#tv production

[renthony]

Genuinely tired of people blaming the vague idea of "TV writers suck" for sub-par television instead of corporate meddling, blatant censorship, arbitrary time constraints, and other behind-the-scenes fuckery. Also really tired of "obviously it's objectively bad writing" getting used in place of "I, personally, did not like this."

Even if the writing is genuinely bad in something, you can just...watch something else. There are plenty of other shows out there with writing you might connect with more. Acting like the entire industry is full of bad writers who don't care about their work is ignorant as hell.

Writers being used as the go-to for audiences to shit on is getting really fucking old.

[360degreesasthecrowflies]

Heartstopper season 3 episode 4 should be an award-winner - I hope it gets nominated. I never expected this series to actually go out of the box and do something ambitious and daring with storytelling structure like this - a two month timeskip incorporated through two mini episodes of the same events from two perspectives, with a handheld cam video as a connecting throughline!

[cbrownjc]

Hello :) I was wondering if we ever got confirmation about which books Rolin is interested in focusing this adaptation on? I know that they'll probably take elements from most (if not all) VC books, but if they're aiming at 7-8 seasons with some books taking multiple seasons to adapt, they're going to have to pick and choose which books to really dig into.

I was also thinking about production. I've seen people talk about how we'll need to wait another 1.5-2 years between seasons and I kinda doubt that? I feel like we'll start speeding things up and getting a new season every year, mostly because I just can't see them go for 12+ years of production on this show. Very few shows nowadays go more than 10 years, and if they really want to do 7-8 seasons I can't see how they'll manage that with 1.5 to 2 years in between each season. I understand they're in for the long haul with the Immortal Universe but...that's very long in the modern drama landscape.

Honestly I am mostly just hoping to get new seasons more frequently and also be able to see their full vision realized because the longer it goes on the higher the chance they'll run into issues like actor availability, leadership changes that could impact renewals, budget restrictions, etc. What do you think?

Hello!

Okay, first to answer the production question. Now, while many shows rarely go past 10 years wrt production of them, that is really dependent on their Season count. Game of Thrones, for example, only ran for 8 Seasons, and production only lasted 8 years as well.

The Walking Dead ran for 11 Seasons and was produced over 12 years.

AMC has said in the past (or, at least, Rolin Jones has said that AMC has said) that they wanted 10 Seasons for IWTV. RJ, however, has been consistent in saying he has an 8 Season plan.

So whether the show continues on for at least 2 more years after Rolin's 8 Season plan is up in the air right now and we should just focus on, at most, getting 8 Seasons, Which yes, I think will take over the course of 8-9 years to film.

Because I think starting with Season 3, the wait and production times will decrease over time. Remember, the strikes threw a bit of a wrench into things. But what also did regarding Season 2 was that it's clear that Rolin and the writing staff didn't start actually writing Season 2 until AMC had officially greenlit Season 2 back in September of 2022. That is why shooting for Season 2 couldn't start in the fall of 2022, there were no scripts broken, let alone written yet!

And then, once the scripts were done, they still had to start pre-production stuff, such as location scouting, figuring out which sets needed to be built, etc.

So shooting for Season 2 could only start shooting when it did because it was the earliest they could get all that done once they were given a renewal notice.

I think things are very different when it comes to Season 3 because I think, even if the show hadn't already been quietly renewed for Season 3 before it was officially announced, RJ and the other writers were already breaking and writing the scripts for Season 3 starting either just before or while Season 2 was airing. And so given that writing time, plus the fact that they probably don't have to do as much location scouting (since many of those locations were already found in Season 2) pre-production will likely take less time.

I think filming will begin in late October, meaning we'd get an October 2025 release date. Which I think will be the standard release window going forward with each new season and why the wait will be another long one again, but that will also give the production staff and actors breathing room after they are done filming a season before going into the next one.

So for that reason, I can see production of the show lasting 9-10 years, but that is because of the extra 1/2 year gaps between the filming and airing of Season 2 and the one I feel we are going to get for Season 3.

As well as the fact that I think when they get to Queen of the Damned, that will be a true split-season like the one Breaking Bad got for its final season. That show had Season 5, Part 1, and Season 5, Part 2. Because even though this past season was called "Season 2" externally, you can see by the episode numbers that internally, what this really was was "Season 1, Part 2."

Anyway, as to the books being adapted -- and not just having elements taken from them -- Rolin has said for sure we are getting IWTV (which we just finished), The Vampire Lestat (Season 3), Queen of the Damned (which is where he spoke about it being so epic and grand a story that they will probably have to split the season in order to tell it all) and Tale of the Body Theif (which he confirmed after Season 2 was finished that they were beginning to already set up for). He also mentioned at Comic-Con in 2022 that Prince Lestat would be adapted.

Also, while RJ talked about the book The Vampire Armand being important, he's never said it would get its own separate adaptation, which honestly makes sense. Because of the way that book is told, you can just interweave elements of it when you want to focus on Armand's backstory, or even just do a stand-alone episode here and there dedicated to parts of it. It really isn't the kind of book you do a full season on IMO.

So yeah. The books that we know for sure are getting their own, full adaptations per RJ so far are IWTV, TVL, QotD, TotBT, and PL.

I can see them throwing elements of books like Memnoch, TVA, and Blood and Gold into it all, but I don't know if they'll get their own full-season adaptations. As I said, I don't think TVA will. And I don't think B&G will either, as I see it just like TVA -- you adapt elements of it during a season, maybe even full sections of it for a flashback episode or so during a season, but it doesn't get its own full stand-alone season.

The same goes for Merrick, since they already did Louis' suicide attempt and Louis seems to be moving forward from his despair and grief regarding Claudia -- so that even if Lestat did fall into his post-Memnoch coma in the show, I'm not sure this Louis would attempt to end his life again over that loss. (Even more so after this Louis also got that letter from Lestat in the past, telling Louis to please live on in the event of his death.)

I have no idea if they are seriously going to ever do Blackwood Farm or Blood Canticle. Neither book has ever been mentioned, even in passing. Plus, they kind of depend on what and where Mayfair Witches is at or has going on at the time and well, that show . . . 😅

Oh! And they might be looking to adapt the whole Prince Lestat trilogy, but I don't remember if RJ has talked about adapting the whole trilogy -- meaning the entirety of each book -- or just the full first book and then elements from the other two. (Because I do think it's clear that, if anything, we'll get the Loustat ballroom dance from Blood Communion in the final season of the show).

So yeah, I think that this is what we're looking at for the next few years, book adaptation-wise.

[ladyluscinia]

It's so fucking weird to me how much of the OFMD S2 "discourse" on the side of praising and defending the decisions keeps centering on "if you just rewatched the show as a whole you would see it all fits!"

Now to be clear this is not true - I rewatched all of S1 quite literally right before S2 started dropping, and I rewatched 2x01-2x07 right before 2x08 dropped. I am, in fact, basing my analysis of the whole season on the whole season (even if I'm not inclined to rewatch / get more pissed), I'm not relying on year old fanon to tell me what happened the season before (actually I encouraged S1 rewatches all through S2 for that issue), and I still have criticisms. Many.

But moreover... What kind of insane streaming-poisoned take is it that having watched a season play out over 3 weeks has made it so fans cannot trust their evaluation of the story and arcs?????

Like people are genuinely, with their whole chests, arguing that the main reason other fans are criticizing things is because they just got too many ideas in their heads with the episodes spaced out instead of just appreciating the story that was intended. Or that the pacing felt off just because of waiting for episodes. Or that fans have straight up forgotten the context of scenes that aired less than a month before the finale.

What.

I made an argument on how fandom is changing due to streaming schedules vs traditional cable airing but have so many fans just straight up forgotten how television is consumed??? 3 weeks. THREE FUCKING WEEKS?

I do not know how to impress upon you that if a tv story falls apart the moment you are not consuming it in a singular 4 hour block then it is almost certainly not a good story. Having a week between episodes to speculate on ideas does not create an entire alternate fanon that fucks up an airing story. Good pacing is achievable even if your audience takes breaks between episodes.

Like fuck I guess I'm glad if a rewatch made you feel better but what the actual fuck is this idea the first watch is inherently corrupted just because people might have engaged with it like a tv show???

[signfeld-stills]

1999, The Seinfeld-Pokémon Crossover Movie

[alpaca-clouds]

Media Production: It takes a village to make a thing

I want to talk a bit about media creation this week. Mostly because I want these blogs then to be a reference for whenever that discussion comes up again. Because, frankly, I am very tired of people not understanding - and not caring - about how many people it actually takes to make most media they consume.

We see that both when a piece of media succeeds - and when a piece of media flops or is heavily critisized. In both cases both the general public and also fans will usually latch onto one or two people involved in the production to be deserving of either all the praise or all the blame. Usually this is the person with most name recognition, or, if there is nobody like that involved, a general idea of "the writer(s)" or "the director", because while a lot of folks do not quite know what is in the control of either role, it feels kinda right that they should be able to have the most say about the outcome.

And don't get me wrong: There definitely are examples of media where indeed it was the writer(s), director, or whatever person with most name recognition making a project fail or succeed. And yes, this even goes so far as including actors. I can think of at least two movies where an actor, who was very full of themselves, made it almost impossible to work on a set. Just as I can think of examples, where a project would have failed without an actor putting all their name recognition and everything behind it to secure enough money to actually finish production.

But most of the time... It is a lot more complicated than that.

General rule: If a piece of media is not a self-published published book or comic, there is definitely more than one person involved into having gotten that piece of media onto the market.

Yes, even with a book. Sure, generally speaking, an author is allowed to ignore any advice given to them by an editor and publisher, unless their contract states something else (which it rarely does, because publishing industry standards). Does not mean that writers do. And yes, I know definitely cases where at least in my view editors have made books worse - often by pressing for more traditional climaxes of books that originally did not have such a thing. (You know, at times you can resolve the tension in certain books without a big BOOM. But I definitely know a lot of editors who will at least advice authors to do an action finale in a fantasy or scifi book, rather than one where characters talk that shit out.)

And of course, once we are talking "multimedia" there is gonna be a whole lot of people involved. If you have ever sat down to watch that by now 10 minute long credit roll of a movie or game, you know how many people there are. And... yeah, often not everyone gets credited. Because other wise those credits would be 20 minutes.

Of course, of those often hundreds of people, most do not have the kind of power over the project to make it either become amazing, nor fail. Neither the single accountant, nor the gaffer, nor the catering service will probably majorly influence the outcome of a project. But there are absolutely other people than just the director, the writer and the headline actors.

If we talk about both TV and movie production, it usually starts with a pitch or a script. Both are options - though the pitch will usually never get anywhere, unless there already is someone with a recognizable name and/or some influence attached. Though these days it is also very common that a pitch is: "Let's do a movie based on recognizable IP XYZ." At least when we are talking projects with some budget.

But let's not assume the "big budget" stuff for now. If it is not big budget, it usually starts with a script. And that script is gonna get sent into with a variety of producers. Most of them will usually put those scripts right into the trash, because they might on some days receive tens of those things. But some might read a script when it sounds interesting and if they see some promise, they might give some feedback for the writer to workshop it. Often it will get sent back and forth then, until the producer then goes to pitch it to investors and studios. And if the people involved are lucky, it is gonna get picked up.

Now, this is where a lot of people think the involvement of the writer ends - which studios will use to horribly underpay writers, mind you. But no, usually the writer is gonna be involved till the shooting is wrapped. You know why? Because no script will survive the reality of shooting or even just animation.

There is stuff that sounds amazing on paper, but just will not work in real life on set (or in the animation). Maybe a line sounds cool when written out, but once the actor says it, it sounds wrong. Maybe the writer imagined an amazing scene, but when they try to make it work, it won't because physics are a thing - and working against physics while possible does take more budget than a project eventually has. (Not to mention: In action heavy productions, there are enough writers that have learned to write in something across they lines of "they fight, X wins" and let the director, stunt coordinators, and actors/stunt people figure it out. I have seen fans of certain media rage about those "lazy writers", upon getting their hands on scripts, but... yeah, no this is actually a good practice, because those other people will usually have a better idea of what is possible than a writer.)

Also, directors and actors often have ideas about a story, and will want to change a scene or two.

If you have ever watched anything having to do with productions (no matter if movie or tv) you will have heard actors talk about receiving their pages for the shooting day early in the morning while in make up. That is because of those last minute changes. And that is why usually you do want to have writers involved in the production - and also why writers want writer rooms. Because two to three writers can mostly handle a movie, sure. But a TV production, that covers a lot more screentime in a few months of shooting/animating? You want more people working on it to make the daily adjustments.

And again: One of the main reasons why the writers guild was protesting last year was, that studios did a) not want a writers room (because more writers to pay) and b) actually did not want to pay the writers for those last minute adjustments during shooting. Which we hopefully can agree is very much unfair towards the writers.

The main director(s) will usually make a lot of decisions of course of how things happen on set or in the animation. Ideally a good director in this listens to the other specialists involved - though not all directors do, and in terms of certain productions recently (MCU *coughs*) often do not get the chance. But ideally they will get the input of actors, stunt people, the cinematographer, the people in command of set stuff, and also the people working on the visual effects. While the director(s) are definitely creative people and the role is a creative role, it is also very much a management thing, to get everyone onto the same page.

How much a director is involved in the pre-production (aka: getting an idea of the visual language, getting sets, costumes and whatever prepared, casting talent, getting the character and environment designs done, and so on) and the post-production (aka editing, visual effects, reshoots, retouching and so on) is very different depending on the project. Again, with Marvel Studios in recent years directors are usually only hired for the main production, with Marvel mainly taking care of both pre- and post-production, as most directors do not get to put in their unique creative style - it has to fit the brand after all. But even outside of Marvel it is also very dependent on the director and the kind of project it is, whether the director is heavily involved in this. Some directors will be sitting in the studio every day during post-production helping out whereever they can, others bring people for these things they trust and will only be on call, and some others will disappear on the last day of shooting.

And of course there is always the producers and executive producers. Every media project has them in some way or form. They are the people mainly there to secure funding and work as the communication line between the heads and board of a studio, and the creatives on set. As Guillermo del Toro once said (I am paraphrasing here): "A good producer is there, when you need them, but leaves you alone, when you don't." But... The higher the budget and investment, the worse the producer is usually by this metric.

Please note: By now it is fairly usual that at least big stars (both in terms of directing, and acting) will have their own production studio, and yes, also be credited as producers in a movie or TV show. However, as soon as there is more budget involved, that budget usually comes form a bigger studio or media conglomerate (like Disney, Netflix, Warner-Discovery and so on) and the producers who are responsible for the big investors in a project will have a lot more say. This might lead to something called "executive meddling" about what I am going to talk in two days.

And yes, before I forget. There is of course also game production, which usually is very different from anything else, because game productions most of the time do not start with a story concept, but rather with a general concept/game play concept. This might of course be different when you produce within established franchises, where people might expect a certain gameplay and your question is more what kinda story will allow that gameplay to happen again, but generally speaking: Gameplay will trump story in game productions.

But here is also the issue with game productions: These work very, very differently depending on what studio we are talking about. Sure, the AAA studios work in comparable ways, but everyone who isn't AAA has their unique style, because compared to every other form of media games are still fairly young as a form of media. And while for big budgeted releases certain "best practices" (given these will usually involve crunch for at several weeks) have been established that managers and investors will push for, smaller studios might well have their own best practices (that ideally will involve less crunch). But of course, with games the effect that there is not a single person or group of people to be praised/blamed for something being really amazing, or really bad, is even stronger, because usually game productions are more spread out and have a lot more moving parts that can make a thing really great or really bad.

Though a general rule still holds true for games as well: The bigger the budget, the bigger the power of certain producers and managers to overrule any creative decision in an attempt to appease investors. Because executive meddling definitely isn't a problemt unique to a single medium. But I will talk about that on Wednesday...

[girlwiththegreenhat]

i genuinely love when you can tell an older show was Not made with high quality video viewing in mind. i am watching knight rider and constantly seeing all the little mistakes they surely brushed under the rug thinking nobody would see them on their crunchy little CRTs back in the 80s, that are huge attention grabbers now in HD fullscreen on my 3 foot computer monitor

the biggest one of course is all the drivers/controllers for the (in-universe) self driving car, kitt. there's guys tucked down in the footwells who can't always stay out of the shot. there's a guy who has a Car Seat Suit to blend in and look like the drivers seat from a distance, but you can always tell when that's the method they're using for a particular shot because its so much thicker than the passenger seat next to it and the headrest is missing it's cutout section. in at least one instance he starts taking the suit off too early, on a focus shot of the damn car, so its REAL visible.

all the extremely obvious stunt drivers or performers who look nothing like the character they're supposed to be

props, such as animals, vanishing from the car interior for stunt/race sequences.

the production crew (or their shadows) being visible in the background. only at a glance, but its especially hilarious in shots where nobody else is supposed to be around

the camera panning out from a sound stage set far enough that you can actually see over the edges of the set and into the stage they were filming in. mostly this happens with their truck trailer mobile unit thing.

this one isn't a mistake but every time the car "turbo jumps" they CLEARLY hide the ramp behind another car, a prop, the environment, and its just. so charming. sometimes its blatantly on screen just for a moment. like... of Course in real life this car isn't magically leaping 20 feet, of course its a ramp, but it's still so silly and fun to be reminded of how they were doing those stunts to begin with.

also not really a mistake but related, the bracket they keep on the front of the car for stunt work.... is just left on half the time. cuz it's a pain to take on and off.

and there are more examples that are more unique that haven't cemented themselves in my head well yet, but these are the more notable or common things i see and it's really charming. if i'm not giggling to myself noticing the "seams" and flaws and so human imperfections of your show or movie what EVEN is the point. hollywood is too flashy these days i think!

[kingoftieland]

Just obtained this directly from one of the set decorators for the final season of Better Call Saul: a “World’s Best Lawyer Crew” travel mug given out by Kim Wexler actress Rhea Seehorn after Episode 604 as a thank you to all those who helped with her directorial debut!

Definitely a special piece of television history! 🎬

[broadcastarchive-umd]

“Anybody know how to work this thing?”

(Sorry, the illustration just seemed to cry out for a caption.)

TV Tape Commercials: New Techniques of Creating and Producing Television Advertising. Harry Wayne McMahan. 1960. New York: Hastings House. HF6146.T42 M3

[tllgrrl]

Pardon me while I geek out on the Production side a bit.

This stuff here. This is the stuff that makes parts of my brain feel like Wheeeeee!

Andrew Lincoln (Rick) has deep-set eyes and sharp, angular facial features, which plays into his acting style, whereas Danai Gurira (Michonne) has shallower-set eyes. She has a very open face but darker skin, so she can take a lot of different tones and textures of light and color. They were an interesting duo to light…. Adrian Peng Correia, DP - The Ones Who Live

After I had been hired to do the middle block [Episodes 3-4], Adrian and I spoke about the look and he updated me about the discussions. I supported 65 mm because I felt the story needed to feel big. It needed to be part of the world of the original “Walking Dead,” but it had to have a clear, distinct vibe – something that belongs specifically to Rick and Michonne, because they are so pivotal to the story. The ALEXA 65 was an obvious choice to give it a very distinct visual break from the original series and the spin-offs. — Wesley Cardino, DP - The Ones Who Live

*****

There were times when I was watching the mothership show (the original The Walking Dead) where I wanted to throw something at the TV, specifically because of the way Danai Gurira was lit. Or not lit. Or care wasn’t taken in lighting her even if the director was going for something of a mood.

Run Adrian Peng-Correia and Wesley Cardino their flowers for the work they did on The Ones Who Live.

[gameshowtrainwreck]

How to Rig a Game Show (Covering the 'How' and 'Why,' and a little 'How Come'), With Relevant Social Commentary

I'm trying to type up this big effort-assed essay on the American quiz show scandals and the part they played in why we are now where we are.

Nutshell is that, apart from Charles Revson, there was never really one single, abjectly malevolent actor in the whole thing, it was a series of people making small rationalizations and little moral compromises that ended up snowballing into something big enough, heavy enough, fast enough, and out of control enough that the whole thing plowed right tf into the court of public opinion and clobbered a hell of a lot of people.

And in a weird way, it serves as part of an explanation on why some of the shit that happened recently has happened. Let's examine the mechanisms in place that let it happen, how it took place, and who benefitted from it.

The punchline from all of that is that as a consequence of the whole fracas is those who produce game shows are legally mandated to hold a higher ethical standard than any producer for any segment of any news outlet operating within these borders. Neither a complaint nor a complement, just a description of the state of play as on the field.

But here is the complaint: 'Yellow Journalism' never really stopped being a thing with the American press, they just managed to shunt that image off to the tabloids and celebrity gossips, while rewording some of their more-blatant examples to appear more respectable. Even though 'if it bleeds, it leads' was the operative slogan of my day (at any rate), such sentiments were begrudgingly pooh-poohed by those trying to maintain a veneer of integrity. The information age has gone to demonstrate to everybody that engagement has always ranked higher than any proclaimed allegiance to objective fact.

Hell, look at how the US press was quick to call the recent clashes in Amsterdam as anti-Semitic attacks before everybody else found out it was a case of a bunch of out-of-towners literally trying to start shit with locals and the locals reminding the out-of-towners they were both unarmed and without air support. I don't think anybody who originally reported it as motivated by anti-semitism have bothered updating everybody on the newer developments, and if they did, they probably included it as a side note on an unrelated story, below the fold.

Yet some poor, dumb sumbitch of a college undergrad intern is looking at a nickel, minimum, in a federal penn if they bullshit the MSRP on a can of soup.

But despite the exaggeration of the stakes and the consequences involved, there are about three ways I can think of for cheating a game to happen (as in a deliberate and willful effort towards influencing what is presented as a genuine competition towards a pre-determined outcome), depending on who is involved with the deception, and the direction in which it is applied:

"Top-Down Bias:" This was the type of rigging that happened with The $64,000 Question and it's spinoff, The $64,000 Challenge. The shows' producers would meet with Revlon CEO Charles Revson, who would make thinly-veiled comments about the state of the contestants on the show, with producers adjusting material to be friendlier or more antagonistic in their questions for them based on those meetings.

The fault in this approach is that while any plan can be foolproof, there is no plan out there that is capable of being goddamned foolproof. As much as Charles Revson fuckin hated Dr Joyce Brothers' guts as a contestant, there really wasn't a way for the writers to get around her memorizing the literal encyclopedia of boxing they gave her, even to the point of asking her about people who were referees of notable fights.

"Bottom-Up Bias:" Contestants try to exert influence on the outcome of a game by means of outside assistance. Possibly the rarest instance of rigging a game that I've seen or studied-- it's only happened twice in all of history (that I know of). Charles Ingram's incredibly unsubtle coughing code on the UK's Who Wants to be a Millionaire? was the most-recent incident of this I can think of happening in real life.🎤

(please note: I do not consider Michael Larsen's exploitation of the big board on Press Your Luck to be an example of this; he wasn't the only one to notice the board had a set pattern, Bill Carruthers made mention of other people after Larsen thinking they had figured out the same system he had done. Larsen was just the quickest to spot and exploit it. Exploiting a bug in a game as it is designed is not cheating, that's on the production for not smoothing out that particular wrinkle at the start. Old Man Goodson liked to shit hisself over an episode of the pre-scandal chat-quizzer Two for the Money when a question came up that read something like "name a word that ends in the letters -TH;" The team figured out a lot of ordinal numbers could end that way, and ended up taking about five grand in early-1950s dollars in a game whose average payout was usually ≤ $750)

"Broadband Bias:" This was the most-common type of rigging that took place during the scandals. Frank Cooper's Dotto was the first show to be canceled on account of rigging but also involved just about every program in Jack Barry & Dan Enright's primetime catalog (Twenty One, Tic Tac Dough, High-Low, The Big Surprise, hell, let's throw Juvenile Jury in on that even though it wasn't a game show) and ultimately came to a head with Charles Van Doren's Senate testimony. Broadband Bias refers to the idea that you don't have to worry about an outcome that would lie beyond your control if you plan it all in advance and give contestants their instructions for each game.

To hear word from Barry and Enright themselves, they acted independently of Geritol's influence, What happened was that Twenty One had it's very first game end the show on a zero-zero tie. Reps with Geritol told B&E point-blank that they never wanted to see another episode like that ever again. The message Enright took from that was to prep the contestants.💰 Jack stated he had no idea what Dan was doing behind the scenes, but I think that was Jack and Dan's strategy to help soften the impact for each other's roles in it all. Not hatin', just statin'.

The plan was that losers would get a little extra in consolation prize money and/or spots on other quiz/panel shows B&E operated for their taking the dive, winners kick back some money to the production to help cover the losers' extra pay. Nobody the wiser would think anything truly wrong was taking place, they were entertainers, they were there to entertain, this was the check drawn from their performances.

The problem with this lies in the sheer number of participants you have to involve in order to keep the deception going: promises made to participants were not promises kept. Enright painted himself into a corner he couldn't get himself out of, and was exiled to Canadian TV for a decade as a result of it.

Does that mean that game shows are inherently more moral content than anything else out there?🍀 Absolutely not-- considering how much quid-pro-quo that Enright was running just for Twenty One (and this was a scheme Dan had apparently done across multiple shows), a cynical person could argue that the bulk of the reforms in the wake of the 1960 amendment to the Communications Act of '34 to address This Sort of Thing was not just to ensure honest competitions kept and maintained a paper trail (to show how they kept everything honest), but it also lead to one of the first instances of security theater in this country.

It's one thing to have a bank manager on stage talking about leaving questions sealed in a safe deposit box for a week (like on $64k), it's another to guide contestants through a bureaucratic process that could be presented in such a manner that contestants get the feeling that they would have no standing to launch proceedings if they had a grievance anyway.

Not that any of that excuses the predatory gaming that producers participated in during that rash of call-in-and-lose 'live game show' scams that were a thing for a handful of years during the first decade of the 22nd century. The three examples of game rigging I spoke of here were with the consideration of 'the contestant' vs 'the house' as parties ultimately neutral to one another; the house actually taking money from contestants📺 is something altogether different. I do hold the Call-In-and-Lose games as responsible for what would be every negative trope associated with mobile game ads (purposely terrible game demo, simplistic ruleset presented, little to no thought at all put into them, ad astra, ad infinitum).

And despite all of that, the public really wouldn't have cared if those accused had told everybody it was rigged to begin with. Case in point: Chuck Barris' The $1.98 Beauty Show had Johnny Jacobs announce it was fake at the beginning of every episode. Every episode straight up carried a disclaimer roughly saying "this is a satire. please do not think in any way that the participants are actually involved in any kind of competition because this is a satire. Please do not inquire about being a contestant on The $1.98 Beauty Show, even if you live in or plan to visit the Los Angeles area, because this is a satire. There are much better uses of your dignity that are worth considerably more than $1.98 because this is a satire." And that was on the screen for longer than the rest of the show's credits.

I mean, they didn't really say that in roughly that way, but I think you get the point.

I do believe that the that extra scrutiny that was incorporated into American game shows as a result of the scandals was a factor in why Mike Richards was cut loose from Jeopardy! as quickly as he was after Alex Trebek's passing. Going by accounts from those who had complaint against him while he was the executive producer at The Price is Right, one could not help but come away with the idea that Richards was trying to be the same type of business-as-usual Hollywood producer that empowered Harvey Weinstein to go hogg wild for as long as he did. Not a big deal in any other sector of the entertainment industry, apparently, but in a subsector of entertainment where you literally cannot do Business-as-Usual (including the regular charge of acting like a Goodson/Todman Producer towards Goodson/Todman Models that Bob Barker liked to pull), that is an absolute non-starter. If Sony Pictures Entertainment had their Standards & Practice rep go over the allegations, they likely saw an established pattern that did not carry good omens for Sony's fiscal futures if they allowed him to carry on. And remember, this was the company that released Mobius to theaters twice.

Unless you've sworn a life debt to them (and why the fuck would you ever go and do a fool thing like that in fuckin Hollywood of all places?), there are no bosses or coworkers that are really worth going to prison over, particularly when it comes to anything that would be highlighted by hand within the pages of "Legally Established and Enforceable Precedents About Which On Game Shows You Do Not Fuck Around (Even as a Joke Between Good Good Good Friends), Rev 5th Ed, Now With New Ingram's Rule"🏛️

It is possible to rig a game show, but if you wanna stay out of prison you gotta tell everybody it's rigged. There are three ways I have found to put a thumb on the scale if you wanted to but there really isn't a need to, because the money straight up ain't in it like it used to be. Pat Weaver at NBC (Sigourney's pa) had pushed for the 'magazine' style of sponsorship for programs for years before this happened in order to reduce sponsors' control of programming, and that was before the march of technology increased the number of competitors through the internet.

You can control the outcome of a closed system; nobody gives a shit that pro-wrestling is scripted because no promoter will suddenly decide to allow random members of the audience to participate in a royal rumble; but if your pitch is that anybody can play, then anybody should be able to win, and you should be able to show the receipts backing that up.

If you want to make a game show, make one that requires leaving the things that need to be left up to chance left up to chance. Trust your audience and your contestants, give them a game that builds tension organically.

Footnotes and bonus content:

🏛️ [it's an actual book, ask your Standards and Practices representative to show it to you the next time you're a contestant on a game show; some of them will even take the time to read it to you, and slowly because you're supposed to read that in your contestant agreement when you signed at the bottom saying that you understood it and their paychecks really depend on your having understood it.]

🎤[about the only other time I can think of something like that happening in the English-speaking world was, funnily enough, a plotline on The Phil Silvers Show— Fred Gwynne was a guest star as somebody previously attached to an Antarctic weather expedition and only had a guide to North American birds to read, and so he remembered all eight thousand-plus birds and went crazy because of it. Sgt. Bilko gets him on as a contestant on The $64,000 Question despite his protests and the bulk of the episode involves their trying to sneak Bilko and a walkie-talkie into the isolation booth to get Gwynne over that last hurdle (given a "now what?!" amnesia plot on Gwynne's part).

Beyond the anglosphere, there was an incident in the 1990s on Italy's 'Telemike' (named for the host, Mike Bongiorno. He hosted the Italian version of Jeopardy! back in the seventies for RAI; when a competing network managed to get him signed, they brought it back under a different name). A contestant tried to sneak in notes to help her out during the double-or-nothing final round and Mike caught her trying to look down her own blouse.

The point is that it hardly ever happens in fiction, and happens with the same apparent frequency as it does in real life.]

💰[Martin Scorsese's character in Quiz Show even mentioned as much to Rob Morrow's character, and more or less explained everything that would happen as a result of the scandals. When Jack Barry talked a little about it on the Dick Cavett Show, he still spoke about the stakeholders involved in the manner someone would assume somebody still intending to draw a paycheck in 'this town' would speak of them would say, which I don't fault one bit. And to his credit, Jack could have just as easily left Dan twisting in the wind when The Joker's Wild took off, but he didn't. I have to give the man props for that.

And while I'm on it, Goodwin's role in the scandals is given a little more impact in the portrayal because he's good friends with Robert Redford. Not hatin', just statin'; I'm sure you'd do the same if you directed a movie about a day in the life at your friend's job]

📺 [Not that I think setting up a game to be impossible to win is "rigging" like how I have attempted to discuss it; there have been several game shows that made a giant performance about the top prize being offered, and then you watch the show and realize there's no likely possibility that anybody would be lucky enough to collect on the amount as advertised. Just because you could win $50k at Plinko does not mean anyone has actually won it.

As a personal bit of advice to any quiz producers out there: don't do that shit. The game is the thing, make a good game and the prizes will take care of themselves]

🍀[lmao a Turkish crossword quizzer some time back got cancelled immediately after they had a whole round of questions making fun of President Erdoan on a live broadcast. News channels here wouldn't dare try to jeopardize their access like that]

[gaeapplehairline]

Something that I notice so often is that the way shows and movies are filmed now. The camera angles are so so different then they were say 20 years ago. I can't place exactly what's so starkly different but there's two things I've noticed. Shows don't seem to use as long as shots as they used to, it seems more like a tennis match now. The other being the now frequent use of characters faces front and center in the camera during casual moments.

[cbrownjc]

As an older fan, I’m starting to get some major Sherlock-vibes from the show, in the sense that fans are coming up with all these big-brained theories to explain weak writing that we have to have faith will come to fruition in some future season. Why make the change to Lestat saving Louis? Why is Louis seemingly stronger than Armand?  Why have the Loustat reunion, only for Louis to leave and challenge the entire vampire world (despite the fact that he’s apparently in a better place mentally-speaking)? Why publish under Daniel’s name, when that would clearly paint a target on his back, especially now that he’s a vampire? What’s going on with Daniel’s eyes?

The whole “spite” thing seems like a clear mis-direct, but with only like 8-ish episodes a season and Dubai-era Devil’s Minion being 100% subtext so far, I don’t think the writing team can do DM justice. All the inconsistencies seem like they’re being written off because it’s the unreliable narrator show, when they’re actually just plot holes.

Like…I 100% think the writing team forgot makers can’t telepathically talk to their fledglings, and that’s why they had to add in the throwaway line of Lestat actually whispering to Louis in 1x02. There was no hidden reason we were meant to find, it was just inconsistent internal logic justified because Louis can’t remember anything correctly.

IDK. I don’t want to be a downer, but a lot of my hype for the show just kinda fizzled out with the finale. I'm still gonna watch S3, but I think I'm just gonna wait til the whole thing comes out this time.

Hi!

So I never watched Sherlock nor was every in that fandom, though I did hear about some things after the fact. So I can't compare it to that fandom. But I can compare things to another book series that was being adapted fandom I was in which was Game of Thrones. And I think wrt things we are at least nowhere near that level of things and theorising. Yet.

Maybe because, unlike ASOIAF all the VC books are written and done. So that's a plus.

And see, the thing is? I can actually see a lot of methods to the madness of some of the things you've listed. Especially given the nature of how the story in the show is told through POVs. Where the issue comes into it is not ever knowing if what you are seeing is true, false, or just an interpretation of the truth -- as in Louis' POV of the play-trial rehearsal.

And I'd really like to know if how they ended this season is how they plan to end every season when a full book has been adapted? Something that wraps up the main character arc and story, but just leaves a host of other questions that, if we weren't getting a Season 3, would have never been answered. And who knows if they will all be answered in Season 3? As far as Devil's Minion goes, or Armand himself, I'm not expecting it to be now, given that Season 3 is The Vampire Lestat adaptation and Armand is a straight-up villain/antagonist in that book and Daniel doesn't appear in it at all, so anything we get with him will be extra anyway.

Now, as to whether Rolin Jones and the writers have a plan, Rolin says he pitched an 8-Season (or so) Arc to AMC before he was given the show to run. So at the moment? That is the only solid thing we have to go on right now wrt if there actually IS a play or not for the show.

But see (and oh boy, please forgive me as am I about to go into a big digression here), plotting a TV show is much harder to do than a book or a movie. TV writing is way more organic given that unforeseen circumstances can occur that you've never planned for when you go into a new season of TV production. Such as the studio asking you to split the first book you're adapting into 2 seasons instead of one, leaving you with only a month to rewrite the scripts. Or, a writer's strike and then an actors' strike a few weeks later, delaying production for months. Both of which happened to IWTV wrt Season 1 and then Season 2.

So organic things beyond the show's control are why it is much harder to plan out every little detail of a TV show in advance over multiple seasons. Take another AMC show, Breaking Bad. It's known that Season 2 of that show was intricately plotted out in advance but then, after that, the writers plotted and wrote the rest of the show as things came along for the remaining seasons, with no grand design to it -- even though the creator of the show, Vince Gilligan, knew way in advance how the show was going to end. And the show was able to get there, to that ending, without having a meticulous plan over seasons on how to do so.

I mean, the character of Jesse on Breaking Bad was originally supposed to die at the end of the first season. But instead, he lived through the whole damn thing. That was not planned at all.

And I think that might very well be the situation we have going here wrt IWTV. I think there are larger things they already know in advance about the show -- which books out of all of them will adapted into full stories vs which will only get references. Which characters in the show will make it into the show as full characters vs which characters will either be cut or combined with other existing characters (as Sam Ried revealed in his interview with Autumn Brown that that is going to happen -- that some characters will be combined with others). And what end point they want each of the main four characters -- Louis, Lestat, Armadn, and Daniel -- to be at when they get to at least Season 8. (If not Season 10, which is what AMC wants, 10 seasons). I think those are things Rolin and the writers very much know.

But I don't think the show has every single little detail plotted out for every little thing wrt how they are going to get to certain things. Not super far in advance at any rate.

I do think they'll purposefully put in seeds for later -- that they very much know they are going to need later -- though I think at most they do it one season ahead if it's a little thing. I very much do think that is what the things from episodes 1x02 and 1x03 very much were, since Season 1 and 2 were supposed to just be one season originally. Or the fight in 1x05 only being shown from Claudia's POV. I think that was also deliberate and they are very much planning on visiting it once again in Season 3, as they did in Season 2.

But I also think there are some things the show has not plotted way in advance and only figured out when they are writing that particular episode. Or maybe just decided to do that season as they were writing it, and not before then. Just like how almost every other TV show works, even ones that might very well know the ending they are working toward.

So I in no way think the show has figured and plotted out every single moment and beat of Armand and Daniel's relationship. Why? Not only because much of it happened in the past -- which yes I very much still think it did -- which covers 12 years of time, but because if you look at this clip, Rolin Jones kind of hints that they haven't plotted it out completely point for point even though there are some things they've thought and figured out:

video credit: Rei Gorrei on Twitter

So as far as Devil's Minion goes, I think Rolin and Co -- mostly Rolin -- has an endpoint for it in mind. But how they get to that endpoint is probably not planned out to the letter, super far in advance. And something they very likely just come up with as they are writing that particular season. At most? I'd say they've put things in this season that will be relevant next season and that's it.

So, I'm not going to say they can't do it justice. Not yet. I frankly don't have enough data to call that in a yes or no fashion since we haven't seen anything adapted from it aside from the 3-4 days Daniel spent in a cage, which is just the very start of how Devil's Minion begins. Basically one or two paragraphs. That's all they've really adapted when it comes to it at the moment.

And hey, it's okay if you feel down about all of this. If it helps, I'd say try and take a pragmatic approach to the show season by season, and if you feel it's better to binge it than watch it episode by episode for a time, that's good too. This is going to be a long journey after all.

[ladyluscinia]

Also love watching early 2000s TV because of all the random guys doing background parts. Modern TV is so lacking in the rotating cast of background actors 😔

8 episodes into House MD and I've seen Mick Rory from Legends of Tomorrow and the beautifully recognizable bald head of Kurt Fuller (Zachariah, Woody from Psych, etc.)

[signfeld-stills]

2002, Seinfeld 2 - Remembrance (s03e01)

[mattdeeryradio-blog]

Ran Sound for TUTV for Election 2024 in Annenberg Studio 3 for Klein College of Media and Communication