Storytime : how much is faked in what you're shown.... a lot of the time
Without getting into more details, I work for a company that employs thousands of people, in over 20 countries. You may not have heard our name, but you have most likely interacted with hundreds of products or services that we have participated in developing, maintaining, evolving and/or marketing. Needless to say, we are involved in many sectors of activity, at a variety of levels.
Which is why I can tell this story without it being too revealing.
I want it to be an illustration of :
How much is faked in things that are presented to you for consumption
Sometimes, for seemingly no purpose (if it is, it’s because it’s considered to add an amount of commercial value, but as an outsider, would you consider it worth the effort? I’m willing to bet, in this case, you’ll think not)
How much work can go into faking little details
A studio is set up to record two people that will be talking heads in a made for tv documentary. One man, one woman. They are not hosts, they are in the commentators / experts / interviewed people category. The images of the doc I saw were wide nature shots, different landscape panoramas. It wouldn’t shock me if it was some kind of earth / geology documentary.
Hair and makeup is done, because these two have to be on camera. Because of lighting and high quality video equipment, even if you are shown “natural”, you still get makeup to even skintone, hide undereye darkness, make you look “peppier”. For example, classic stuff on men is skincolor kohl in the waterline and some kind of faint lip color if your lips are too pale to make you look more awake. And you know, powders because how dare human skin produce oils to be alive.
So, that happens. Six times. Over the course of the day.
She changes hairdo, earings, makeup.
He gets a beanie, then not. They go as far as to trim his 5-day beard to a 3-day beard.
For variety. And to make it look like time passes and the interviews weren’t all shot at the same time.
I shit you not. That was the sole purpose. Because I guess they think the nerds like us who watch geology documentaries will be bored if the people explaining the sciencey stuff look the same every time they speak.
Either that, or they set up their spoken parts to pretend that they were commenting at different period of shooting the doc.
(You know, like Top Chef competitors interviews being edited in and them commenting as the episode goes as if the whole thing hasn’t been shot after the end of it.)
So. I dunno. Personally, as a consumer, whether it’s transparent or it fools me, I think that’s going to great lengths and financial effort (that’s a ton of extra billable hours) for something I find super silly.
And I’m pretty sure that’s what was going on there. Just make it more dynamic.
Now. You could make it more lucrative. And it might end up in our pocket or someone else’s depending on who makes the deal, here.
Say this interview you’re producing is about something that’s a lot more interesting to a lot more people and you can guarantee a certain amount of audience. (Anyting, the first interview of a press tour for some major movie, the episode about the true crime case that shook the country last year, the first interview of so-and-so after a scandal… what have you. Anything is an opportunity to make money (sigh).)
So let’s say you’ve got that. You know that this will get eyes on it. Maybe that extra cost is completely covered by a couple of brands that want their earrings or blazer or new watch or beanie shown in the interview. Hell. Maybe every brand can cover the whole cost of this extra work. (Welp, maybe, unless some of them are competing brands, and one of them negociates an exclusivity deal, so you definitely cannot also work with this other brand on this shoot. Or if one of the people involved has a contract, or-.... And that’s why there are so many lawyers in PR…. And that’s why we come in so that the poor folks who just wanted to make a documentary don’t have to think of, organize, and implement all of that…)
And that’s it. When I first stepped behind the scenes, that’s the kind of details on a much larger project that both fascinated and baffled me. I hope this wasn’t too boring to read.
(I have another story on how much money can be “thrown away” by instantly scrapping a project AFTER LAUNCH because of how much those little details do matter. Let me know if you’re interested.)
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