Well, that's just the thing. Most television is fiction. Bad and Predictable fiction to boot.
When the fad becomes "reality" tv, and as we move forward into LIVE broadcasts like on Ustream and BlogTV, unless you're actually an interesting person in real life and interesting stuff happens to you and around you, your show's going to suck... unless people start doctoring either the input or the output of the situation. This is why there are credits for "producers" on shows that claim to be "reality". There are producers in charge of spinning the footage in the edit so that it tells a story they think is compelling. There are producers in charge of telling people what to do in order to create storylines. If reality television was actually allowed to be a depiction of what actually happened, people would be gambling with their jobs. :D I'm not saying this is a good thing. I'm saying that people are now getting CAUGHT for what they've always been doing. I have a piece about Uganda airing on the Hallmark channel on the 30th of this month. It's a 5-minute segment that we cut from 20 HOURS of footage! :O Needless to say, I could have told 60 different stories with that footage... all of them "honest" to a degree, but all of them SPIN, definitely. You have houses made out of mud and you have houses that look like actual houses... which ones to show? You have people walking down the dirt road with baskets on their heads and no socks or shoes on, you have people on bicycles and you have people in cars and trucks... which ones to show? It depends on what you want to say about the area and the story you're trying to tell. Still, there's a difference between needing to tell A VERSION of what really happened to people, and MAKING STUFF UP and passing it off as "reality". The fakers deserve to get busted and embarrassed! :D -- billcammack --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, "Steve Watkins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Over here in the UK there has been wave after wave of stories that are > causing the spotlight of truth to be pointed all over the place. > > It started, as best I can remember, when it emerged that some TV phone > in competitions were being conducted with very low standards. Things > such as viewers being asked to phone in for a chance to appear in next > weeks program, when the next weeks program was about to be taped just > a few minutes later. Popular BBC childrens programme 'Blue Peter' > having a fake winner of a competition because the real one didnt show > up. Stuff like that. Most of the networks have been affected and have > had to suspend or masively alter these sorts of things. > > More recently, it has moved onto reality television, and how much > truth there is to fly-on-the-wall documentaries, after they've been > edited. A big storm erupted on the BBC the other week when it emerged > that the Queen had been shown in a misleading light on an advert for a > forthcoming documentary. > > The latest is this story about some survivalist actually spending the > night in a motel: > > http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6911748.stm > > So anyways I doubt these sorts of things are new, but what is new here > is the focus on these issues by the media themselves. And as there is > a relationship between the credibility, or lack thereof, of > traditional media, and both the positive and negative potential of > vlogging, I thought Id post about it here. > > Cheers > > Steve Elbows >
