Carol L. Voss Wrote:
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> I speak as someone who has worked with tv media
> years ago when I was PR director for a large
> corporation-------------if you are living in a
> house along with 24/7 multiple cameras and light
> screens and tv people and etc and supposedly are
> carrying on a day-to-day life, I really don't
> think you can call it "reality". Now if you have
> a house totally bugged with video cameras and no
> intrusive camera crews and etc, then maybe you can
> call it something like "real time action" but if
> you know everything you are doing and saying is
> being recorded, is that really going to produce
> "reality". I don't think so. ANd if this so
> called "reality" is going to keep people watching,
> there has to be some kind of drama and that
> probably has to be "manufactured" by the producers
> to keep the thing going. Having a tv crew in my
> house 24/7 isn't going to do much for so called
> "reality". And while I have to admit I have never
> watched these programs, what kind of people would
> let this happen in their lives for their "15
> minutes of fame" ? Are they well paid for this? or
> is the "fame" the carrot??
> C.

Drama is created in two ways...

1) Casting - casting is the heart of most of these shows, be they a ridiculous situation like Big Brother with people locked in a house together or anything else on pretty much any channel you look at today. It's all about finding "characters" - people who are larger than life. These are not people you would generally want to know, but are "train wrecks" themselves who you kind of can't stop looking at.

2) Editing - rather ordinary scenes get cut together by accomplished editors to make them appear to be far more dramatic than they actually are.

Charles Freericks