I was watching the new MTV show, Double Shot at Love, and a stunt that the show pulled early on felt fraudulent to me. What are the chances that this was faked?
As a novel way of introducing the men and women that are competing in the show, the two groups are “delivered” in two large crates - “boys” and “girls” - toted by two different helicopters. The crates are hanging from the bottom of the helicopters, which slowly fly in and eventually set them down. This footage is cut back and forth with internal footage of the people in the crates jumping around and lurching from side-to-side. You can see a little bit of footage of this in this youtube clip from :13 to :18 or so.
Now, I don’t buy that they really did it on the grounds that it’s just too dangerous of a stunt for very little payoff, and the insurance company behind the production probably wouldn’t underwrite it. With one little mistake, either of the crates could end up causing a problem and killing all 12 people inside, not to mention any helicopter pilots. The physics and logistics of the actual stunt also seem a little unbelievable; if you have 12 adult men jumping around and lurching back and forth, they would probably cause a lot of turbulence for the helicopter as the crate would invariably lurch around. It seems to me that a helicopter towing such a load would have to rely on the cargo staying relatively stable.
Anyone have any ideas?
While I can’t answer the question directly in regard to that instance, I have $.02 to add regarding MTV’s honesty in their ‘reality’ shows.
A bit over two summers ago, I got a call from MTV who caught wind of a couple pranks that I played on my High School. It was for the reality show “High School Stories”. They were interested in covering two pranks I did (Streaking during homecoming and supergluing pornographic pictures to lockers, clocks, walls, etc in the school.)
I spent 10 days with MTV filming for at least ten hours per day. The entire filming was already scripted by MTV prior to finding out important details of the pranks. I had a lengthy sit-down interview for narration and voice-overs. They would ask questions about certain aspects and I would give the answer. They would stop filming and say 'The way we have it written, it happens this way… now, answer that again but state it this way…"
It was pretty ridiculous when all was said and done because the story was changed approximately 85% for better television. I knew some would be changed but not that much! It finally aired last month (After about two years) and I was shocked to see that aside from the pranks themselves, the other details were entirely fabricated!
With that said, if you see something and you question its validity, it’s probably made up. I can no longer watch any of MTV’s reality TV shows and take it as true. It’s all about what they think would make good TV.
In all fairness, most of those people wouldn’t be missed.