted: When we participated in the Doc Challenge, our worst fear was drawing “sports” as a genre. Sports documentaries can be great, but when you only have five days, you’ve ruled out following a team for the season or watching a competitor struggle to improve. So I became hypersensitive to sports or activities that people might do anytime. Hula hooping was one of these, and with a little research I found that there were hoopers of every conceivable type. We focused on two because they had both come to New York to act, and had “accidentally” become professional hoopers. One, Jenny McGowan, performs with her hoops (sometimes in a burlesque act) and another, Loren Bidner, now teaches hooping as fitness training. To me, the classic New York story of coming to the city to act and then having to find a way to fit in and survive is fascinating — and the fact that both characters lives changed in an unexpected way makes it more interesting to me. I think that’s one of the things that is always revealed in documentary: life doesn’t do the expected thing.

The toughest element in production in our era of Reality Television and polemic documentaries is to convince someone that you just want to get a glimpse at their life. It’s very easy for them to expect you have an agenda, or want to trick them, or make fun of them. Or, to think “this will make me a star!” and expect the film to work in that way. So my goal has always been to try to be as honest as possible: I think you are interesting, what you do is interesting, and it might be great as a film. There’s not much else you can promise, except to show up on time.

Ted Fisher behind the camera

Ted: There’s a cliche in a lot of police shows: a chase proceeds up to the rooftops, and a character realizes the only way forward is to jump across a huge gap to the next rooftop. The move from shorts to features feels like that for me, at least at the moment.

We live in an era where if you can work with people, can borrow a camcorder and buy a few tapes, you can plausibly go out and shoot a good short doc. Since I made my first documentary short in 2002, however, the ladder up to feature work has gotten much harder to climb. Everyone seems to be struggling to find funding, or if they’re adventurous or resourceful enough to complete the film somehow, then they’re struggling with distribution. There’s more competition, fewer resources, less of a potential pay off in the end, and a lot of confusion and doubt. There are still people doing it, and people succeeding, but the jump seems further.  The professional process — develop an idea, get access, shoot some on the cheap, cut some type of funding trailer, get funding, develop a team and finish the film, then get it into festivals and sell it  — still exists, but seems to be working for fewer than in the past.

So, as with my other production, I’ve developed a list of possible feature-length documentaries. I have careful notes about who I can get access to, what travel is required, what archival materials need to be licensed, how many crew members it would take to get everything shot, where we might need a location to interview, and all the other details. And that’s where I’m going.

But that gap between roofs looks huge. Wish me luck.

Film schools are a training ground for many young film makers, and many schools are hiring well known filmmakers to teach in their programs.  For those filmmakers interested in teaching how would they proceed in finding opportunities? And for those students interested in attending film school, what can they hope to accomplish?

Ted: After a career in the arts — I was a public art coordinator for five years, then a photography curator for another five years — I moved to New York so my wife could complete her Ph.D. I very purposefully decide to avoid jobs that would lock me into a rigid work week. How could I make films if I couldn’t show up for interviews or location shoots? So I’ve been mixing freelancing and teaching for several years now.

A typical term for me is teaching an editing class and a TV studio production class at Bronx Community College (part of the CUNY system), teaching an editing class and a visual effects class online at Westwood College, and teaching a photography class through Hunter College Extension. That’s roughly equivalent to a full-time teaching load — many college teachers do four classes each semester — but I try to set it up so there’s some freedom with my schedule. Half of documentary production is showing up, so I tend to value that flexibility.

For me, teaching is a way to continue my education. In the tradition I come from (I earned an M.F.A. in art before I got seriously involved in documentary) all the best artists taught as part of their practice — but in the film world it’s often looked at as a fallback career. Of course, now that the economy is the way it is, I’m seeing some great filmmakers suddenly ask “hey, how does that teaching thing work?” Of course, in Europe, that model of filmmaker / professor is very well known. Michael Haneke is a professor at the Vienna Film Academy, other great filmmakers teach at places like La Fémis in Paris.

The main thing for filmmakers who are considering teaching to know is that your credits on IMDB.com and your stack of great reviews become just part of the picture when you apply. A typical hiring committee will want to see academic background, preferring a terminal degree and maybe some publications or conference presentations in your area of the field, a willingness to develop into a good teacher, a willingness to do those things academic departments need, and a different type of communications skill from filmmaking: the ability to teach, lecture and clarify. There are some great filmmakers with only a B.A. who teach, but in general that’s fading away and the requirement is now generally an M.F.A. or — in some departments — a Ph.D. may even be desired. And most of the people hiring you will have come from a “publish or perish” background, where academic papers and conferences are a part of the practice. Most importantly, they want to feel you are fantastic at taking the complex ideas of filmmaking and making them accessible to students. There are a lot of great filmmakers who confuse the heck out of people when they try to teach: they know how to do it, but that’s not the same as being able to help someone else to do it.

The upshot is that while you can point to your awards and festival screenings, you can’t waltz into the best school and expect to be named department chair. For most people this means starting with adjunct classes, typically based in a specialty like editing, cinematography, or audio. You’ll develop a syllabus, have your teaching observed and get student evaluations. And you’ll want to collect student projects if appropriate. Document everything, and after enough work at the adjunct level you can, if it turns out to be your thing, apply for the full-time tenure-track gigs, if that’s your interest and it fits  your lifestyle. But be aware: even the adjunct jobs are receiving hundreds of applications these days.

For students, my best advice is to think of sports stars who get an offer from a pro team, leave college to take it, then get injured. There’s a lot of pressure on people in school, once they start to show skill, to “go pro” and it can be very tempting. My take is that the real value in the college process is you have an opportunity to focus on your own work and improve to your full potential. In a lot of ways, that’s plentiful when you are in school and then instantly disappears when you go out to a job. School forces you to complete your film, to go through critique processes, to master elements of the field you wouldn’t on your own.

You don’t have to look far, however, for the folks who say “film school is a waste of time, I learned more my first week on the job.” There’s an element of truth to that, but the counterargument is this: take any filmmaker, put them in a good program, and they improve, often in ways they had never considered before. That “first week on the job” can wait. But for school to be valuable, you have to use the opportunity that’s there: a chance to focus, a chance to get great support and great critique, and a chance to prove yourself. Everything depends on you, not on a lucky meeting, the right person reading your screenplay or anything else. For students that do the work and take advantage of the possibilities, there’s no question that it can be a foundation of ideas that you can’t get by being self-taught.

The thing my students are always surprised about is that we’ll cover an idea, and then the next week they’ll happen to watch a film and see it implemented — and realize they just couldn’t see it before. The process is about making people see the world in an a new and different way.

Thanks Ted for taking the time to join us and sharing your process and insights.

Find out more about Ted by visiting his blogs New York Portraits,and Actualities and his website.

Ted Fisher behind the camera

Ted Fisher is a multi-talented writer, producer, editor and documentary short film maker.  His documentary Bend & Bow can be seen on Netflix as part of the International Documentary Challenge DVD.  I spent some time chatting with Ted about his process as a film maker and as a teacher.




Interview With Film Maker Ted Fisher Part One.

Your documentary Bend & Bow was created in five days for the International Documentary Challenge – how did you choose your subject and what steps did you take to finish within the time constraints?

Ted: When people imagine making a documentary, they picture going on a shoot somewhere beautiful, exotic, perhaps dangerous, or think about crafting material from a stack of tapes into something an audience will enjoy. It’s easy to forget the essential process of documentary work is developing an idea and then gaining access. Nothing happens without good planning and the ability to find and ally with the right subject. Even if you think of yourself as a director, an editor, or a cinematographer, you’ve got to immerse yourself in the role of producer and take care of those tasks — or there is no film.

For Bend & Bow I worked with five other filmmakers. We’d participated in the Doc Challenge the year before, making Blind Faith: A Film About Seeing. For that film we followed a group of blind photographers on the last day of their exhibition at a Manhattan gallery, and tied that with the Empire State Building going dark to draw attention to the issue of preventable blindness. The film made it to the Doc Challenge finals, but we left the process exhausted and felt we could have made the film better if we had worked smarter.

So for Bend & Bow, we took every element seriously: we made a list of possible topics and subjects, preparing for any genre and theme we might draw in the Challenge. We then did the hard work: we secured a “yes” from every one of our possible subjects. We acted like we were producing several short films, and prepared to shoot any of them. When we received an email at the start of the challenge, telling us that the year’s theme was “Change” and our genre was “experimental” we took a phone vote — and were most excited about following Natalia Paruz, a musician who plays the saw in the New York subway. We knew from our pre-production discussions with her that her life story involved major change, and of course busking musicians are generally paid in “change” also. More importantly, we found our conversations with Natalia captivating. My best advice is to not start a documentary unless you find the main subject exciting. If you’re not fascinated, no one else will be.

For the shoot, we tried to gather everything in one day: we followed Natalia from her home to the subway station at Union Square, stayed as she played, and later that night shot interviews at her home. That was according to plan. Then our process moved to my tiny apartment, where the six of us huddled for several days, ordering take out food, drinking wine and trying to shape the film. My wife and I are normally quiet, but for about 72 hours straight the apartment rang with saw playing and people shouting out ideas. That’s where the we hit a bit of a wall: at a certain point we realized we didn’t know how to end the film. The clock kept ticking, and we kept re-editing, looking for an ending and struggling to agree.  We found we could beat the basics of production, but we fought the clock to figure out our film. That’s the main thing I now do differently: at every shoot I wait to have the moment where I say “aha, that thing that just happened? That’s our ending.”

The Frugal Traveler: The Grand Tour features 13 European Cities in 12 weeks.  The series gives viewers a look at the Old World through conversations with the people you encountered in your travels.  How much footage did you shoot compared with what was seen in the series?  Were there stories you wished you had more time to tell?

The summer before, I worked as producer on the Frugal Traveler: American Road Trip series, which was the New York Times first venture into serial programming. The idea was that travel writer Matt Gross would take a summer road trip in an old Volvo, and report in each week with a video in addition to his written piece. At the time there was a lot of excitement about video blogging, and if you looked around the Web you could have seen a lot of video shows that were really just someone talking to the camera, maybe standing in an interesting place but maybe just against a plain background. But Matt is a good writer, and definitely wanted to go further, and my background is documentary, so I wanted to angle the show towards those concerns, and the Senior producers were very supportive but wanted an emphasis on the characters Matt would meet. So the three themes blended: Matt’s personal thoughts on travel mixed with some documentary material emphasizing the experience, mixed with the type of quirky characters you find in every city in the U.S. It worked well (the series won the Webby for Online Film & Video in the travel category) and we made it seem enough like a crewed television production that I’m not sure people understood what a high-wire act it was: Matt really did travel the country alone with a small touristy camcorder, pulling it out when people seemed willing, then uploaded the footage online with a proposed script. I usually had less than 12 hours to edit the piece — a great learning experience and editing exercise, but nerve-wracking and challenging.

So when the series expanded to Europe the next year, the idea of how stories would be developed was exactly the key production point: Matt traveled alone, shooting what he thought could be the week’s story but aware that once the footage and script arrived at the New York Times’ there would be a very pragmatic process. Based on input from Senior producers, the task of constructing something that works out of limited material, as well as the context of the series, there were always hard choices and stories that were in the assembly draft, then cut from the final edit. Usually Matt shot a good amount of material, following several possibilities. The most common outcome was that one of the mini-stories he’d tried for would get cut: I’d do an assembly based off the script, we’d see how long we were running, and then usually the first step toward finishing would be to trim out at least one of the encounters he’s had during the week. So some charming characters went into the trims bin, and a few surprising adventures as well. The goal always had to be for a watchable, coherent video, though — and it had to fit in the overall arc of the summer journey, too.

For me, two things happened that I found most exciting: in one episode, after he had finished filming everything else, Matt got a chance to meet immigrants struggling to survive. It shifted the episode from the traditional material of travel video — see art here, eat food there, don’t miss this — to one where the idea of traveling as luxury was contrasted with those who travel because they have to. It meant we pushed the edit right up to a late-night deadline, but made for a story that was worth telling and an experience that no one had expected to see. In another episode, Matt set out to hitchhike around Cyprus. That’s not the kind of experience you can communicate with a “star” followed by a big crew. A single person with a tiny camcorder, however, could get across the feeling of waiting, as the sun goes down, to find one last ride out of the middle-of-nowhere to somewhere to stay for the night.

Part Two – My interview with Ted Fisher continues tomorrow.  Ted talks about his documentary Hoop Springs Eternal, teaching and film school.

Find out more about Ted by visiting his blogs New York Portraits, and Actualities and his website.

Today I’m talking with Emmy award winning Executive Producer David P. Levin.  David’s work includes TV Land Confidential, Inside the Kid’s Choice Awards, MTV’s Uncensored and most recently the VMA 2009: What You Didn’t Know.  David is also known in many circles as the master of the interview.  He has the uncanny knack of getting people to tell him their untold stories.

You’ve executive produced many television shows that have become popular based on their ‘un told nature’.  It began when you wrote and produced for the hugely popular series MTV Uncensored.  How did the idea come about?

David: MTV Uncensored started as a special for MTV’s Ultrasound series.  The first in the series was the Video Music Awards Uncensored.  I was one of several segment producers working on the project, but the concept really spoke to me.  With MTV’s 20th anniversary coming up, I loved the idea of exploring the history of the VMA’s through untold stories.

That first two-hour show was simply envisioned as a new way to promote the Video Music Awards.  What nobody expected was that the show would actually generate ratings – and buzz.   Even more unexpected:  the more it aired, the better the ratings.  That actually became a regular occurrence on later episodes of Uncensored – it rated better in the reruns.

When supervising producer Carlo Ocando left MTV, I was asked to produce MTV Spring Break Uncensored – and that show received even higher ratings.

Dave Sirulnick and Lauren Lazin then asked me to do MTV Uncensored– covering the entire history of MTV.   That show really set the tone for all the others.  We began booking actual stars; everyone from Jon Stewart to Cindy Crawford.  That two-hour show received an Emmy nomination, but we lost to the Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC.

A whole series of specials followed – not just about MTV.  We produced Sports Illustrated swimsuit Issue Uncensored, Jim Carrey Uncensored, Grammy’s Uncensored, and Def Jam Uncensored.  We had amazing producers for all of them – a terrific team.   And I also helped put together the 20th anniversary coffee table book which was based partly on the interviews  from MTV Uncensored.

You also produced two special Uncensored television shows for CBS Sports – the story behind The Final Four college basketball championships and the SuperBowl.  How did your story go from cable to network television?

David: That came about when MTV became involved with the CBS Superbowl coverage in 2001.  It had to do with the synergy that was created when CBS and MTV came under the Viacom banner.  MTV was producing an evening of prime-time Super Bowl specials the night before the big game, as well as the half-time show that year.  One of the specials was SuperBowl Uncensored, which I supervised, and Craig Shepherd directed and produced.  It was done in the same irreverent tone that we had done all the other Uncensored specials and was hosted by Craig Kilborn and Chris Connelly.

It did well in the ratings and received good critical notices, so later CBS asked us to do March Madness Uncensored.

Ironically, I know nothing about sports.  That worked to my advantage, oddly enough, because I didn’t have any preconceived notions about what a sports program should look like.  At the time, Les Moonves got a good laugh at the fact that I had never filled out a bracket before.  I picked the teams based on the length of their names – whoever had the shortest name moved up.  It didn’t turn out too badly, actually – Duke did very well that year.

When you created TV Land Confidential you featured the untold stories of favorite television shows, movies and music. Was it difficult producing a show without knowing what the actual stories would be until you were in post production?

David: Well, that’s the thing about untold stories:  they’re untold.  I mean, the people telling them have probably told their friends and family, and insiders might know.  But the stories we were generally looking for were stories we had never heard before.

I’m a total trivia geek.  My head is filled with the most useless knowledge about pop culture.  With TV Land Confidential, I finally got to put that knowledge to use.  So we would start with obscure stories and work our way from there.

Each person we interviewed became a link in the most convoluted TV family tree you’ve ever seen.  Interviewing Barbara Eden meant we wanted to interview Larry Hagman which led to the cast of Dallas.  We interviewed Gavin MacLeod and that meant both the Mary Tyler Moore Show and Love Boat stories.     Cloris Leachman led to stories about Malcolm in the Middle and Mel Brooks movies which led to Peter Boyle which led back to Everybody Loves Raymond.

I was constantly juggling information in my head.

As Executive Producer of MTV’s VMA 2009 What You Didn’t Know you were given the task of writing, producing and getting the show on the air in two weeks.  What challenges did you face and overcome when dealing with such a short turnaround time?

David: What You Didn’t Know was something that MTV decided on in the eleventh hour.  The 2009 VMA’s this year generated a lot of buzz and they wanted to capitalize on it while interest it was still high.

The key was MTV giving their full support to getting this on the air.  Meetings happened quickly, approvals were turned around within a few hours, everyone involved knew that there was no time to get it wrong.  They hired a terrific team of PA’s, AP’s writer and editors who all hit the ground running.

Even though these were untold stories to the general public, we knew from day one what the stories were going to be.   Unlike the uncensored or confidential shows, the show was fully scripted BEFORE we did any interviews.  That made it a lot easier.   And so did the fact that we could do all the interviews on DV, something that would have been impossible six years ago.

What’s the secret to finding the untold story and getting a celebrity to tell all?

David: First, you have to know your subject inside and out.  Once I’ve done all my cramming, then I “forget” what I know.  My job isn’t to show them how smart I am or to tell the stories for them.  It’s to get THEM to share.  I encourage them and show my knowledge in small ways.  I keep my questions short and the whole thing completely conversational.  Allison Steele once told me that she didn’t really need research for an interview.  She told me her own feigned ignorance, combined with natural curiosity always led to the best results.

Occasionally, someone will show up for an interview unexpectedly.  Lou Gossett showed up with Garret Morris for his interview and I got a terrific conversation about the early years of Saturday Night Live.

I never go in with a list of questions.  I go in with a list of topics and try to NEVER look at my notes.  But then I let the conversation go where it will.  I ask general questions, show the person I’m talking with that I REALLY am interested in what they have to say – and show my knowledge in small ways over the course of the interview.

I never dig for dirt.  It’s salacious and what they’re expecting.  For the most part with celebrity interviews, I’m not looking to play “gotcha.”  It’s about making them look good.

Once you get someone comfortable, they’re willing to talk about almost anything.  I’m very proud of the interviews where someone started out reticent to talk and then ended up going much longer than planned.

Most important is to remember that celebrities do interviews all the time.  In the first fifteen minutes, they will give you their “stock answers.”  You have to go longer.  The best stuff usually comes in the second half hour when they let their hair down.  Your interest and enthusiasm to hear their real stories is the best way to get the BEST stories.

Once you show that you are not looking for dirt on them or on their co-stars, you will get some surprising material that’s better than anything you were expecting.

What was the biggest untold story you’ve ever uncovered?

David: I can’t tell you that.  It’s still untold.

What was your favorite untold story?

David: That I CAN tell you.  And it’s not about a celebrity at all.  It’s the very first story from March Madness Uncensored, about a player named Wiley Brown.  Today, he’s the head coach for Indiana University Southeast.  But back in 1981, Wiley was a student playing for Louisville headed to the NCAA finals.  When he was four years old, Wiley lost his thumb in an accident and now played basketball with a prosthetic thumb.
On the morning of the big game, Wiley accidentally left his thumb back at the restaurant where the team had breakfast.  He couldn’t play without his thumb.  So the assistant manager and team assistants had to race back to the restaurant with a police escort to go find the thumb, which had inadvertently been thrown out by the restaurant staff.

We actually tracked down Wiley and the assistant coach who told us that the thumb was only found after doing a dumpster dive.  But Wiley’s story didn’t end there.  In the middle of the big game, on national television, a time out was called – Wiley lost his CONTACT LENS.  We found the footage of all the players searching for his lens.  Wiley laughed as he told us about the embarrassing moment.  And of course, Louisville went on to win the national championship.

But for me the capper to the whole thing was the great visual we got at the end of the story:  Wiley’s thumb from that game now resides in the Louisville Hall of Fame in a glass case.  That was a story that kept on giving.

Thanks David for sharing your stories.  See David’s latest untold stories in the special he recently executive produced for MTV -  VMA 2009: What You Didn’t Know.

Join me tomorrow for an exclusive interview with Executive Producer/Show Runner David P. Levin as we talk about MTV’s  Uncensored success and the making of his latest special, VMA 2009: What You Didn’t Know.

You can enjoy the show at MTV’s website as it is no longer available for sharing on other sites.

Biagio Messina, Killer Clown, Joke Fincioen (left to right)

Joke Fincioen and Biagio Messina are the husband and wife team behind the very successful production company Joke Productions. You may not know them personally, but you know their work across the television landscape with such hits as VH1’s Scream Queen, CW’s Beauty and Geek, Style Network’s Foody Call, E!’s Celebrity Drive By and others.

They’re executive producers with ideas and they know how to get a show made.  What’s different about these pros is their willingness to share their experience and help others.  They agreed to an interview and I jumped at the chance to get a look behind the curtain of Reality TV making.  Here’s Joke and Biagio.

As executive producers/show runners what are the specific hats you wear and how do you divide them amongst each other?
Joke: We both handle big-picture creative in terms of content, overall vision for each show, etc.  On a more day-to-day level, I oversee most of the logistics, scheduling, budgeting, staffing and managing crew, on top of dealing with both casting and story departments.  Biagio has a knack for dealing with talent, so he is their producer, doing pick-ups etc.  As the resident master editor, he’s also much more involved with making sure we get all the shots we need, so he’s point for the director and DP in those situations.

Biagio: Yeah, I’m really lucky I married Joke! She is a genius. She’s creative and great with planning/logistics.  I’m creative and, well, I’m creative. However, we’ve both run entire productions by ourselves, so we’ve each had to handle creative and logistics on our own. I use David Allen’s Getting Things Done method to help me be ALMOST as good as Joke logistically, but when we can both work together on a project, I dive for the writer’s chair, director’s chair, or the edit bay. I’ve also self-taught myself motion graphics, and often end up editing and creating 2D and 3D elements for  our shows.  I tend to do all the graphics work on pilots. On series, I usually do quick supplements to what the graphics company provides.  In low-budget situations, Joke and I will do the filming ourselves, and I will edit, mix, and create the graphics.

When it comes to reality TV, one of the first steps is casting real people.  Why is casting so important to the success of a Reality TV show, and what do you look for?
Joke: Most, if not all, reality shows live and die by their cast.  Our job as reality producers is to create a world our cast can live in, set up boundaries, but then let cast members run free within those boundaries.  That’s when the magic happens…when you let the cast be themselves within the world you created.

For that to be a success you need people who don’t self-censor. Reality TV cast members must be comfortable with who they are and be willing to share their true opinions and feelings.

We look for those who are excited about the journey they are about to embark on. They must be truthful about their strengths AND their weaknesses.  And yes, they have to be open about both because that’s what makes them relatable, rootable or despiseable to our audience.  Anyone who comes in faking or hiding who they really are is out. We’ve learned to spot the fakers.

Remember, not everyone is right for a reality show.  Not everyone is exciting enough, or open enough, and that’s ok!  Not everyone is meant to be a pro-athlete either.

Biagio:  Choosing cast members is a puzzle that takes weeks to solve.  Every show has it’s own demands.  For instance, when we cast Beauty and the Geek, we had to find a group of Geeks who were socially inept, extremely smart, but still willing to open up on camera–a tall order for brainiacs who don’t like to talk to people as it is!

Plus, they had to have great make-over potential, and the ability to learn something from our Beauties.  Likewise, the Beauties had to be beautiful, not exactly book-smart, and be willing to live in a house with a bunch of geeky guys. AND we had to believe they’d grow and change over the course of the season and learn something from our Geeks.  Finally, all Beauties and all Geeks have to be unique from each other, so you’d remember them.  This means some potentially great cast members don’t make the show because they look too much like another person we’re casting that season.

For Scream Queens, on the other hand, we need girls from a wide range of acting backgrounds and geographic locations who could potentially appear in a major motion picture.  We have to ask ourselves:

Are they a good enough actress?

If not, do they have enough raw ability to become a far better actress over the course of the show?

Do they look like a Scream Queen?

Does everyone in the cast look different enough from each other?

Being an ex-actor myself (I played the dorky next-door neighbor on Kenan and Kel) I know how hard it is to go out for audition after audition.  Seeing what a grueling casting process Scream Queens has been makes me happy I became a producer instead!

Joke and Biagio with Zombie on Scream Queens set

When producing a reality show how much of the story gets determined in post production?
JOKE:  Someone said that a scripted show gets written 3 times, once on the page, once during shooting, then again in the edit bay.  You can say the same about reality.  We go out there with a sense of what we’re going to get, we develop the challenges and can predict certain reactions from the cast to those challenges.  But, when shooting, everything can change at any moment. That’s the exhilarating part about reality, and many times they story we would have never thought of is much better than anything we could have predicted.

Also, when we get to post, and we comb through our hours and hours of footage, we find these gems we didn’t even know we had.  With cameras running at all hours of the day, you can’t possibly see and hear everything, so it’s fun to discover new nuances or insights in the bay.

Biagio: We’re both writers, and part of the reason we wanted to get into documentary and reality TV was that real people are always more interesting than anything we could ever make up.  We wanted to expose ourselves to people from all walks of life to help us become better writers and story-tellers.  So casting real people and then telling them what to do would go against the whole reason we started producing unscripted TV in the first place.

Are there reality shows on TV that are heavily scripted ahead of time? I’m sure there are. But again, that’s not why we wanted Reality TV to be part of our repertoire.  The whole allure of making an unscripted show is the excitement of not knowing what’s happening next.

Do we cast people we think will have interesting chemistry, stories, and conflicts with each other? Of course.  Are we guessing that a challenge where girls are covered in cockroaches will get a rise out of the cast?  Yes.  But do we say, “Okay, now you say X, you say Y, then get in a fight and break something” to our cast? No.

What do you look for in a director for your shows, and what’s your collaboration process?
JOKE:  The need for a director in reality varies from show to show.

When you’re dealing with a docu-series, having a producer who can also tell your camera operators what to shoot is much more cost effective.  You do need to rely more on your cam ops at that point to frame pretty pictures, but a strong DP in the A cam position usually gets it done.

When you’re dealing with a multi-camera situation (more than 3 cameras) a director/supervising producer is needed to manage all those bodies and decide who will be shooting what.  Whether that’s a senior story producer directing cameras on where to go in a during in-house reality, or a supervising producer/director setting up camera positions for format elements like challenges and eliminations, it’s a role that involves lots of communication with other departments.  They must talk to the AD, the DP, Story, Art, etc.

We look for people who can work as part of a team, are cool under pressure, know their stuff and are fun to be around.  Going into production is like going into battle. You want someone you like next to you in the trenches.

Biagio:   I like directors who are also great photographers, and who’ve carried a camera on their shoulder at some point in their career.  If the have editing experience, BIG PLUS.  Too many directors have never sat in a bay.  I want a director who knows first hand how to make a scene work in post.

Story sense is also hugely important.  Often times in reality, a director gives you what they think is good coverage, but all they’ve handed over is a bunch of angles un-connected to the story. It’s a nightmare!  Aspiring reality directors: shooting pretty pictures is not enough! Please, listen to the story that’s unfolding.  This isn’t scripted, you actually have to adjust your angles to the reality of what’s happening.

You’re about to produce the 2nd season of VH1’s Scream Queens, where the challenges are often terrifying and always unique.  Who creates the challenges?
JOKE:  This is again a collaborative process.  We have a challenge department, a story department, we bring in experts to tell us what’s doable in terms of SFX, etc.  Ultimately there are lots of brainstorm sessions where we try to “crack” the challenges. We then present to the network and have a collaborative back and forth with them.

On Scream Queens in particular, we also consult with the judges who add their own ideas or bring to light interesting perspectives or feedback on some of our internally created ideas.

Biagio: Challenges for reality TV have to be big and visual.  A straight up acting challenge is a very boring thing.  Throw in a leap from a forty-foot window and now you’ve got something.  When brainstorming challenges, we have to ask ourselves:

Will it look compelling on TV?

With it cause an emotional reaction in our cast?

Will the challenge itself create great reality moments later?

That last one is important.  If the cast isn’t affected enough emotionally by a challenge to be learning from it, talking about it, debating it, and arguing about it later, it’s probably not a good challenge.

Production work can sometimes be 24/7 – so I have to ask, does being married make it easier or more difficult to work together?
JOKE: For me personally, easier.  My parents worked together in their own business all my life, so did my grandparents and 2 sets of aunts & uncles.  It’s all I know.  To me home is wherever Biagio is, so whether that’s on set, or on the ride home after a long day, it makes it easier.  I couldn’t imagine my life not working with my spouse, not sharing everything, not working towards the same goal.  But it’s not for everyone. There obviously are times we disagree and that’s why we work extra hard at communicating effectively.  When we’re tired or hungry, we’re not always that effective

Biagio: My parents divorced when I was 14, and it was the hardest thing I ever went through.  I decided I’d never get married unless I met my soul mate.  I met her. A woman named Joke.

I wanted to build a life with someone who I was not only madly in love with, but who I also liked enough to be around all the time.  A best friend.

Joke is my best friend, my business parter, and my wife.  And the truth is, I feel like I married way out of my league!  Every day I’m thankful to have a constant companion who’s just so freaking awesome.  The hardest times are when we’re apart more than a few hours.  I think since we married in 2001 we’ve spent less than 10 days apart, and every one of them sucked.

Admittedly, it’s not easy when the person who means everything to you says, “No, I don’t like that graphic you made.” Or I say to her, “I really think that schedule is wrong.”  But we’ve learned not to take it personally, because we know we’re stronger as a team.  We make each other better, and that makes our projects better. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thank you Joke and Biagio!  For more information about Joke and Biagio visit Joke Productions.  If you want information on how to be a producer, breaking into Hollywood, storytelling and much more visit their blog.

Today I asked National Emmy nominated writer and producer Sydnye White to give us some of the basics on shooting in HD.  Sydnye’s credits include the series Home Made Simple for TLC and Moneywise with Kelvin Boston for PBS.  Her documentaries include Great Books: The Autobiography of Malcolm X for The Learning Channel and the Discovery Channel’s Detroit SWAT.

HD Primer by Sydnye White

So you have to shoot in High Definition and you don’t know where to start.  Don’t worry. Though it may seem confusing at the beginning, knowing what to ask is half the battle.  Here are a few questions to help you get started.

1. What type of editing intake system will you be using?  There are many types of HD record options (HDCam, HDV-HD, XDcam, etc.) and decks to go with each.  It is important to know how your edit system will acquire the footage so you can start out with the correct recording format.   If you don’t know where you will edit or what type of system you are using, you can consider using a camera that records onto a disk.  Later, you can then transfer the footage onto a hard drive or straight into the appropriate editing program.

2. What type of footage does your network, client or distributor accept?  Some networks won’t accept some formats or minimal footage must come from it.  For example, they may allow a given HD project to have up to 15% standard definition footage.

3. Will you be required to deliver all of the raw footage and if so, in what format?  If the client wants raw footage in a certain format like HDCam, it makes sense to go ahead and shoot with that format.  If you don’t have to turn over your raw footage, consider how you will archive the footage once your project is complete.

4. What are resolution and frame rate requirements?  Most of the projects that I work on are shot at  1080i or 720i.  Will your final project been show full screen?  Do you have to downconvert to standard definition and if so, will it be centercut, anamorphic or letter boxed?  You’ll want to make sure that the camera being used has the proper settings available and that the tapes and edit system can accommodate your needs.

It is important to talk to as many people as possible about your project until you feel comfortable making choice.  Talk to shooters, editors and distributers/networks/clients.  Sometimes there may be more than one solution to your HD needs.  But armed with the right information, you can make the best decision for your project.  Good luck.

Visit  Sydnye White’s website  at www.docsandtv.com

You’ve sold your pilot.  The network has given you a 6 or 13 episode order.  You’re walking down the street with a smile on your face a mad man couldn’t smack off.  Your new best friend is the network’s  Executive-In- Charge of Production, you’re in sync and you almost imagine you couldn’t possibly do anything wrong.  Then one day it happens, you and the network are no longer doing the same happy dance and you’re story telling doesn’t match up to their expectations. It might happen after the first draft of the treatment or script is delivered, or after the first shooting day, or even after you’ve delivered the first rough cut.  Somehow, almost without warning, you and the network are operating from two separate places and you begin to imagine you’re not even from the same planet.  Where did it all go wrong?

You presented a concept that you were excited about, even passionate about.  Everyone signed off on it.  Now you find yourself in the precarious position of not feeling the love.  It may be that someone high up has decided that a different direction will ensure higher ratings.  Or perhaps the people at the top weren’t really communicating with each other.  It doesn’t really matter, because you’ve got a show to get on the air with precious little time to meet the deadline.  In my opinion it’s time to stand down.
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During pre-production do you ever feel like you’re drowning in a sea of emails?  I do.  I can receive as many as 100 emails in one day.  Just getting all the principals to attend a meeting can create a flurry of emails that would dwarf a basketball player.  At the end of the day, matching up emails and making sure I have the latest on what was decided can be a chore.  So, I’m wondering – wouldn’t it make sense to use Google Wave?  I haven’t tried it, but I’ve read a lot about it.  Mashable describes it here:

Google Wave is a real-time communication platform. It combines aspects of e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client. You can bring a group of friends or business partners together to discuss how your day has been or share files.

Since a wave is a threaded conversation, containing anything ever discussed on a particular topic it would appear to be of value for production companies. Not only are the conversations all in one place, it’s in real time. A wave could be used for script notes, location scouting, budget changes, and on and on and on.

If you ask me – the wave it’s coming my friend.  What do you think?  Useful in a production or not?

You’ve got a budget.  Now it’s up to you to stay within the budget and make money.  That’s right make money.  This is America, we’re capitalists.  But, you also want what’s up on the screen to appear as if you’ve spent every last dollar on the production.  The production must look spectacular.  If the budget has a line for original music then get some composed, don’t go with a cheap library version because the client will know. However, if the client is paying for cheap library music and they decide after seeing the first rough cut they want something more musically unique, then they will have to pay for that.

Don’t be the producer that tells the client they can’t have things unless they pay more money, and don’t be the producer who yeses the client at the expense of your profit.  Fine line?    Actually no.  You and the client enter into a bargain once the concept and budget are approved.  That’s the agreement.  Now, it’s up to you to give the client what they’ve signed off on.  Along the way, you’re going to show them treatments, scripts and rough cuts.  Make sure it’s all in line with the original idea and the original budget.  If you find that you’re taking too long in post-production and your editing bill is going over that’s not the client’s fault. You presumably sent them a production schedule without a gun being held to your head, so you need to stick to it.  If it goes over you eat the overage.  However, if at the eleventh hour the client says, “Gee, I’d like to have (fill in the blank)” and it was never in the original concept, then it’s time to talk.  Firmly put on your producer hat and have a conversation with the client.  Let them know you are more than happy to accommodate their new direction, and then give them a price for that new direction.  Make sure you’ve cost it out before having the conversation.

So when does the client pay and when do you pay?  Easy, if the client is making changes after you’ve signed on the dotted line, they pay.  If you aren’t living up to the original agreement and it’s costing you more money, then it’s costing you more money. (more…)