And which ones are not?
They’re not so much scripted as they are greatly influenced by their producers – IMO, of course.
They are more like improv, set up situations but the dialog is made up. And the answer is all of them.
Let me clarify. What I mean by scripted is that participants are acting out storylines that have been planned in advance by producers.
There are two types of reality shows: game shows and documentaries.
Game shows (e.g., Survivor, The Amazing Race) are scripted in that the situations are set up by writers beforehand and introduced to the people involved, who then have to deal with it. Some game shows (e.g., talent shows like American Idol) are scripted in that the contestants are chosen to be as entertaining as possible. You don’t see the truly mediocre; you see the one who might impress the judges, or those that are so terrible that the audience can laugh at them.
Documentaries usually follow someone around and see what they are doing (e.g., The Deadliest Catch or Ice Road Truckers. They get the drama by portraying actual events as they happen (though they try to make it into a game show aspect by pretending it’s all a competition – the number of tons of crab a boat gets in a season doesn’t really matter as long as it’s enough to make a profit. Beating other boats is nice, but not necessary).
Some shows (e.g., Pawn Stars) are semidocumentaries. It’s clear that the producers pick which people to follow when the come into the shop, since they often interview them beforehand. But the people shown are not ringers.
Ghost Hunters and other ghost shows.
ISTR that one or two of the earliest Fox reality shows (from one particular producer) were criticized for having the producer knowing what outcome he wanted, and then selecting just the scenes that led to that conclusion, but I haven’t heard any other allegations like that in years, and because of the quiz show scandals of the 1950s it’s unlikely any producer would directly cheat to have a certain participant win.
Usually the producers’ influence is more along the line of “say that again, but this time throw your drink in his face.”
I can tell you that at least two “reality” shows are scripted: Operation Repo and Southern Fried Stings. Both shows are scripted reenactments based on previous incidents. Both shows have disclaimers at the beginning stating that to be the case.
The US version of Kitchen Nightmares follows the same exact formula so perfectly in every episode that I can’t help but think that they cheat it somehow.
I was under the impression on shows like that that they interview them afterwords but edit it to appear as though they just happened to catch this really interesting guy on the way in. American Idol does the same thing. You’ll notice that in the Round 1* auditions before the person sings for the judges they’ll show some clips of the person’s family…that person almost always makes it at least to Hollywood. But it’s not like they caught him in line and asked if they could drag their camera crew to his parent’s house. They did this long after he was already in Hollywood and possibly after he had already cleared Hell Week.
Also, a lot of the drama on some of the reality shows is manufactured in the editing room. I remember after the first or second season of Real World some of them were on a talk show. The host asked one of them if she was always that mean and she said she wasn’t even like that on the show, but that you have to when they have 3 cameras following you around for a year and each one has nearly 5000+ hours of footage that they have to trim down to 11 hours they can make anyone look however they want.
*Round 1 is actually Round 2. If you listen closely once in a while they’ll slip and call it that, but in order to get in front of the judges you have to sing for some producers a few days earlier, that’s Round 1.
I think they are all scripted. Some are just less obvious about it.
Which shows? What producer?
Cite?
When you think about the logistics of camera placement, some parts of reality shows obviously have to be scripted. My favorite is when the famous person walks into the establishment and the camera pans over to the reality subjects acting in shocked surprise that this could be happening… except the cameraperson is already in the establishment lining up the shot which is not exactly something that can be easily ignored.
I’m not sure which show you’re talking about but sure, something like that would be ‘scripited’ or rather ‘choreographed’ to some extent.
A bakery I know was on Throwdown with Bobby Flay. They honestly had no idea he was going to be there. They just thought they were doing something for Food Network and he came walking in (and it was kind of funny because at least some of the people in the shot didn’t have any idea who he was and had no reaction and didn’t understand why the show had suddenly changed gears).
So yeah, when you’re in a situation where a celebrity is going to show up certain parts are going to be scripted/choreographed. But it has to be…celebrities don’t just happen to show up on locations out in the middle of nowhere where camera crews just happen to be pointing cameras at doors.
But if the entire show is scripted it’s, by definition, not a reality show. At that point it’s starting to become a mockumentry or just a regular TV show.
Also, don’t forget, for a reality show like Real World or Jersey Shore to work you have to get people that are high energy, full of drama and ready to fly off the handle at any moment. You need drama to make the show work, otherwise you wind up with the equivalent of a college dorm which really isn’t all that exciting to watch. I wonder if people think it’s scripted because so much crap happens all the time when it’s just because you have so many big personalities so close together all the time.
Kendra was on a talk show last week and someone asked her this question. She said that most of it is just their normal life; however, occasionally a story line will develop during the filming and get resolved off camera. Her example was when she and Hank Basket had a fight on camera, they made up off camera so they had to “stage” the make up part for continuity.
These family reality shows all claim that it’s “real” and that they “forget the cameras are there”. I just have a hard time believing that.
Can’t remember, but I’m pretty sure I got the idea from Bill Carter’s book Desperate Networks.
Are you sure you’re not confusing a Fox show with “Manhunt”, a UPN reality series starring John Cena that aired in 2001? The producer admitted some scenes were reshot in LA (the show was supposed to be set in Hawaii) with scripted material. They had to put disclaimers that certain scenes “were intended for entertainment purposes only”. (Source: “Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows”, Brooks and Marsh.)
Sorry, I guess I wasn’t clear enough. That was just my opinion.
Or at least they have to be able to ACT like they have high energy, ACT full of drama, and ACT ready to fly off the handle at any moment.
This is most obvious in shows like those “Housewives Of” or “Bachlor(ette)”. All the participants know their success rests on their ability to be outlandish and over act/react to the extreme. This has been going on forever. Look back at Puck from the Real World in 1994 or Omarosa from The Apprentice. They both knew how to work the cameras for maximum drama and knew the whole idea of reality was b.s. anyway.